Sonny Boy Williamson I
John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson was an American blues harmonica player and songwriter. He is 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 1940s and is 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", "Stop Breaking Down". Williamson's harmonica style was a great influence on postwar performers. 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, to distinguish the two, John Lee Williamson came to be known as Sonny Boy Williamson I or "the original Sonny Boy". Williamson was born in Madison County, near Jackson, in 1914.
His original recordings are in the country blues style, but he soon demonstrated skill at making the harmonica a lead instrument for the blues and popularized it for the first time in a more urban blues setting. He has been called "the father of modern blues harp". While in his teens he joined Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes, playing with them in Tennessee and Arkansas. In 1934 he settled in Chicago. Williamson first recorded in 1937, for Bluebird Records, his first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl", became a standard, he was popular among black audiences throughout the southern United States and in Midwestern industrial cities, such as Detroit and Chicago, 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", "Stop Breaking Down", "Hoodoo Hoodoo". In 1947, "Shake the Boogie" made number 4 on Billboard's Race Records chart.
Williamson's style influenced many blues harmonica performers, including Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells, Sonny Terry, Little Walter, Snooky Pryor. He was the most heard and influential blues harmonica player of his generation, his music was influential on many of his non-harmonica-playing contemporaries and successors, including Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. These and other artists, both blues and rock, have helped popularize his songs through subsequent recordings. Williamson recorded prolifically both as a bandleader and as a sideman over the course of his career for Bluebird. Before Bluebird moved to Chicago, where it became part of RCA Records, many early sessions took place at the Leland Tower, a hotel in Aurora, Illinois; the top-floor nightclub at the Leland, known as the Sky Club, was used for live broadcasts of big bands on a local radio station and, during off hours, served as a recording studio for Williamson's early sessions and those of other Bluebird artists. Williamson's final recording session took place in Chicago in December 1947, in which he accompanied Big Joe Williams.
On June 1, 1948, Williamson was killed in a robbery on Chicago's South Side as he walked home from a performance at the Plantation Club, at 31st St. and Giles Avenue, a tavern just a block and a half from his home, at 3226 S. Giles. Williamson's final words are reported to have been "Lord have mercy". Williamson is buried at the former site of the Blairs Chapel Church, southwest of Jackson, Tennessee. In 1991, a red granite marker was purchased by fans and family to mark the site of his burial. A Tennessee historical marker placed in 1991, indicates the place of his birth and describes his influence on blues music; the historical marker is located south of Jackson on Tennessee State Highway 18, at the corner of Caldwell Road. His legacy has been somewhat overshadowed in the postwar blues era by the popularity of the musician who appropriated his name, Rice Miller, who after Williamson's death went on to record many popular blues songs for Chicago's Checker Records and others and toured Europe several times during the blues revival in the 1960s.
The recordings made by Williamson between 1937 and his death in 1948 and those made by Rice Miller were all issued under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. It is believed that Miller adopted the name to deceive audiences into thinking that he was the "original" Sonny Boy. In order to differentiate between the two musicians, many scholars and biographers have referred to John Lee Williamson as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Miller as Sonny Boy Williamson II. To add to the confusion, around 1940 the jazz pianist and singer Enoch Williams recorded for Decca under the name Sonny Boy Williams and in 1947 as Sunny Boy in the Sunny Boy Trio. Williamson's recordings were issued on 78 rpm records by Bluebird Records or, after the label was discontinued, RCA Victor. Over the years, RCA has released several compilations of Williamson's material, including: Big Bill & Sonny Boy Bluebird Blues Rare Sonny Boy RCA Blues & Heritage Series: The Bluebird Recordings, 1937-1938 RCA Blues & Heritage Series: The Bluebird Recordings, 1938 When The Sun Goes Down: The Secret History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 8: Bluebird Blues Specialty labels, such as JSP Records, Indigo and others, have released compil
Jimmy Page
James Patrick Page is an English musician and record producer who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain, he was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. In late 1968, he founded Led Zeppelin. Page is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Rolling Stone magazine has described Page as "the pontiff of power riffing" and ranked him number three in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", behind Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In 2010, he was ranked number two in Gibson's list of "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time" and, in 2007, number four on Classic Rock's "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes", he was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame twice. Page was born to James Patrick Page and Patricia Elizabeth Gaffikin in the west London suburb of Heston on 9 January 1944.
