From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sat Mar 30, 2002  2:20 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Sonny Boy Williamson # 1
 
SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON (# 1)

Born John Lee Williamson, 30 March 1914, Jackson, Tennessee
Died 1 June 1948, Chicago, Illinois

Blues singer / harmonica player, the original Sonny Boy Williamson.
Easily the most important harmonica player of the pre-war era, John Lee
Williamson almost single-handedly made the humble mouth organ a worthy
lead instrument for blues bands - leading the way for the amazing
innovations of Little Walter and a platoon of others to follow. If not for
his tragic murder in 1948 while on his way home from a Chicago gin mill,
Williamson would doubtless have been right there alongside them, exploring
new and exciting directions.
Already a harp virtuoso in his teens, the first Sonny Boy (Rice Miller would
adopt the same moniker down in the Delta) learned from Hammie Nixon
and Noah Lewis and rambled with Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell
before settling in Chicago in 1934. Williamson's extreme versatility and
consistent ingenuity won him a Bluebird recording contract in 1937. Under
the direction of the ubiquitous Lester Melrose, Sonny Boy Williamson
recorded prolifically for Victor both as a leader and behind others in the
vast Melrose stable (including Robert Lee McCoy and Big Joe Williams,
who in turn played on some of Williamson's sides). Williamson commenced
his sensational recording career with a resounding bang. His first vocal
offering on Bluebird was the seminal "Good Morning Little School Girl,"
covered countless times across the decades. That same auspicious date
also produced "Sugar Mama Blues" and "Blue Bird Blues," both of them
every bit as classic in their own right. Sonny Boy cut more than 120 sides
in all for RCA from 1937 to 1947, many of them turning up in the postwar
repertoires of various Chicago blues giants. His call-and-response style
of alternating vocal passages with pungent harmonica blasts was a develop-
ment of mammoth proportions that would be adopted across-the-board by
virtually every blues harpist to follow in his wake. But Williamson wouldn't
live to reap any appreciable rewards from his inventions. He died at the age
of 34, while at the zenith of his popularity (his romping "Shake That
Boogie" was a # 4 R&B hit in 1947 on Victor), from a violent bludgeoning
about the head that occurred during a strong-arm robbery on the South side.
"Better Cut That Out," another storming rocker later appropriated by
Junior Wells , became a posthumous hit for Williamson in late 1948 (# 15).

Compilations include "Bluebird Blues" on Charly and several volumes on
Blues Classics (from Arhoolie).
Website: http://home.t-online.de/home/mueller.lorenz/