Robert Shaw born 9 August 1908

Shaw was born in Stafford, Texas, the son of farm owners Jesse and Hettie Shaw, who owned a farm there. The family also owned a Steinway grand piano, and his sisters had lessons in playing, but Shaw's father was against allowing his son to learn the instrument. 

Shaw worked with his father on the family's ranch, and played the piano whenever his family was out; the first song he learned was "Aggravatin' Papa Don't You Try to Two-Time Me." In adolescence, Shaw travelled to Houston to listen to jazz musicians, and at nearby roadhouses. He then found a piano teacher and paid for lessons with his earnings. 

He learned a barrelhouse style of playing from musicians in the Fourth Ward, Houston. In the 1920s Shaw was part of the "Santa Fe Circuit", named after touring musicians utilising the Santa Fe freight trains. Although he played in Chicago, Shaw mainly restricted himself to Texas, performing as a soloist in the clubs and roadhouses of Sugarland, Richmond, Kingsville, Houston and Dallas. In 1930, at the height of the Kilgore oil boom, Shaw played there. Two years later he traveled to Kansas City, Kansas, to perform. In 1933 he hosted a radio show in Oklahoma City. He relocated to Texas, first to Fort Worth and then to Austin. 

Here he settled down and met Martha Landrum in Austin in 1936. They married on December 22, 1939. They had no children. He had previously been married to a woman named Blanche, with whom he had a daughter, Verna Mae, and a son, William. For several decades after his marriage, Shaw ran his business in partnership with Martha. He was named the black businessman of the year in Austin in 1962. Shaw kept an old upright piano at his grocery store and practiced every day. He also continued to play his music privately and for people who dropped by the Stop and Swat.

                          Here’s “The Cows” from above LP

In 1963, Shaw recorded an album, Texas Barrelhouse Piano, which was produced by Robert "Mack" McCormick and released by McCormick's Almanac Book and Recording Company. Arhoolie Records later reissued the LP under the title The Ma Grinder. The album contained old favourites such as "The Ma Grinder", "The Cows" and "Whores Is Funky", some of them too risque to have been issued previously. 

Further recordings made in the 1970s and 1980s were released on Arhoolie, Document, and Wolf. Talking about his style, he said, “When you listen to what I’m playin’ you got to see in your mind all them gals out there swingin’ their butts and gettin’ the mens all excited. Otherwise you ain’t got this music rightly understood!”

In 1967, seven years before his retirement from the grocery trade, Shaw recommenced concert playing. With the revival of his career, he played at the Kerrville Folk Festival, overseas in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and at the Berlin Jazz Festival; as well as the Smithsonian Institution's American Folk Life Festival, the World's Fair Expo in Canada, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He played with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at the 1973 Austin Aqua Festival, and continued to perform in the United States and in Europe intermittently in the 1970s, turning up unexpectedly in California in 1981 to help Strachwitz celebrate Arhoolie's 20th anniversary. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, The Handbook of Texas & All About Blues Music.com)