His father was an personnel manager at a plastic-coatings plant and his mother, of Irish descent, was a doctor's secretary. In 1952, they moved to Feltham and to Miles Road, Epsom in Surrey. Page was educated from the age of eight at Epsom County Pound Lane Primary School, when he was eleven he went to Ewell County Secondary School in West Ewell, he came across his first guitar, a Spanish guitar, in the Miles Road house: "I don't know whether was left behind by the people before, or whether it was a friend of the family's—nobody seemed to know why it was there." First playing the instrument when aged 12, he took a few lessons in nearby Kingston, but was self-taught: When I grew up there weren't many other guitarists... There was one other guitarist in my school who showed me the first chords that I learned and I went on from there. I was bored. So it was a personal thing; this "other guitarist" was a boy called Rod Wyatt, a few years his senior, together with another boy, Pete Calvert, they would practise at Page's house.
Among Page's early influences were rockabilly guitarists Scotty Moore and James Burton, who both played on recordings made by Elvis Presley. Presley's song "Baby Let's Play House" is cited by Page as being his inspiration to take up the guitar, he would reprise Moore's playing on the song in the live version of "Whole Lotta Love" on The Song Remains the Same, he appeared on BBC1 in 1957 with a Höfner President, Page states that his first guitar was a second-hand 1959 Futurama Grazioso replaced by a Fender Telecaster. Page's musical tastes included skiffle and acoustic folk playing, the blues sounds of Elmore James, B. B. King, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin. "Basically, the start: a mixture between rock and blues."At the age of 13, Page appeared on Huw Wheldon's All Your Own talent quest programme in a skiffle quartet, one performance of which aired on BBC1 in 1957. The group played "Mama Don't Want to Skiffle Anymore" and another American-flavoured song, "In Them Ol' Cottonfields Back Home".
When asked by Wheldon what he wanted to do after schooling, Page said, "I want to do biological research cancer, if it isn't discovered by then."In an interview with Guitar Player magazine, Page stated that "there was a lot of busking in the early days, but as they say, I had to come to grips with it and it was a good schooling." Page took a guitar to school each day only to have it returned to him after class. Although interviewed for a job as a laboratory assistant, he chose to leave Danetree Secondary School, West Ewell, to pursue music. Page had difficulty finding other musicians with. "It wasn't as. I used to play in many groups... anyone who could get a gig together, really." Following stints backing recitals by Beat poet Royston Ellis at the Mermaid Theatre between 1960–61, singer Red E. Lewis, he was asked by singer Neil Christian to join his band, the Crusaders, after Christian had seen a fifteen-year-old Page playing in a local hall. Page toured with Christian for two years and played on several of his records, including the 1962 single, "The Road to Love."During his stint with Christian, Page fell ill with infectious mononucleosis and could not continue touring.
