Jaybird Coleman

At the suggestion of blues researcher and folklorist Sam Charters, Cather located the family of Jaybird Coleman, the Bessemer, Alabama, harmonica player and singer whose early recordings (1927-1930) were by the 1960s regarded as collectible classics.

Cather's research, first published in a 1962 issue of Music Memories Monthly, filled in important details about Coleman's life and career. From Coleman's brother Joe, Cather also obtained the only known photo of the late musician, an image which has been reproduced often in the years since it first appeared in Cather's magazine.

In 1990, Cather would adapt and expand his original writing on Coleman into a limited-edition monograph, Tracking Down a Legend: The "Jaybird" Coleman Story. Cather's writing, archived here, is valuable not only for its insight into Coleman's biography, but for its depiction of Cather's own teenaged efforts to track down and preserve Alabama's blues and jazz legacies.