By Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
RESPECT FOR THE DEAD
W
hen Steve Salter was growing
up in Muskegon, Michigan in
the '50s, there were a lot of blues
musicians passing through, performing at
small clubs and lounges, only he didn't
know about it. "Being a white guy, I never
knew about these artists coming to town
until I went back and did the research. I
was amazed to discover the artists that
came. Those discoveries would later connect to what would become Steve's life's
work; locating the unmarked graves of
organized a blues festival in his hometown
of Whitehall, Michigan to raise money in
2008. In 2009 The Killer Blues Headstone
Project became a non-profit with a fivemember board. The organization has
placed 35 headstones and will count 40 by
the end of the year.
Moved by his passion for the music
and its players, laying headstones is still
not an easy process. "It all depends on who
it is and where they're at. Some are easy
and some are difficult," he says of the
Luther Tucker 1936-1993,
his headstone was placed in
2009 by the Killer Blues
Headstone Project.
blues musicians and buying and designing
headstones for the bare plots. "They're a lot
of people who claim to love the blues but
I'm paying back what has already been
give to me," he says.
Although Steve grew up listening to all
sorts of music on the local AM radio station, it wasn't until the '60s that he started
consistently listening to the blues. "The
British cats brought the sounds back to us
and I started going back and researching
the artists and I fell in love with it." His
love for the blues has colored his life's path
on many levels. He works full time in a
test lab for an automotive company but the
rest of his time is devoted to the Killer
Blues Headstone Project. He created the
organization in 2007 after a trip to Chicago
revealed a shocking truth to him.
"I wanted to pay my respects to those
who had enriched my life with this art
form I loved so I visited the cemeteries
where some of the musicians were buried.
I was curious about what type of headstones they had and how the world recognized them, "he recalls. "When I envisioned Muddy Waters' grave, I expected a
monumental statue to the king of the blues
but it was just a flat stone. I couldn't
believe it. Then I found Otis Spann's grave
and he didn't have a stone at all. That really bothered me."
Steve couldn't understand how musicians who played the most significant
music that the U.S. has produced, could go
unacknowledged, even in death. He decided to do something about it. "I contacted
Blues Access magazine and told them that
Otis Spann was in an unmarked grave so
let's raise money and they did. But I discovered more unmarked graves of blues
musicians in New Orleans and they
seemed to lose interest. I was a vendor at
blues festivals selling t-shirts and CDs,
that's where the name comes from, 'all
killer and no filler.' I didn't sell anything
that wasn't authentic blues. CDs weren't
selling anymore so I decided to devote my
time to raising money for headstones." He
18 illinoisentertainer.com july 2014
process of locating a musician's burial site
and contacting the family for permission
to lay a headstone. "I work with grassmarker.com. It's all online. They design
and ship a headstone for $300. Cemeteries
charge a placement fee to lay the stone.
The placement fee is $650 in California,
where we did a stone for Ted Hawkins.
The average placement fee in Chicago is
$425-500. Sometimes they'll waive the fee
because we're a non-profit, sometimes not.
Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago waived the
fee for Papa Charlie Jackson and Joshua
Altheimer (the boogie- woogie pianist
who played with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny
Boy Willi [\