Charles Sawyer is a photographer, writer, musician, and leader of the blues band 2120 South Michigan Avenue. For 27 years (1990-2017) he taught software-engineering and blues history at Harvard Extension School. His blues history class at Harvard Extension was offered for 11 years running, starting in 2003 when his guest artist was B.B. King himself. B.B. answered questions from an audience of 400+ captured by Harvard videographer Chris Mehl: B.B. King at Harvard Sawyer's career in software began at Computervision in 1984 and ended at Google in 2015. He was consultant for the B.B. King Museum. He is the author of the The Arrival of B.B. King (Doubleday, 1980), the first authorized biography of blues guitarist and singer B.B. King, and the author of From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the King of the Blues (Schiffer Publishing 2022).
Sawyer was born in 1941 in Concord, NH. He is married to the editor Cherie Hoyt. They have one son Sam Sawyer. He currently lives in Boxford, MA. He was educated at University of New Hampshire (BS 1962), Case Western Reserve (MS 1964), Yale, Boston University and Harvard (MS, 1989).
