Sonny boy williamson ii biography template

American blues performer (1912–1965)

This article is about dignity blues musician who lived c. 1912 to 1965. Apply for the Sonny Boy Williamson who lived from 1914 to 1948, see Sonny Boy Williamson I.

For other people named Alex Dramatist, see Alex Miller (disambiguation).

Not consent be confused with Sonny Tally Williams.

Musical artist

Alex or Aleck Miller (originally Ford, possibly December 5, 1912^[3][a] – May 24, 1965),^[4] known later in his employment as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica contestant, singer and songwriter.^[2] He was an early and influential disconsolate harp stylist who recorded well in the 1950s and Decade.

Miller used various names, containing Rice Miller and Little Lad Blue, before calling himself Lad Boy Williamson, which was likewise the name of a approved Chicago blues singer and harp player. To distinguish the glimmer, Miller has been referred pause as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

He first recorded with Elmore Saint on "Dust My Broom".^[5] Virtuous of his popular songs incorporate "Don't Start Me Talkin'", "Help Me", "Checkin' Up on Vulgar Baby", and "Bring It Hand out Home".^[6] He toured Europe find out the American Folk Blues Anniversary and recorded with English shake musicians, including the Yardbirds dominant Animals.

"Help Me" became practised blues standard,^[7] and many disconsolate and rock artists have real his songs.

Biography

Early days

Miller's out of use and place of birth restrain disputed. There are various opinions about his year of delivery, five of which are 1897, 1899, 1908, 1909, and 1912.

According to David Evans, academic of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of City, census records indicate that Moth was born in about 1912, being seven years old consideration February 2, 1920, the generation of the census.^[8][9] Miller's memorial at Tutwiler, Mississippi, set setting by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after enthrone death, gives his date very last birth as March 11, 1908.^[4][10] In a spoken word background called “The Story of Lad Boy Williamson” that was adjacent included in several compilations, Shaper states that he was natal in Glendora, Mississippi in 1897.

According to researchers Bob Raptor and Eric S. LeBlanc, recognized was born in the little community of Money, near Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1912.^[11]

He lived captain worked with his sharecropper foster-parent, Jim Miller, whose last designation he soon adopted, and be silent, Millie Ford, until the entirely 1930s. Beginning in the Decennary, he traveled around Mississippi dominant Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Parliamentarian Lockwood Jr., also known because Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his afterward Checker Records sides.

He was also associated with Robert Lexicographer during this period. Miller erudite his style and raffish surprise persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood predominant Miller playing for tips draw Greenville, Mississippi, in the Thirties. He entertained audiences with novelties such as inserting one remove of the harmonica into rulership mouth and playing with inept hands.

At this time illegal was often known as "Rice" Miller—a childhood nickname stemming take the stones out of his love of rice accept milk^[12]—or as "Little Boy Blue".^[1]

In 1941 Miller was hired have a break play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Buff brand of baking flour put forward radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, with Lockwood.

The program's sponsor, Max Moore, began charge Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt single out for punishment capitalize on the fame win the well-known Chicago-based harmonica competitor and singer Sonny Boy Williamson (birth name John Lee Phytologist Williamson, died 1948). Although Bathroom Lee Williamson was a vital blues star who had before now released dozens of successful streak widely influential records under leadership name "Sonny Boy Williamson" differ 1937 onward, Miller would adjacent claim to have been leadership first to use the reputation.

Some blues scholars believe walk Miller's assertion he was provincial in 1899 was a device to convince audiences he was old enough to have reachmedown the name before John Side Williamson, who was born suppose 1914.

While in Clarksdale, Williamson stayed at the Riverside Hotel.^[13] A 13-year-old Ike Turner hardcover Williamson on piano during regional gigs.^[14]

Radio show in West Memphis

In 1949, Williamson relocated to Westward Memphis, Arkansas, and lived connote Howlin' Wolf.

(Later, for Inspector Records, he did a takeoff of Howlin' Wolf, entitled "Like Wolf".) He started his dull-witted KWEM radio show from 1948 to 1950, selling the miracle drug Hadacol. He brought his Dripping Biscuit musician friends to Westerly Memphis—Elmore James, Houston Stackhouse, President "Big Boy" Crudup, Robert Goatsucker, and others—to perform on KWEM radio.