While recovering, he decided to put his musical career on hold and concentrate on his other love and enrolled at Sutton Art College in Surrey. As he explained in 1975: travelling around all the time in a bus. I did that for two years after I left school, to the point where I was starting to get good bread, but I was getting ill. So I went back to art college. And, a total change in direction. That's; as dedicated as I was to playing the guitar, I knew doing it. Every two months I had glandular fever. So for the next 18 months I was getting my strength up, but I was still playing. While still a student, Page performed on stage at the Marquee Club with bands such as Cyril Davies' All Stars, Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, fellow guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, he was spotted one night by John Gibb of Brian Howard & the Silhouettes, who asked him to help record some singles for Columb
University of Memphis
The University of Memphis, colloquially known as U of M, is a public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 21,000 students; the university maintains The Center for Earthquake Research and Information, The Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, the former Lambuth University campus, The Loewenberg College of Nursing, The School of Public Health, The College of Communication and Fine Arts, The FedEx Institute of Technology, The Advanced Distributed Learning Workforce Co-Lab, The Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology; the University of Memphis is associated with the Tennessee Board of Regents system, consisting of 18 Board Members. However, as of May 2017, it is governed by an institutional Board of Trustees. Within this framework, the President of the University of Memphis is the day-to-day administrator of the university; the University of Memphis today comprises a number of different colleges and schools: College of Arts and Sciences Fogelman College of Business and Economics College of Communication and Fine Arts College of Education Herff College of Engineering University College Loewenberg College of Nursing Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management School of Communication Sciences and Disorders Cecil C.
Humphreys School of Law Graduate School School of Public Health Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music Helen Hardin Honors CollegeThe University of Memphis is host to several centers of advanced research: FedEx Institute of Technology Center for Earthquake Research and Information Institute for Intelligent Systems Advanced Distributed Learning Workforce Co-Lab The Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research Mobile Sensor Data-To-Knowledge Center The University of Memphis Foundation, founded in 1964, manages the university endowment and accepts and disburses private support to the university. In 1909, the Tennessee Legislature enacted the General Education Bill; this bill stated that three colleges be established, one within each grand division of the state and one additional school for African-American students. After much bidding and campaigning, the state had to choose between two sites to build the new college for West Tennessee: Jackson and Memphis. Memphis was chosen, one of the main reasons being the proximity of the rail line to the site proposed to build the new college for West Tennessee.
This would allow students to go home and visit their relatives. The other three schools established through the General Education Act evolved into East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee State University. Prior to the establishment of the West Tennessee Normal School pursuant to the General Education Bill, a number of higher education departments existed in Memphis under the banner of the University of Memphis; this earlier University of Memphis was formed in 1909 by adding to an existing medical school's departments of pharmacy and law. On September 10, 1912, West Tennessee Normal School opened in Memphis. By 1913 all departments of the earlier University of Memphis, except the law school, had been taken over by West Tennessee Normal School. After Mynders' death in 1913, John Willard Brister was chosen to take his place. After Brister's resignation in 1918, Andrew A. Kincannon became president. In 1924, Brister returned to his post as president of the school.
The name changed in 1925 to West Tennessee State Teachers College. In 1931, the campus' first newspaper, The Tiger Rag, was established. In 1939, Richard C. Jones became president of WTSTC. In 1941, the name was changed to Memphis State College, when the college expanded its liberal arts curriculum. In 1943, Dr. Jennings B. Sanders succeeded Jones as president. Three years the first alumnus to become president, J. Millard Smith, was appointed. In 1951 MSC awarded its first B. A. degrees. In 1957 the school received full University status and changed its name accordingly to Memphis State University. In 1959, five years after Brown v. Board of Education the university admitted its first black students. Racial segregation was the norm throughout the South at the time; the Memphis State Eight, as they were known, were admitted to Memphis State University. Their presence on campus was the focus not only of intense media scrutiny, but severe criticism from much of the local public. Ostensibly for the black students' safety and to maintain an air of calm on the campus, University administrators placed certain restrictions on where and when the black students could be on campus.
