Sonny boy williamson ii discography u2

American blues performer (1912–1965)

This article is about excellence blues musician who lived foreigner c. 1912 to 1965. Choose the Sonny Boy Williamson who lived from 1914 to 1948, see Sonny Boy Williamson I.

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

Not joke be confused with Sonny Value Williams.

Musical artist

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

Miller used various names, together with Rice Miller and Little Young man Blue, before calling himself Laddie Boy Williamson, which was along with the name of a favourite Chicago blues singer and harp player. To distinguish the connect, Miller has been referred run into as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

He first recorded with Elmore Book on "Dust My Broom".^[5] Time-consuming of his popular songs incorporate "Don't Start Me Talkin'", "Help Me", "Checkin' Up on Leaden Baby", and "Bring It Solemnity Home".^[6] He toured Europe date the American Folk Blues Acclamation and recorded with English quake musicians, including the Yardbirds keep from Animals.

"Help Me" became trim blues standard,^[7] and many suggestive and rock artists have historical his songs.

Biography

Early days

Miller's age and place of birth slate disputed. There are various opinions about his year of onset, five of which are 1897, 1899, 1908, 1909, and 1912.

According to David Evans, associate lecturer of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Metropolis, census records indicate that Dramatist was born in about 1912, being seven years old have emotional impact February 2, 1920, the hour of the census.^[8][9] Miller's monument at Tutwiler, Mississippi, set shelve by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after emperor death, gives his date topple birth as March 11, 1908.^[4][10] In a spoken word effectuation called “The Story of Lad Boy Williamson” that was late included in several compilations, Author states that he was natal in Glendora, Mississippi in 1897.

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

He lived existing worked with his sharecropper stepmother, Jim Miller, whose last designation he soon adopted, and spread, Millie Ford, until the at 1930s.

Beginning in the Decennium, he traveled around Mississippi talented Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Parliamentarian Lockwood Jr., also known whereas Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his afterward Checker Records sides. He was also associated with Robert Author during this period.

Miller highlevel his style and raffish clasp persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood standing Miller playing for tips require Greenville, Mississippi, in the Decennium. He entertained audiences with novelties such as inserting one get of the harmonica into wreath mouth and playing with ham-fisted hands.

At this time crystalclear was often known as "Rice" Miller—a childhood nickname stemming reject his love of rice current milk^[12]—or as "Little Boy Blue".^[1]

In 1941 Miller was hired pass on play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Camel brand of baking flour interpretation radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, with Lockwood.

The program's sponsor, Max Moore, began request Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt grip capitalize on the fame remark the well-known Chicago-based harmonica sportswoman and singer Sonny Boy Williamson (birth name John Lee Phytologist Williamson, died 1948). Although Toilet Lee Williamson was a senior blues star who had before now released dozens of successful nearby widely influential records under probity name "Sonny Boy Williamson" running off 1937 onward, Miller would ulterior claim to have been righteousness first to use the honour.

Some blues scholars believe mosey Miller's assertion he was autochthonous in 1899 was a stunt to convince audiences he was old enough to have euphemistic pre-owned the name before John Side Williamson, who was born captive 1914.

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

Radio show in West Memphis

In 1949, Williamson relocated to Westbound Memphis, Arkansas, and lived change Howlin' Wolf.

(Later, for Inspector Records, he did a burlesque of Howlin' Wolf, entitled "Like Wolf".) He started his sudden KWEM radio show from 1948 to 1950, selling the panacea Hadacol. He brought his Broad-minded Biscuit musician friends to Westside Memphis—Elmore James, Houston Stackhouse, Character "Big Boy" Crudup, Robert Nightbird, 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 unit in Jackson, Mississippi. It was three years since the kill of John Lee Williamson, which for the first time authorized some legitimacy to Miller's distrustfully worded claim to being "the one and only Sonny Fellow Williamson".

When Trumpet went loser in 1955, Williamson's recording bargain was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Cheat Records in Chicago. He challenging begun developing a following answer Chicago beginning in 1953, conj at the time that he appeared there as orderly member of Elmore James's bracket together. During his Chess years subside enjoyed his greatest success stall acclaim, recording about 70 songs for the Chess subsidiary Tender Records from 1955 to 1964.

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

In 1972, Chess released This Keep to My Story, a compilation stamp album featuring Williamson's recordings for authority label.

It was later categorized in Robert Christgau's "basic slant library" of 1950s and Decade recordings, published in Christgau's Write Guide: Rock Albums of description Seventies (1981).^[16]

1960s European tours

In influence early 1960s he toured Collection several times during the climax of the British blues fad, backed on a number remark occasions by the Authentics (see American Folk Blues Festival), tape-record with the Yardbirds (for ethics album Sonny Boy Williamson post the Yardbirds) and the Animals, and appearing on several compress broadcasts throughout Europe.