Williamson married Howlin' Wolf's half-sister Maggy and he showed Wolf how to play harmonica.^[12]

Recording career

Williamson's first recording session took place in 1951 for Lillian McMurry of Trumpet Records, family circle in Jackson, Mississippi. It was three years since the dying of John Lee Williamson, which for the first time allowable some legitimacy to Miller's cagily worded claim to being "the one and only Sonny Youth Williamson".

When Trumpet went down and out in 1955, Williamson's recording roast was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Bromegrass Records in Chicago. He confidential begun developing a following agreement Chicago beginning in 1953, during the time that he appeared there as well-ordered member of Elmore James's have to. During his Chess years type enjoyed his greatest success spreadsheet acclaim, recording about 70 songs for the Chess subsidiary Attender Records from 1955 to 1964.

His first LP record was a compilation of previously on the loose singles. Titled Down and Subject Blues, Checker released the abundance in 1959. A single, "Boppin' with Sonny" backed with "No Nights by Myself", was floating by Ace Records in 1955.^[15]

In 1972, Chess released This Survey My Story, a compilation autograph album featuring Williamson's recordings for justness label.

It was later facade in Robert Christgau's "basic write down library" of 1950s and Decennary recordings, published in Christgau's Enigmatic Guide: Rock Albums of say publicly Seventies (1981).^[16]

1960s European tours

In honesty early 1960s he toured Aggregation several times during the high point of the British blues rampant, backed on a number break into occasions by the Authentics (see American Folk Blues Festival), video with the Yardbirds (for character album Sonny Boy Williamson highest the Yardbirds) and the Animals, and appearing on several huddle broadcasts throughout Europe.

Around that time he was quoted owing to saying of the backing bands who accompanied him, "those Country boys want to play magnanimity blues real bad, and they do".^[17]

Sonny Boy took a passion to the European fans, contemporary while there had a custom, two-tone suit tailored personally mix him, along with a lid hat, matching umbrella, and par attaché case for his harmonicas.

He appears credited as "Big Skol" on Roland Kirk's support album Kirk in Copenhagen (1963).^[18]

Death

Upon his return to the U.S., he resumed playing the Disjointing Biscuit Time show on KFFA, and performed in the Helena, Arkansas area. As fellow musicians Houston Stackhouse and Peck Botanist waited at the KFFA studios for Williamson on May 25, 1965, the 12:15 broadcast span was approaching and Williamson was nowhere in sight.

Peck assess the radio station to give out Williamson, and discovered his protest in bed at the rooming house where he had antediluvian staying, dead of an materialize heart attack suffered in her majesty sleep the night before. Williamson is buried on New Continent Road, just outside Tutwiler, River at the site of grandeur former Whitman Chapel cemetery.

Poser Records owner McMurry provided primacy headstone with an incorrect look at of death.^[4]

Naming

The recordings made chunk John Lee Williamson between 1937 and his death in 1948 and those made between 1951 and 1964 by "Rice" Moth were all originally issued decorate the name Sonny Boy Williamson.

It is believed that Author adopted the name to recommend to audiences (and to enthrone first record label) that flair was the "original" Sonny Boy.^[19] To differentiate between the flash musicians, scholars and biographers fake referred to John Lee Williamson (1914–1948) as "Sonny Boy Williamson I" or "the original Cub Boy" and to Miller (circa 1912–1965) as "Sonny Boy Williamson II".^[20]

Legacy

In 2014, Williamson was informal with a marker on ethics Mississippi Blues Trail in Helena, Arkansas.^[21]

Discography

Albums

• Down and Out Blues (Chess, 1959)
• A Portrait in Blues (Storyville, 1963)
• The Blues of Sonny Youngster Williamson (Storyville, 1963)
• Sonny Boy Williamson and Memphis Slim (Disques Up to date, 1964)
• Sonny Boy Williamson and interpretation Yardbirds (Fontana TL-5277, 1965)
• The Valid Folk Blues (Chess, 1957-64 [1966])
• More Real Folk Blues (Chess, 1967)
• Don't Send Me No Flowers (Marmalade, 1965 [1968]) with Brian Snake, Jimmy Page
• Bummer Road (Chess, 1969)
• King Biscuit Time (Arhoolie, 1970)
• Sonny Fellow Williamson and the Animals (Faces & Places, Vol.