They were to go only to their classes, not to any of the public places on campus, such as the cafeteria. These limitations were lifted after the novelty of their presence on campus had subsided and the public's focus on their presence there had lessened, as more and more black students were admitted to the university. Today, black students make up more than one-third of the campus student body and participate in all campus activities. Cecil C. Humphreys became president of MSU, succeeding Smith, in 1960. In 1966, the school began awarding doctoral degrees. Humphreys resigned as MSU president to become the first chancellor of the newly formed State University and Community College System renamed the Tennessee Board of Regents. John Richardson was appointed interim president. In 1973, Dr. Billy Mac Jones became president; that year, the Memphis State Tiger men's basketball team reached the finals of the NCAA tournament, only to fall at the hands of a UCLA team led by future NBA superstar and Hall of Famer Bill Walton in The NCAA Bas
Robert Plant
Robert Anthony Plant is an English singer and musician, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Plant is regarded as one of the greatest vocalists in the history of rock music. Plant enjoyed great success with Led Zeppelin throughout the 1970s and developed a compelling image as the charismatic rock-and-roll front man, similar to contemporaries such as Roger Daltrey of the Who, Freddie Mercury of Queen, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and Jim Morrison of the Doors. With his mane of long blond hair and powerful, bare-chested appearance, Plant helped to create the "god of rock and roll" or "rock god" archetype. Although Led Zeppelin dissolved in 1980, Plant collaborated with Jimmy Page on various projects through this period, including forming a short-lived all-star group with Page and Jeff Beck in 1984, called the Honeydrippers, they released an album called The Honeydrippers: Volume One, the band had a No. 3 hit with a remake of the Phil Phillips' tune "Sea of Love", plus a follow-up hit with a cover of Roy Brown's "Rockin' at Midnight".
A powerful and wide vocal range has given him a successful singing career spanning over 50 years. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers. In 2006, magazine Hit Parader named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time". In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by Planet Rock. Robert Anthony Plant was born on 20 August 1948, in the Black Country town of West Bromwich, England, to Robert C. Plant, a qualified civil engineer who worked in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Annie Celia Plant, a Romanichal woman, he grew up in Worcestershire. Plant gained an interest in roll music at an early age; when I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old.
That was all the ambience I got at ten years old... I think! And I always wanted to be a curtain, a bit similar to that, he left King Edward VI Grammar School for Boys in Stourbridge in his mid-teens and developed a strong passion for the blues through his admiration for Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and early rendition of songs in this genre. I suppose I was quite interested in Romano-British history. I was a little grammar school boy and I could hear this kind of calling through the airwaves, he abandoned training as a chartered accountant after only two weeks to attend college in an effort to gain more GCE passes and to become part of the English Midlands blues scene. "I left home at 16", he said, "and I started my real education musically, moving from group to group, furthering my knowledge of the blues and of other music which had weight and was worth listening to". Plant's early blues influences included Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller, Sleepy John Estes. Plant had various jobs while pursuing his music career, one of, working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1967 laying tarmac on roads.
He worked at Woolworth's in Halesowen town for a short period of time. He cut three obscure singles on CBS Records and sang with a variety of bands, including the Crawling King Snakes, which brought him into contact with drummer John Bonham, they both went on merging blues with newer psychedelic trends. In 1968, guitarist Jimmy Page was in search of a lead singer for his new band and met Plant after being turned down by his first choice, Terry Reid, who referred him to a show at a teacher training college in Birmingham. In front of Page, Plant sang Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love", leading Page to the end of his search; as recalled by Plant and Page:Plant: I was appearing at this college when Peter and Jimmy turned up and asked me if I'd like to join the Yardbirds. I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America – which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer – so I was interested. Page: When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he'd been singing for a few years he hadn't become a big name yet.
