The two are easy to distinguish. Williamson I played the harmonica acoustically and was essentially a pre-War artist. Williamson II was entirely an electrified harpist, in the style of Little Walter, reflecting the advent of the jukebox and electrified instruments following World War II.
(Compare the albums Sonny Boy Williamson I ~~ Sonny Boy Williamson II)
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Sonny Boy Williamson I (30 March 1914 - 1 June 1948)
also known as John Lee Curtis Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, born in Jackson, Tennessee, whose first record Good Morning little School Girl was a hit in 1937. He was widely popular throughout the whole southeast of the U.S., and was practically synonymous with the blues harmonica for the next decade, making his a commonly used stage name by the time he was murdered in 1948. He is buried at the Old Blairs Chapel Church, south west of Jackson, Tennessee.
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Sonny Boy Williamson II (11 March 1908 - 25 May 1965) also known as Willie Williamson, Willie Miller, Little Boy Blue, The Goat and Footsie.
Aleck "Rice" Miller was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter.
Born as Aleck Ford to Millie Ford on the Sara Jones Plantation in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, his date and year of birth are a matter of uncertainty. He claimed to have been born on December 5, 1899, but one researcher, David Evans, claims to have found census record evidence that he was born around 1912. His gravestone lists his date of birth as March 11, 1908.
He lived and worked with his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, whose last name he soon adopted, and mother, Millie Ford, until the early 1930s. Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood, Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his later Checker Records sides. He was also associated with Robert Johnson during this period. Miller developed his style and raffish stage persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Miller playing for tips in Greenville, Mississippi in the 1930s. He entertained audiences with novelties such inserting one end of the harmonica into his mouth and playing with no hands.
In 1941 Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show, advertising the King Biscuit brand of baking flour on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas with Lockwood. It was at this point that the radio program's sponsor, Max Moore, began billing Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently in an attempt to capitalize on the fame of the well known Chicago-based harmonica player and singer John Lee Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson I). Although John Lee Williamson was a major blues star who had already released dozens of successful and widely influential records under the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" from 1937 onward, Aleck Miller would later claim to have been the first to use the name, and some blues scholars believe that Miller's assertion he was born in 1899 was a ruse to convince audiences he was old enough to have used the name before John Lee Williamson, who was born in 1914 (this is made somewhat less likely, however, by the fact that Miller was certainly older than Williamson even if one does not accept the 1899 birthdate.) Whatever the methodology, Miller became commonly known as "Sonny Boy Williamson", and Lockwood and the rest of his band were billed as the King Biscuit Boys.
In 1949 he relocated to West Memphis, Arkansas and lived with his sister and her husband, Howlin' Wolf (later, for Checker Records, he did a parody of Howlin' Wolf entitled "Like Wolf"). Sonny Boy started his own KWEM radio show from 1948 to 1950 selling the elixir Hadacol.
Sonny Boy also brought his King Biscuit musician friends to West Memphis: Elmore James, Houston Stackhouse, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Robert Nighthawk and others, to perform on KWEM Radio.
In the 1940s Williamson married Mattie Gordon, who remained his wife until his death.
Williamson's first recording session took place in 1951 for Lillian McMurry of Jackson, Mississippi's Trumpet Records (three years after the death of John Lee Williamson, which for the first time allowed some legitimacy to Miller's carefully worded claim to being "the one and only Sonny Boy Williamson"). McMurry later erected Williamson's headstone, near Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1977.
When Trumpet went bankrupt in 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, who sold it to Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Sonny Boy had begun developing a following in Chicago beginning in 1953, when he appeared there as a member of Elmore James's band. It was during his Chess years that he enjoyed his greatest success and acclaim, recording about 70 songs for Chess subsidiary Checker Records from 1955 to 1964.
