He and his wife, Selby Minner, founded the Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival.

RENTIESVILLE -- D.C. Minner, the blues musician and singer who with his wife started the annual Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival 16 years ago, died Tuesday. He was 73.

Services are pending with Ragsdale Funeral Center in Muskogee.

Minner was born in 1935 in tiny Rentiesville, a town he would put on the blues map.

He served in the Army as a medic during the Korean War.

A skilled musician, he performed with artists ranging from O.V. Wright and Fred die King to Chuck Berry, Eddie Floyd and Bo Diddley.

He and his wife, Selby Minner, met during the 1960s when she was singing and playing acoustic blues in northern California clubs.

The couple toured for 12 years before settling back into Rentiesville in 1979.

While Minner was growing up there during the Prohibition years, his grandmother owned a corn-whiskey hall.

In 1988, the Minners reopened its doors as the Down Home Blues Club.

They hosted the popular Dusk Til Dawn Blues Festival at the club each year during Labor Day weekend.

"If you play blues to get rich, then you really are making a mistake," Minner once said. "So we don't do this for the money. What we do do this for is for the love of the music."

D.C. Minner was a member of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.

The Minners had served