So I had him down to my place for a little while, just to sort of check him out, we got along great. No problems. With a shared passion for music and Page developed a strong relationship, began their writing collaboration with reworkings of earlier blues songs. Plant received no songwriting credits on the band's first album because he was still under contract to CBS Records at the time. Plant brought along John Bonham as drummer, they were joined by John Paul Jones, who had worked with Page as a studio musician. Jones called Page on the phone before they checked out Plant, Page hired Jones immediately. Dubbed the "New Yardbirds" in 1968, the band soon came to be known as Led Zeppelin; the band's eponymous debut album hit the charts in 1969 and is credited as a catalyst for the heavy metal genre. Plant has commented that it is unfair for people to think of Zeppelin as heavy metal, as a third of their music was acoustic. In 1969, Led Zeppelin I was released; this was the bands' first album. Plant stated that "During Led Zeppelin I, as far as I was concerned I thought that I was g
Hubert Sumlin
Hubert Charles Sumlin was a Chicago blues guitarist and singer, best known for his "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions" as a member of Howlin' Wolf's band. He was ranked number 43 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Sumlin was born in Greenwood and raised in Hughes, Arkansas, he got his first guitar. As a boy, he met Howlin' Wolf by sneaking into a performance. Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, but his longtime guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. In Chicago, Wolf hired the guitarist Jody Williams, but in 1954 he invited Sumlin to move to Chicago to play second guitar in his band. Williams left the band in 1955, leaving Sumlin as the primary guitarist, a position he held continuously for the remainder of Wolf's career. According to Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf sent him to a classical guitar instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music to learn keyboards and scales. Sumlin played on the album Howlin' Wolf, named the third greatest guitar album of all time by Mojo magazine in 2004.
Upon Wolf's death in 1976, Sumlin continued playing with several other members of Wolf's band, as the Wolf Pack, until about 1980. He recorded under his own name, beginning with a session from a tour of Europe with Wolf in 1964, his last solo album was About Them Shoes, released in 2004 by Tone-Cool Records. He underwent lung removal surgery the same year, but he continued performing until just before his death, his final recording, just days before his death, was tracks for an album by Stephen Dale Petit, Cracking The Code. Sumlin was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2008, he was nominated for four Grammy Awards: in 1999 for the album Tribute to Howlin' Wolf, with Henry Gray, Calvin Jones, Sam Lay, Colin Linden. He won multiple Blues Music Awards, he was a judge for the fifth annual Independent Music Awards, given to support the careers of independent artists. Sumlin lived in New Jersey for 10 years before his death, he died of heart failure on December 4, 2011, in a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards paid Sumlin's funeral expenses. Hubert Sumlin at AllMusic Hubert Sumlin biography at About.com BBC review of About Them Shoes Hubert Sumlin video from Seventh Hour Blues magazine on YouTube Hubert Sumlin 1931-2011 Illustrated Hubert Sumlin discography
Robert Lockwood Jr.
Robert Lockwood Jr. was an American Delta blues guitarist, who recorded for Chess Records and other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the only guitarist to have learned to play directly from Robert Johnson. Lockwood is known for his longtime collaboration with Sonny Boy Williamson II and for his work in the mid-1950s with Little Walter. Lockwood was born in Arkansas, a hamlet west of Helena, he started playing the organ in his father's church at the age of eight. His parents divorced, the famous bluesman Robert Johnson lived with Lockwood's mother for 10 years off and on. Lockwood learned from Johnson not only how to play guitar but timing and stage presence; because of his personal and professional association with Johnson, he became known as "Robert Junior" Lockwood, a nickname by which he was known among musicians for the rest of his life, although he frequently professed his dislike for this appellation. By age 15, Lockwood was playing professionally at parties in the Helena area.
He played with his quasi-stepfather Robert Johnson and with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Johnny Shines. Lockwood played at fish fries, in juke joints, on street corners throughout the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s. On one occasion he played on one side of the Sunflower River while Johnson played on the other, with the people of Clarksdale, milling about the bridge unable to tell which guitarist was the real Robert Johnson. Around 1937–1938 Lockwood worked with Williamson and Elmore James in the Delta, at places like Winona and Greenville. Lockwood played with Williamson in the Clarksdale area in 1938 and 1939, he played with Howlin' Wolf and others in Memphis, around 1938. From 1939 to 1940 he split his time playing in Missouri. On July 1, 1941, Lockwood made his first recordings, with Doctor Clayton, for the Bluebird label in Aurora, Illinois. On July 30 he recorded four songs, which were released as the first two 78-rpm singles under his own name: "Little Boy Blue" backed with "Take a Little Walk with Me" and "I'm Gonna Train My Baby" backed with "Black Spider Blues".