In the early 1960s he toured Europe several times during the height of the British blues craze, recording with The Yardbirds and The Animals, and appearing on several TV broadcasts throughout Europe. According to the Led Zeppelin biography 'Hammer of the Gods', while in England Sonny Boy set his hotel room on fire while trying to cook a rabbit in a coffee percolator. Robert Palmer's "Deep Blues" mentions that during this tour he allegedly stabbed a man during a street fight and left the country abruptly.
Sonny Boy took a liking to the European fans, and while there had a custom-made, two-tone suit tailored personally for him, along with a bowler hat, matching umbrella, and an attaché case for his harmonicas. He appears credited as "Big Skol" on Roland Kirk's live album 'Kirk in Copenhagen' (1963). One of his final recordings from England, in 1964, featured him singing "I'm Trying To Make London My Home" with Hubert Sumlin providing the guitar. Due to his many years of relating convoluted, highly fictionalized accounts of his life to friends and family, upon his return to the Delta, some expressed disbelief upon hearing of Sonny Boy's touring across the Atlantic, visiting Europe, seeing the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and other landmarks, and recording there.
Upon his return to the U.S., he resumed playing the King Biscuit Time show on KFFA, and performed around Helena, Arkansas. As fellow musicians Houston Stackhouse and Peck Curtis waited at the KFFA studios for Williamson on May 25, 1965, the 12:15 broadcast time was closing in and Sonny Boy was nowhere in sight. Peck left the radio station and headed out to locate Williamson, and discovered his body in bed at the rooming house where he'd been staying, dead of an apparent heart attack suffered in his sleep the night before.
Williamson is buried on New Africa Rd. just outside Tutwiler, Mississippi at the site of the former Whitman Chapel cemetery.
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Good Gal Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Black gal, that ya' ought know
I can get me a woman, black gal
Most ev'rywhere I go
I'm just as crazy as I can be
Lord, knows I'm wild about you, black gal
You ought to be a fool about me
Well now, look-a-here, black gal
Black gal, you oughta be ashamed
The way that my baby brother know you, black gal
He's scared to call your name
And my brother says he's wild about you black gal
He's just as crazy as he can be
My brother says, wild about you black gal
You oughta be a fool about him
Well now, here's my picture, black gal
I want you to keep it in yo' frame
Now this other boy, days is all you been lookin' at
Sonny want just the same
And Lord, knows I been worrin' about you, black gal
I be as crazy as I can be
Now, I'll be thinkin' 'bout you, black gal
I hope you be kinda worried about me
Now, fare you well, black gal
I ain't got no mo' to say
There's mister so an so taken my kingdom
I want you to have yo' way
Lord, knows I'm wild about you, black gal
I'm just a crazy as I can be
You know I'm wild about you, black gal
You ought to be a fool about me.
In "Black Gal Blues," Sonny Boy Williamson expresses his love and admiration for a black woman. He emphasizes that he can easily get any woman he wants, but he's particularly wild about this black woman. He urges her to reciprocate his feelings and be a fool about him too. Williamson believes that his brother also desires this black woman, evident from his brother being scared to call her name, and Williamson tells her that she should be a fool about his brother too. He provides her with his picture and asks her to keep it in her frame, hoping that she will worry about him as he thinks about her.
The song seems to reflect the musical era that it was produced in and the social attitudes of the time. At this time, black women were not commonly celebrated in popular media, and Williamson's embrace of a black woman as his object of affection was a significant deviation from societal norms. Moreover, the song's theme of male rivalry for the same female individual was also common in blues and other African American popular music. Through the theme of a love triangle, Williamson explores the complexities of African American relationships.
