Sonny Boy Williamson I
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This article is about the blues musician who died in 1948. For the Sonny Boy Williamson who died in 1965, see Sonny Boy Williamson II.
Sonny Boy Williamson
Birth name John Lee Curtis Williamson
Born March 30, 1914
Jackson, Tennessee, United States
Died June 1, 1948 (aged 34)
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres Country blues, Chicago blues, acoustic blues, electric blues, harmonica blues
Instruments Harmonica
Years active 1930s – 1948
Labels Bluebird (1937–48)
John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player and singer, and the first to use the name Sonny Boy Williamson.
Biography and career
Williamson was born near Jackson, Tennessee in 1914.[1] His original recordings were considered to be in the country blues style, but he soon demonstrated skill at making harmonica a lead instrument for the blues, and popularized it for the first time in a more urban blues setting. He has been called "the father of modern blues harp". While in his teens he joined Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes playing with them in Tennessee and Arkansas, and in 1934 settled in Chicago.
Early recordings
Sonny first recorded for Bluebird Records in 1937 and his first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl", became a standard.[1] He was hugely popular among black audiences throughout the southern United States as well as in the midwestern industrial cities such as Detroit and his home base in Chicago, and his name was synonymous with the blues harmonica for the next decade. Other well-known recordings of his include "Sugar Mama Blues", "Shake the Boogie", "You Better Cut That Out", "Sloppy Drunk", "Early in the Morning" and "Stop Breaking Down" and "Hoodoo Hoodoo" aka "Hoodoo Man Blues". In 1947 "Shake the Boogie" made #4 on Billboard's Race Records chart.[1] Williamson's style influenced a large number of blues harmonica performers, including Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells, Sonny Terry, Little Walter, and Snooky Pryor among many others. He was the most widely heard and influential blues harmonica player of his generation. His music was also influential on many of his non-harmonica playing contemporaries and successors, including Muddy Waters (who had played guitar with Williamson in the mid-1940s) and Jimmy Rogers (whose first recording in 1946 was as a harmonica player, performing an uncanny imitation of Williamson's style); Rogers later recorded Williamson's songs "My Little Machine" and "Sloppy Drunk" on Chess Records, and Waters recorded "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" in September 1963 for his Chess Folk Singer LP and again in the 1970s when he moved to Johnny Winter's Blue Sky label on CBS.
1940s
He was popular enough that by the 1940s, another blues harp player, Aleck/Alex "Rice" Miller, from Mississippi, began also using the name Sonny Boy Williamson. John Lee is said to have objected to this, though no legal action took place, possibly due to the fact that Miller did not release any records during Williamson's lifetime, and that Williamson played mainly around the Chicago area, while Miller seldom ventured beyond the Mississippi Delta region until after Williamson's death. In 1942, John Lee allegedly confronted Miller, but according to Miller's friend and guitarist Robert Lockwood, "Big Sonny Boy [Miller] chased Little Sonny Boy [Williamson] away from there. He couldn't play with Rice. Rice Miller could play Sonny Boy's stuff better than he could play it!"
Death and musical legacy
Williamson recorded prolifically both as a bandleader and a sideman over the entire course of his career, mainly for the Bluebird record label. Before Bluebird moved to Chicago, where it eventually became part of RCA Records, many early sessions took place at the Leland Tower, a hotel in Aurora, Illinois. The top-floor nightclub at the Leland, known as "The Sky Club", was used for live big band broadcasts on a local radio station, was utilized during off-hours as a recording studio for Williamson's early sessions, as well as those of other Bluebird artists.
Williamson's final recording session took place in Chicago in December 1947, backing Big Joe Williams. On June 1, 1948, John Lee Williamson was killed in a robbery on Chicago's South Side, as he walked home from a performance at The Plantation Club at 31st St. and Giles Ave., a tavern just a block and a half away from his home at 3226 S. Giles. Williamson's final words are reported to have been "Lord have mercy".
His legacy has been somewhat overshadowed in the post-war blues era by the popularity of the musician who appropriated his name, Rice Miller, who after Williamson's death went on to record many popular blues songs for Chicago's Checker Records label and others, and toured Europe several times during the 'blues revival' in the early 1960s.
Williamson is buried at the former site of The Blairs Chapel Church, southwest of Jackson, Tennessee. In 1991, a red granite marker was purchased by fans and family to mark the site of his burial. A Tennessee historical marker, also placed in 1991, indicates the place of his birth and describes his influence on blues music. The historical marker is located south of Jackson on TN Highway 18, at the corner of Caldwell Road.
Studio albums
The Original Sonny Boy (Saga) 2005
Bluebird Blues (RCA Victor Europe) 2003
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Boy_Williamson_I
https://www.blues.org/halloffame/inductees.php4.php?YearId=25#ref=halloffame_inductees
http://www.onthisveryspot.com/search.php?ss=Sonny_Boy_Williamson
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8395191
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Sonny+Boy+Williamson
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson was the first great blues hamonoicist. Not to be confused with Aleck Ford Miller, who assumed the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" to promote the sponser of his radio program in Helena, AR. Easily the most important harmonica player of the pre war era, John Lee Williamson single-handedly made the harmonica a worthy lead instrument for blues bands and opened the door for many players such as Little Walter, Billy Boy Arnold and Junior Wells. A harp virtuoso in his teens, hence the nickname, Sonny Boy learned his licks from Hamie Nixon and Noah Lewis. His call and response style of alternating vocal passages with a powerful harmonica blast would be adopted by virtually every harmonica player that followed. His career began to blossom when he moved to Chicago in 1934, and began playing with Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams, Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy. From 1937 to 1947, Sonny Boy recorded over 120 sides for RCA, which included such classics as "Decoration Blues," "Whiskey Headed Blues," "Tell Me Baby," "Bring Me Another Half a Pint," "Sugar Mama," and "Hoodoo Hoodoo"(aka Hoodoo Man). His "Good Morning Little School Girl" could possibly be the most covered blues song in history. Unfortunately Sonny Boy would not live to reap the rewards of his accomplishments. On the morning of June 1, 1948 while returning home after playing the Plantation Club on Chicago's south side, he was mugged and brutally beaten. As he lay dying on the street he uttered the immortal words "Lord, have mercy on me," which would become a staple in blues lyrics. (bio by: Jim Adams)