Rumford native who became Midwest blues icon slain in Oklahoma homicide

By Ethan Hartley
Posted 7/2/25

A Rumford native who would go on to become a prominent performer, proponent, and artistic leader in the Oklahoma blues scene became a victim of tragedy on June 9, 2025.

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Rumford native who became Midwest blues icon slain in Oklahoma homicide

Posted

A Rumford native who left the state as a young woman and would go on to become a prominent performer, proponent, and artistic leader in the Oklahoma blues scene met a tragic end on June 9, 2025 after she was found dead in her home in what authorities have determined to be a homicide.

Susan Selby Minner, 75, was born Susan Selby Guenther on Nov. 18, 1949 in a Providence hospital, but her native home was on Wildwood Avenue in Rumford.

Fellow Rumford native Ned Connors — who saw a short notice about Guenther’s death in a recent edition of The Providence Journal — said he recognized her name immediately. He said that Susan and his late brother, Tommy, were close, and that he remembered her father, Louis; appropriately enough for a reason related to music.

“Her dad had the first Hi-Fi system I had ever seen,” Connors said. “He played classical music on it, but we’d tune into FM on it and play rock and roll.”

Connors described Susan as one of Rumford’s first “folkies”, someone interested in folk music and playing the guitar.

Jack Potter — who grew up as a next-door neighbor to the Guenthers and was the same age as Susan — said that Susan attended St. Margaret’s School, and that he went to prom with Susan’s younger sister, Jean. Potter said he remembered Susan being a part of the Rumford neighborhood crowd that would go out and find ways to enjoy themselves within their surroundings.

“Any summer evening when it was still light out and we’d already eaten and were still outside and the streetlights would go on, we were running around,” he said. “We lived right next to the reservoir. The Guenthers lived one house over from it, and the rifle range was behind us. So we often went out there and played in the fields and what not.”

Susan would go on to become an active member of East Providence High School’s Class of 1967, where according to the yearbook she became the president of the Art Club, the president of the Science Research Club, and was a member of the drama club, the creative writing club, and the debate club. She is also credited as being the student photographer for the yearbook.

After high school, Susan went on to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and it wasn’t long after that she found her launchpad into the world of music.

The OK queen of blues
According to her obituary posted by Garrett Family Funeral Home in Checotah, Okla., it all started with a Janis Joplin concert that her friends took her to at the campus dining hall.

“That night her path shifted to music, a passion that would define the rest of her life,” the obituary reads. “She picked up an acoustic guitar and left Providence in 1971, with guitarist Jim Donovan.”

She and Donovan formed an acoustic blues duo and hitchhiked across the country, touring coffeehouses in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New Orleans before settling for a time in San Francisco. During this time, she became acquainted with an Oklahoma blues musician, D.C. Minner, “who had played bass with Larry Johnson and the New Breed and behind musical legends including Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and O.V. Wright,” according to the obituary.

She and Minner began performing together, and in 1979 she and Minner married in Santa Fe. They toured the country for over 10 years as the blues duo, Blues on the Move, and returned to Minner’s hometown of Rentiesville, Okla. in 1988. There, they renovated his grandmother’s former speakeasy club, the Cozy Corner, into the Down Home Blues Club. They founded the Dusk til’ Dawn Blues Festival in 1991, which has now been running for 34 years each Labor Day Weekend.

In 2006, Susan Selby Minner was inducted into the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame, and in 2024, she received a Community Service Award from the Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, “honoring her decades of leadership and volunteerism in Oklahoma’s cultural communities.” She has been featured in programs and publications spanning local Oklahoma media to The Oprah Winfrey Show.

“Selby’s impact reached far beyond the stage. Among her proudest accomplishments was teaching youth to love and play the Blues. Whether introducing children to the electric guitar or mentoring aspiring musicians in the classroom, Selby believed in the power of music to uplift, heal, and connect. Her students loved her, and she loved them back just as fiercely,” the obituary reads. “She was more than a musician. Selby Minner was a matriarch of the Blues, and a radiant light in every room she entered. Her music was raw and real. Her presence was unforgettable. And her love for community and culture will echo through generations to come.”

Brother arrested
Court documents have revealed that Minner’s brother, Louis Guenther, has been arrested as the primary suspect in the crime.

An affidavit, reported on by other Oklahoma news sources, revealed police were alerted that something gruesome had occurred when they received a report that a man was sitting at the Honey Springs Battlefield in Rentiesville, Okla. for several hours while being covered in what appeared to be blood and while being in possession of a hammer.

When he was questioned at the scene, he reportedly told officers he had committed the crime, and told them where they would find Minner; at her house, which she had turned into a multi-purpose space for entertainment, called the Blues Club.

Court documents also reveal that Louis Guenther has since pleaded not guilty to the crime, and will undergo testing as to whether or not he is mentally fit to stand trial.

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