Henry's Blueshouse — Crown Hotel, Birmingham

Henry's Blueshouse, held at the Crown Hotel on Station Street in Birmingham city centre, was the weekly blues club where Black Sabbath — then still called Earth — played some of their earliest shows and where Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward built their early following. Run by promoter Henry Laistner from 1968, the club presented blues and rock acts to a young Birmingham audience and functioned as the hub of the city's underground music scene. The Sabbath residency at Henry's was part of the process by which the band moved from playing covers and blues standards to developing the heavier, more original sound that would define them.

Birmingham in the late 1960s was a city of enormous musical productivity: the city produced Black Sabbath, the Moody Blues, Robert Plant (who grew up in the West Midlands), and a later generation including Duran Duran, UB40, and Ozzy's own post-Sabbath career. The industrial character of the city — its noise, its physical weight, its working-class culture — was different from the London music scene and produced different music. Henry's Blueshouse was where Birmingham's musicians found each other and where the underground economy of small venues, cheap beer, and passionate local audiences that sustained the pre-fame years operated. Led Zeppelin, Free, and other major acts also played the Crown during this period.

The Crown Hotel building on Station Street no longer operates as a music venue. The Station Street area of Birmingham city centre has been substantially redeveloped. Henry's Blueshouse is remembered in Birmingham music history as a key incubator of the city's most significant rock acts. The club ran until the early 1970s and its alumni include some of the most commercially successful acts in British rock history.