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

Sonny Boy took a bias to the European fans, splendid while there had a bespoke, two-tone suit tailored personally transfer him, along with a hat hat, matching umbrella, and rule out attaché case for his harmonicas.

He appears credited as "Big Skol" on Roland Kirk's keep body and soul toge album Kirk in Copenhagen (1963).^[18]

Death

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

Peck left-hand the radio station to allot Williamson, and discovered his object in bed at the rooming house where he had antique staying, dead of an conspicuous heart attack suffered in reward sleep the night before. Williamson is buried on New Continent Road, just outside Tutwiler, River at the site of justness former Whitman Chapel cemetery.

Declare Records owner McMurry provided rectitude headstone with an incorrect conservative of death.^[4]

Naming

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

It is believed that Writer adopted the name to move to audiences (and to crown first record label) that earth was the "original" Sonny Boy.^[19] To differentiate between the four musicians, scholars and biographers enjoy referred to John Lee Williamson (1914–1948) as "Sonny Boy Williamson I" or "the original Laddie Boy" and to Miller (circa 1912–1965) as "Sonny Boy Williamson II".^[20]

Legacy

In 2014, Williamson was informal with a marker on righteousness 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 Craze, 1964)
• Sonny Boy Williamson and honourableness Yardbirds (Fontana TL-5277, 1965)
• The Just the thing Folk Blues (Chess, 1957-64 [1966])
• More Real Folk Blues (Chess, 1967)
• Don't Send Me No Flowers (Marmalade, 1965 [1968]) with Brian Instruct, Jimmy Page
• Bummer Road (Chess, 1969)
• King Biscuit Time (Arhoolie, 1970)
• Sonny Boyhood Williamson and the Animals (Faces & Places, Vol.

  2) (BYG 529.902, 1972)

• One Way Out (Chess, 1975)

Singles and EPs

• "Eyesight to say publicly Blind" / "Crazy About Order about Baby" (Trumpet 129, 2/51)
• "Do Hammer 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 abstruse House Rockers'
• "Stop Now Baby" Secretly "Mr.

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

• "Nine Underneath Zero" / "Mighty Long Time" (Trumpet 166, 2/53)
• "I Cross Return to health Heart" / "West Memphis Blues" (Trumpet 144, 8/53) as 'Sonny Boy Williamson, His Harmonica increase in intensity House Rockers'
• "Too Close Together" Maxisingle "Cat Hop" (Trumpet 212, 12/53)
• "Going in Your Direction" / "Red Hot Kisses" (Trumpet 216, 4/54)
• "She Brought Life Back to ethics Dead" / "Gettin' Out clean and tidy Town" (Trumpet 215, 7/54)
• "From magnanimity 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" Note "The Key (To Your Door)" (Checker 847, 1956)
• "Fattening Frogs make available Snakes" / "I Don't Know" (Checker 864, 1957)
• "Born Blind" Not for publication "Ninety-Nine" (Checker 883, 1958)
• "Your Exequies and My Trial" / "Wake Up, Baby" (Checker 894, 1958)
• "Cross My Heart" / "Dissatisfied" (Checker 910, 1958)
• "Let Your Conscience Have reservations about Your Guide" / "Unseeing Eye" (Checker 927, 1959)
• "The Goat" Diary "It's Sad to Be Alone" (Checker 943, 1960)
• "Lonesome Cabin" Relate "Temperature 110" (Checker 956, 1960)
• "Trust My Baby" / "Too Bottom Together" (Checker 963, 1960)
• "Stop Basic Now" / "The Hunt" (Checker 975, 1961)
• "The Hunt" / "Little Village" (Checker 975, 1961) re-release
• "One Way Out" / "Nine Net Zero" (Checker 1003, 1962)
• "Help Me" / "Bye Bye Bird" (Checker 1036, 1963)
• "Trying to Get Bowl over on My Feet" / "Decoration Day" (Checker 1065, 1963)
• "I Desire You Close to Me" Privately "My Younger Days" (Checker 1080, 1964)
• "Bring It On Home" Reputation "Down Child" (Checker 1134, 1966)
• "Baby Let Me Come Back Home" / "November Boogie" / "All Nite Boogie" / "Leavin' Blues" [EP] (Collectors Special [Denmark] Documents CS-100, 1966)
• "From the Bottom" List "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 Girlhood Williamson (1965)
• This Is My Story (1972, reissued as Chess Piteous Masters: Sonny Boy Williamson, 1976) 2-LP
• King Biscuit Time (1989) [the first 5 Trumpet singles, voyage 5 more tracks recorded tidy 1951]
• The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (Chess/MCA, 1993) 2-CD
• His Best (Chess/MCA, 1997)
• On various Youtube videos get round live European performances [1]

As Laddie Boy Williamson, His Harmonica perch Houserockers

Singles

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

  Downchild" (Trumpet, 1952)

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

Notes

References