Sonny Boy Williamson (
John Lee Curtis
Williamson, 30 March 1914 — 1 June 1948) was an American
blues harmonica player, and the first to use
the name Sonny Boy Williamson.
Career
He was
born near Jackson
, Tennessee
in 1914. 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".
Early recordings
His very first recording, "
Good Morning, School Girl", was a
major hit on the 'race records' market in 1937.
He was hugely popular
among black audiences throughout the whole 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 "Shake
the Boogie", "You Better Cut that Out", "Sloppy Drunk", and "Early
in the Morning". 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 easily
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 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, and Waters recorded "Good Morning Little
Schoolgirl" in September 1963 for his Chess LP Folk Singer and
again in the 70s when he moved to Johnny Winter's Blue Sky label on
CBS.
1940's and later recordings
He was
popular enough that by the 1940s, another blues harp player,
Aleck/Alex "Rice" Miller,
who was based in Helena,
Arkansas
, 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
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!"
Murder 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, with many early
sessions taking place in the ballroom on the top floor of the
Leland Hotel in Aurora,
Illinois
; most later
sessions were recorded in Chicago. His final recording
session took place in December 1947, backing
Big Joe Williams. On June 1, 1948, John Lee
Williamson was killed in a mugging on Chicago's South Side, as he
walked home from his final 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 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.
See Also
Sonny Boy Williamson
II
References
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