🎹 Cornbread Harris, 98, brings famed weekly gig to the Schooner

Palmer’s Bar closed down last weekend, ending a 119-year run as a Cedar-Riverside staple – and with it, among many other things, Cornbread Harris’s weekly Sunday night gig.

It could’ve been a chance for the 98-year-old piano player to take a breather. But, now in his ninth decade of performing around town, Harris isn’t keen to skip a beat. Instead, he’s moved the weekly show to Longfellow’s own storied old dive bar, the Schooner Tavern, where his inaugural gig drew more than 100 people Sunday evening.

Background 

Harris was born in Chicago but moved to St. Paul to live with his grandparents after he was orphaned as a toddler. He's been performing in the Twin Cities since the 1940's, and in 1955 he co-wrote and performed on Augie Garcia's "Hi Yo Silver," regarded as the Twin Cities’ first rock n’ roll record. He’s had other brief brushes with fame, too, but mostly he’s remained a working-class musician, holding down gigs as background entertainment in bars and supper clubs around town while spending much of his daytime career at a St. Paul foundry.