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It’s half past 11. The lunch hour crowds are just starting to trickle into the vintage Piccadilly on Government Street. Backlit by a blinding late morning sunshine magnified by plate glass windows, the silhouette of an old gray blues cat emerges slowly into the main dining hall. He waves to the ladies. One runs up to him for a giant hug. He shuffles, almost limping, to an upright piano pressed against the long, warm beige walls of the cafeteria.

At 81, everything about blues legend Henry Gray moves a little slower these days—except for his graceful hands, which still slide across the keys like the Spirit moving over the waters. He sits down at the piano, pauses and smiles. Suddenly, it’s boogie woogie; it’s barrelhouse blues; it’s a rollicking “Blueberry Hill.”

I wonder if diners digging into mashed potatoes and sipping their sweet tea know whose dry, plaintive voice is serenading them? I wonder if they know he served as piano man for Howlin’ Wolf throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s? That he played and recorded with Buddy Guy, Elmore James and Muddy Waters? That he was paid $2,000 an hour to perform at Mick Jagger’s opulent 55th birthday bash in Paris and the Rolling Stones acted like giddy fans the entire night?

Gray will be traveling next month to Washington, D.C., as one of nine recipients of a 2006 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. There, he will perform with gospel great Doyle Lawson and soul sister Mavis Staples. “Yeah, that’s all right,” Gray says with a wide smile.

He spent the summer traveling back and forth from Phoenix where he is recording a new album, but almost every Sunday, Monday and Tuesday he can be found at the Piccadilly piano for lunch hour sets of rhythm and blues classics.

“The people like it, so I like it,” Gray shrugs. “I do it for the people, not for a pocketful of money.”