There are two harmonica playing bluesmen known as Sonny Boy Williamson. The… Read Full Bio ↴There are two harmonica playing bluesmen known as Sonny Boy Williamson. They are colloquially referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Sonny Boy Williamson II respectively, but are of no relation.
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.
more on wikipedia
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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.
more on wikipedia
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)
--------------------------------------------
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.
more on wikipedia
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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.
more on wikipedia
The Sky Is Crying
Sonny Boy Williamson Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
I've been looking for my baby
And I've been wondering where can she be
I my baby early one morning
She was walking on down the street
I my baby early one morning
She was walking on down the street
You know it hurt me, hurt me so bad
It made my poor heart skip a beat
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
You know the sky's been crying
Can see you see the tears roll down my door
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
I've been looking for my baby
And I've been wondering where can she be
I my baby early one morning
I my baby early one morning
She was walking on down the street
You know it hurt me, hurt me so bad
It made my poor heart skip a beat
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
You know the sky's been crying
Can see you see the tears roll down my door
"The Sky Is Crying" is a blues standard that has been covered numerous times by various artists. The song talks about the singer's heartbreak as he laments the loss of his lover, who has left him. The first verse refers to the rain as "the sky crying" and suggests that the tears fall down the streets as if they were caused by someone's sorrow.
The second verse is a flashback to the morning the singer's baby left him. He watched her walking down the street, and the image caused him to feel pain so intense it made his heart skip a beat. The third verse continues the theme of heartbreak, with the singer revealing the devastating feeling that his lover no longer loves him. The final line brings the song back to the image of the sky crying, except this time the tears are rolling down the singer's door, a metaphor for his sadness.
Overall, "The Sky Is Crying" is a powerful expression of lost love and the pain it leaves in its wake. The song's lyrics and blues-infused music effectively capture the raw emotions of heartbreak and longing.
Line by Line Meaning
The sky is crying,
It's raining heavily outside
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
The rain water is flowing down the street like tears
I've been looking for my baby
I have been searching for my lover
And I've been wondering where can she be
I am worried and confused about her whereabouts
I saw my baby early one morning
I happened to see my lover one morning
She was walking on down the street
She was walking down the street
You know it hurt me, hurt me so bad
It pained me deeply
It made my poor heart skip a beat
It caused my heart to skip a beat in anxiety or pain
I got a real, real fine feeling
I am convinced/positive that
That my baby she don't love me no more
That my lover doesn't love me anymore
You know the sky's been crying
It's been raining heavily
Can see you see the tears roll down my door
Rain water is flowing down my door like tears
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Elmore James
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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slint69
The sky is crying
Can you see the tears roll down the street
The sky is crying
Can you see the tears roll down the street
I've been looking for my baby
And I've been wondering where can she be
I my baby early one morning
She was walking on down the street
I my baby early one morning
She was walking on down the street
You know it hurt me, hurt me so bad
It made my poor heart skip a beat
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
I got a real, real fine feeling
That my baby she don't love me no more
You know the sky's been crying
Can see you see the tears roll down my door
Jin Seok Choi
Empty, the sky is crying, look at the tears rolling down the street
The sky is crying, look at the tears rolling down the street
I'm studying trying to fly my baby, and I wonder what can she be?
So, one mornin', and she was walkin' on down the street
I saw one mornin', and she was walkin' on down the street
Made me feel so good, until my poor heart skip the beat
(Spoken : All right, empty)
I got a funny feelin', my baby don't love me no more
I got a funny feelin', my baby, my baby don't love me no more
The sky is crying, look at the tears going out my door
Nicci Cox
Sitting in my living room, enjoying a glass of wine on a Saturday afternoon, listening to my husband play harp along to this song.....good times. All the misery we experience in working class America, barely making it from paycheck to paycheck, all of it is totally worth it. Just for moments like this.
Fernando Samico
I am Brazilian and I admire Sonny boy, very good the best. His velvety voice and very beautiful. Hugs and good blues my friends. Dom Samicão
Ruy Papaléo Bianchini
Divino 👏👏👏👏👍🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇧🇷.
Horacio Rojas Gutierrez
que fácil es para Sony hacer ese maravilloso blues que siempre hizo. INCREÍBLE.
Rob Davie
He influenced so many blues and rock legends, and listening to this you can really hear how!
Angeli Alvares
And I discovered him only recently and just cannot get enough of listening to him...Sonny makes us STOP and think about what life is all about.......pushes a pause button on pretentious nonsense, helps you just to be still, to realize where you're hurtin and to let yourself free.
Francisco Diniz
Fenomenal Sonny Boy williamson cantando 'O Céu Está Chorando', acompanhado da inseparável gaita blues
imanol
Su armonica y su voz cantan delineando maravillosamente la ruta autentica del blues. Siempre S.B.W.
JJ Ryan
Matt Guitar Murphy on acoustic? First time to hear. So good.
Torbjörn Brunzell
King of harmonica... a true legend...