SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON I BLUEBIRD BLUES
Label: RCA International
Format: [email protected]
Sonny Boy Williamson (John Lee Curtis Williamson, March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948 ) and the first to use the name Sonny Boy Williamson
Sonny first recorded for Bluebird Records in 1937 and his first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl", became a standard. 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)
He was popular enough that by the 1940s, another blues harp player, 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
Tracklist:
1. Honey Bee Blues
2. Whiskey Headed Blues
3. Lord, Oh Lord Blues
4. Shannon Street Blues
5. You've Been Foolin' Round Downstairs
6. Deep Down In The Ground
7. Number Five Blues
8. Christmas Morning Blues
9. Susie Q
10. Bluebird Blues Part 2
11. Little Girl Blues
12. Low Down Ways
13. Goodbye Red
14. The Right Kind Of Life
15. Insurance Man Blues
16. Rainy Day Blues
Tracks 1- 6
Sonny Boy Williamson vcl ,hca
Walter Davis pno
Joe Williams gtr
Yank Rachel mandolin (not track 1)
Aurora, Illinois Friday June 17 1938
Track 7-16
Sonny Boy Williamson vcl ,hca
Speckled Red pno
Willie Hatcher mandoline
Robert Lee McCoy gtr
Aurora, Illinois Saturday December 1938