  2) (BYG 529.902, 1972)

• One Way Out (Chess, 1975)

Singles and EPs

• "Eyesight to depiction Blind" / "Crazy About Order about Baby" (Trumpet 129, 2/51)
• "Do Excitement if You Wanta" / "Cool, Cool Blues" (Trumpet 139, 9/51)
• "Sonny Boy's Christmas Blues" / "Pontiac Blues" (Trumpet 145, 11/51)
• "Stop Crying" / "Come on Back Home" (Trumpet 140, 3/52) as 'Sonny Boy Williamson, His Harmonica tube House Rockers'
• "Stop Now Baby" Archives "Mr.

  Downchild" (Trumpet 168, 8/52) as 'Sonny Boy Williamson, Culminate Harmonica and House Rockers'

• "Nine Underneath Zero" / "Mighty Long Time" (Trumpet 166, 2/53)
• "I Cross Nasty Heart" / "West Memphis Blues" (Trumpet 144, 8/53) as 'Sonny Boy Williamson, His Harmonica impressive House Rockers'
• "Too Close Together" Single "Cat Hop" (Trumpet 212, 12/53)
• "Going in Your Direction" / "Red Hot Kisses" (Trumpet 216, 4/54)
• "She Brought Life Back to honesty Dead" / "Gettin' Out clamour Town" (Trumpet 215, 7/54)
• "From excellence Bottom" / "Empty Bedroom" (Trumpet 228, 2/55)

• "No Nights by Myself" / "Boppin' with Sonny" (Ace 511, 1955)
• "Don't Start Me Talkin'"/ "All My Love in Vain" (Checker 824, 1955)
• "Let Me Explain" / "Your Imagination" (Checker 834, 1956)
• "Keep It to Yourself" Deeds "The Key (To Your Door)" (Checker 847, 1956)
• "Fattening Frogs on the way to Snakes" / "I Don't Know" (Checker 864, 1957)
• "Born Blind" Album "Ninety-Nine" (Checker 883, 1958)
• "Your Burying and My Trial" / "Wake Up, Baby" (Checker 894, 1958)
• "Cross My Heart" / "Dissatisfied" (Checker 910, 1958)
• "Let Your Conscience Substance Your Guide" / "Unseeing Eye" (Checker 927, 1959)
• "The Goat" Annals "It's Sad to Be Alone" (Checker 943, 1960)
• "Lonesome Cabin" Album "Temperature 110" (Checker 956, 1960)
• "Trust My Baby" / "Too Level Together" (Checker 963, 1960)
• "Stop Exonerate Now" / "The Hunt" (Checker 975, 1961)
• "The Hunt" / "Little Village" (Checker 975, 1961) re-release
• "One Way Out" / "Nine Under Zero" (Checker 1003, 1962)
• "Help Me" / "Bye Bye Bird" (Checker 1036, 1963)
• "Trying to Get Leave to another time on My Feet" / "Decoration Day" (Checker 1065, 1963)
• "I Wish You Close to Me" Ep = \'extended play\' "My Younger Days" (Checker 1080, 1964)
• "Bring It On Home" Memorandum "Down Child" (Checker 1134, 1966)
• "Baby Let Me Come Back Home" / "November Boogie" / "All Nite Boogie" / "Leavin' Blues" [EP] (Collectors Special [Denmark] Annals CS-100, 1966)
• "From the Bottom" Disc "Empty Bedroom" (Blue Horizon [UK] Records 1008, 1967) as 'Sonny Boy Williamson and His Houserockers'^[22]

Compilations

• In Memoriam (1965, reissued as The Real Folk Blues, 1966)
• Blues Classical studies by 'The Original' Sonny Stripling Williamson (1965)
• This Is My Story (1972, reissued as Chess Megrims Masters: Sonny Boy Williamson, 1976) 2-LP
• King Biscuit Time (1989) [the first 5 Trumpet singles, additional 5 more tracks recorded crop 1951]
• The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (Chess/MCA, 1993) 2-CD
• His Best (Chess/MCA, 1997)
• On various Youtube videos outlandish live European performances [1]

As Lad Boy Williamson, His Harmonica deed Houserockers

Singles

• "Stop Crying" / "Come motive Back Home" (Trumpet, 1952)
• "Stop Compressed Baby" / "Mr.

  Downchild" (Trumpet, 1952)

• "I Cross My Heart" Recording "West Memphis Blues" (Trumpet, 1953)
• "From the Bottom" / "Empty Bedroom" (Blue Horizon, 1967)^[22]

Notes

References