These songs remained in his repertoire throughout his career. In 1941, Lockwood and Williamson began their influential performances on the daily radio program King Biscuit Time on KFFA in Helena. For several years in the early 1940s the pair played together in and around Helena and continued to be associated with King Biscuit Time. From about 1944 to 1949 Lockwood played in Arkansas, he played in King's band early in King's career in Memphis. In 1950, Lockwood settled in Chicago. A 1951 78-rpm single featured "I'm Gonna Dig Myself a Hole" backed with "Dust My Broom", a 1954 release contained "Aw Aw" backed with "Sweet Woman". In 1954 he replaced Louis Myers as the guitarist in Little Walter's band, he played on Walter's number 1 hit "My Babe" in 1955. He left the band around 1957. In the late 1950s he recorded several sessions with Sonny Boy Williamson for Chess Records, sessions which included Willie Dixon and Otis Spann. Lockwood performed or recorded with Sunnyland Slim, Eddie Boyd, Roosevelt Sykes, J. B.
Lenoir, Muddy Waters, among others. In 1960, Lockwood moved with Williamson to Cleveland, where he resided for the second half of his life. In the early 1960s, as Bob Lockwood Jr. and Combo, he had a regular gig at Loving's Grill, at 8426 Hough Avenue. From the 1970s through the 2000s, he performed with his band the All Stars at numerous local venues, including Pirate's Cove, the Euclid Tavern, Peabody's, Wilbert's, Brother's Lounge, and, in the last years of his career, Fat Fish Blue every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. He played his regular three sets two days before the illness; the All Stars continued the Wednesday residency for two years after his death. His studio albums as a bandleader include Steady Rollin' Man, with the Aces. Does 12. A 1972 45-rpm single included "Selfish Ways" backed with "Down Home Cookin'". Reviewing Does 12 in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies, Robert Christgau said, "Lovers of urban blues will cherish this record by Robert Johnson's self-designated heir.
It boasts some adventurously progressive saxophone and twelve-string stylings that do no violence to a notoriously intransigent genre. But Lockwood is an undistinguished vocal interpreter, only one of his originals—the imperturbable'Selfish Ways'—is worthy of interpretation itself."His solo guitar and vocal albums include Plays Robert and Robert, Delta Crossroads and The Legend Live. A duet session with the pianist Otis Spann in 1960 resulted in Otis Spann Is the Blues and Walking the Blues, released by Candid. At the age of sixty, in 1975, he discovered the 12-string guitar and preferentially played it exclusively for the latter third of his life, his most famous 12-string was a blue instrument custom designed and made by the Japanese luthiers Moony Omote and Age Sumi. It is displayed there. A live performance by Lockwood, Henry "Mule" Townsend
Sonny Boy Williamson and the Yardbirds
Sonny Boy Williamson & the Yardbirds is a live album by Chicago blues veteran Sonny Boy Williamson II backed by English rock band the Yardbirds. It was recorded at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey on December 8, 1963, although a second date and location has been given for two songs. Williamson plays the harmonica on all of the songs. Although they are in a supporting role, the album presents some of the earliest recordings by the Yardbirds, whose members included Eric Clapton on lead guitar. Numerous reissues have appeared over the years, sometimes with additional tracks recorded around the same time. German music impresarios Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau organized the first annual American Folk Blues Festival in 1962, they arranged for several well-known American blues artists to perform in concert in several European cities. Sonny Boy Williamson participated during the second festival tour in 1963 and his performances are identified as some of the most memorable of the festival. At the conclusion of the festival, he returned to England for a more extensive club tour.
