Henry Townsend has been played on NTS shows including Carolina Soul, with Cairo Is My Baby's Home first played on 23 April 2017.

Henry 'Mule' Townsend (27 October 1909, Shelby, Mississippi – 25 September 2006, Mequon, Wisconsin) was an American blues singer, guitarist and pianist.

Townsend was born in Shelby, Mississippi and grew up in Cairo, Illinois. He left home at the age of nine because of an abusive father and hoboed his way to St. Louis, Missouri. He learned guitar while in his early teens from a locally renowned blues guitarist known as "Dudlow Joe".

By the late 1920s he had begun touring and recording with…