Line by Line Meaning
Well, that I got somethin' to tell ya, black gal
Hey black gal, I have something important to tell you
Black gal, that ya' ought know
It's something you really need to know
I can get me a woman, black gal
I can easily find another woman
Most ev'rywhere I go
Almost everywhere I go
But Lord, knows I'm-a wild about you, black gal
But God knows I'm crazy in love with you, black gal
I'm just as crazy as I can be
I'm really going crazy over you
You ought to be a fool about me
You really should like me a lot
Well now, look-a-here, black gal
Hey look, black gal
Black gal, you oughta be ashamed
You should feel ashamed, black gal
The way that my baby brother know you, black gal
The way my little brother talks about you, black gal
He's scared to call your name
He's afraid to say your name
And my brother says he's wild about you black gal
My brother is also crazy in love with you, black gal
He's just as crazy as he can be
He's going really crazy over you
You oughta be a fool about him
You should really like him a lot too
Well now, here's my picture, black gal
Here's my photo, black gal
I want you to keep it in yo' frame
I want you to keep it in a frame
Now this other boy, days is all you been lookin' at
Lately, you've been looking at this other guy a lot
Sonny want just the same
But I want the same thing
And Lord, knows I been worrin' about you, black gal
And God knows I've been worrying about you, black gal
I be as crazy as I can be
I'm going really crazy over you
Now, I'll be thinkin' 'bout you, black gal
I'll be thinking about you, black gal
I hope you be kinda worried about me
I hope you're thinking about me too
Now, fare you well, black gal
Goodbye, black gal
I ain't got no mo' to say
I have nothing else to say
There's mister so an so taken my kingdom
Someone else has taken my place
I want you to have yo' way
I want you to do what you want
You know I'm wild about you, black gal
You know I'm crazy in love with you, black gal
You ought to be a fool about me.
You should really like me a lot
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Cora Visser
This is real pure blues ,real legend love it .!
Abigail
John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He is often regarded as the pioneer of the blues harp as a solo instrument. He played on hundreds of recordings by many pre–World War II blues artists. Under his own name, he was one of the most recorded blues musicians of the 1930s and 1940 and is closely associated with Chicago producer Lester Melrose and Bluebird Records. His popular songs, original or adapted, include "Good Morning, School Girl", "Sugar Mama", "Early in the Morning", and "Stop Breaking Down".
Williamson's harmonica style was a great influence on postwar performers. Later in his career he was a mentor to many up-and-coming blues musicians who moved to Chicago, including Muddy Waters. In an attempt to capitalize on Williamson's fame, Aleck "Rice" Miller began recording and performing as Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1940s, and later, to distinguish the two, John Lee Williamson came to be known as Sonny Boy Williamson I or "the original Sonny Boy".
TheDamianino1
Thanks for this wonderful piece. Been searching all over for more but quite difficult to get em. I would give an arm to get the collection. Any one outta there with links to his music?
David S.
Got me right to the center of my heart... For all the romatics
Lip Allowance
Killer intro music! AC/DC is incredible. So are Sonny boy one and Sonny boy 2! All three are highly win influential on me
Ben Cripps
Nick Barcenas - you MUST be able to tell the difference! They sound about as far away from identical as it is possible to be! Different vocal phrasing, different trademark harmonica licks, but above all Sonny Boy I's records are all recorded from 10-20 years earlier than Sonny Boy II's cuts and the style is totally different; much more transitional between country and Chicago blues (except for Sonny Boy II's early Trumpet recordings which are less heavily urban and electric in sound). You say you listen to a shit load of blues - well, you will just have to listen to quite a lot more until you can tell the difference within half a second of starting to listen. The only thing that is the same is the name!
Barry Miller
I think you're overstating the differences here. Aleck Rice Miller began his career as a John Lee/Sonny Boy imitator, ergo the identity theft and claiming he was him on the radio in an era when it was easier to get away with it. His harp and vocal styles eventually began to take a shape of their own, but you can still hear much of what Aleck took from John Lee in this recording...vocal timbre and phrasings, and harp phrasings. To an untrained ear, they probably do sound a good bit alike, just as they must have to those listeners in the 40s.
elPYROreal
good, good...
MRMITCHELLZ
im trying to hear the blues song....but now i got Oi Oi Oi Oi Oi see me ride out of the sunset...!!! ! all in my head
Arjhendrix
precious thx