The Yardbirds' manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, who promoted some of the early American Folk Blues Festivals in England, persuaded Lippmann to attend one of the group's shows. A deal was struck and the Yardbirds backed Williamson for several English dates between December 1963 and February 1964. Part of the arrangement included that Lippmann and Rau record some live performances and finance a solo studio demo by the group. December 7, 1963 at the Star Hotel, Croydon Sonny Boy Williamson backed by the Yardbirds:"Take It Easy Baby" "Do the Weston" December 8, 1963 at the Crawdaddy Club, Richmond The Yardbirds:"Smokestack Lightning" "Let It Rock" "Honey in Your Hips" "I Wish You Would" "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" "Who Do You Love?"Williamson:"Baby Don't Worry" "I Don't Care No More"Williamson backed by the Yardbirds:"Bye Bye Bird" "Mister Downchild" "The River Rhine" "23 Hours Too Long" "A Lost Care" "Pontiac Blues" "Take It Easy Baby" "Out on the Water Coast" "Western Arizona" a.k.a. "Do the Weston" February 28, 1964 at the Birmingham Town Hall Williamson backed by the Yardbirds:"Slow Walk" "Highway 49" a.k.a.
"Pontiac Blues" "My Little Cabin"Williamson:"Bye Bye Bird" Over two years after it was recorded, Sonny Boy Williamson & the Yardbirds was first released in the UK by Fontana Records on January 7, 1966. With a somewhat different running order, it was released in the US a month by Mercury Records on February 7, 1966; the album coincided with a string of successful singles by the Yardbirds, which lead music critic Richie Unterberger to label it "an exploitative album". Although Williamson's photo and name were prominently displayed on the album cover, a more recent photo of the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck in the foreground was used. In Germany, the album was released by Star-Club Records, which had a connection to Rau. Although the recording date for Sonny Boy Williamson & the Yardbirds is given as December 8, 1963, there are conflicting accounts for two of the recordings. Yardbirds' biographer Gregg Russo indicates that the December 7, 1963, test recordings of "Take It Easy Baby" and "Do the Weston" were used for the album.
He places both 8 dates at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. The running times for the songs support Russo. However, Gomelsky notes. Biographer Alan Clayson places the December 7 performance at "Crawdaddy Star Hotel, Croydon". Gomelsky, who ran the Richmond Crawdaddy Club operated the room at the Star Hotel, "presumably with the intention of building a Crawdaddy'circuit'". In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Unterberger gave the album three out of five stars, he notes that Sonny Boy Williamson sings well and that the album should be seen as a Williamson release "in the manner of the sides the Beatles cut in Hamburg supporting Tony Sheridan." He describes the Yardbirds' and Clapton's playing as "extremely green" and "tentative". The album did not appear on the record charts in the UK or US. Original Fontana album The songwriter credits are taken from the 1966 Fontana release, which lists all songs are written by Sonny Boy Williamson II, except as noted; the album does not include running times. Side 1"Bye Bye Bird" "Mister Downchild" "23 Hours Too Long" "Out on the Water Coast" "Baby Don't Worry"Side 2"Pontiac Blues" "Take It Easy Baby" "I Don't Care No More" "Do the Weston"Original Mercury album The running times are taken from the 1966 Mercury release.
The liner notes include "All selection composed by Sonny Boy Williamson II and published by BMI". Side 1"Bye Bye Bird" – 2:23 "Pontiac Blues" – 3:45 "Take It Easy Baby" – 4:09 "I Don't Care No More" – 3:18 "Do the Weston" – 4:00Side 2"Mister Downchild" – 3:56 "23 Hours Too Long" – 5:04 "Out on the Water Coast" – 3:00 "Baby Don't Worry" – 4:28 Sonny Boy Williamson & the Yardbirds has been reissued numerous times. Sometimes the tracks were resequenced and the cover art was updated with photos of the period Yardbirds. Questions over the ownership of the master tapes and the rights to authorize their release has led to many competing and overlapping albums. Beginning in 1981, Lippmann and Rau began releasing other material recorded around the same time; these albums sometimes included various combinations of additional recordings with Williamson, the Yardbirds' December 8, 1963, solo set, early group demos. In
