"Professor Longhair", a.k.a. Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd was born in 1918 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He moved with his family to New Orleans, where he began performing at a young age, tap dancing for tourists in the French Quarter. Many say this is where he picked up his incredible sense of rhythm.

Byrd is most known for his unique piano playing style, creating entire solos on a very limited range of notes. Chalk it up to his early days when he was first learning from his mother on an old broken piano that someone had left out for the garbage man. "My mother started teaching me what few keys they had left on it – I guess that’s why I learned the style that I learned. When I was playing, I had to remember what keys were good and what was bad and skip them and jump ‘em. Some of the guys said I was cross-chording but, whatever it was, I was getting to the right keys. With these good pianos, it’s simple for me to do what I was doing then."

After returning from serving in the Army in 1944, he went through a series of professions, cooking, boxing, and often hustling cards. The first break as a musician came in 1949 at a New Orleans club called the Caledonia. He started playing there every weekend, and gained a large following. The name Professor Longhair was awarded him by the owner of the club – "Professor" being a common term used then to describe anyone who was a great piano player, and "Longhair" because, well, he had long hair. Soon he was in a studio recording tracks, and his first (and only) hit came in 1950 when "Bald Head" reached number five on the R&B charts.