Sonny Boy Williamson II

Alex or Aleck Miller ( Ford, possibly March 11 or December 5, 1912 – May 24, 1965), known later in his career as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He was an early and influential blues harp stylist who recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s. Miller used various names, including Rice Miller and Little Boy Blue, before calling himself Sonny Boy Williamson, which was also the name of a popular Chicago blues singer and harmonica player. To distinguish the two, Miller has been referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

He first recorded with Elmore James on “Dust My Broom“. Some of his popular songs include “Don’t Start Me Talkin’“, “Help Me“, “Checkin’ Up on My Baby“, and “Bring It On Home“. He toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and recorded with English rock musicians, including the Yardbirds, the Animals. “Help Me” became a blues standard, and many blues and rock artists have recorded his songs.

Miller’s date of birth is disputed. In a spoken word performance called “The Story of Sonny Boy Williamson” that was later included in several compilations, Miller states that he was born in Glendora, Mississippi in 1897. There are five opinions about his date of birth. Five opinions are 1897, 1899, 1907, 1909, and 1912. David Evans, professor of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Memphis, claims to have found census records that Miller was born around 1912, being seven years old on February 2, 1920, the day of the census. Miller’s gravestone in or near Tutwiler, Mississippi, set up by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after his death, gives his date of birth as March 11, 1908. Upon his return to the U.S., he resumed playing the King Biscuit Time show on KFFA, and performed in the Helena, Arkansas area. 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 approaching and Williamson was nowhere in sight. Peck left the radio station to locate Williamson, and discovered his body in bed at the rooming house where he had been staying, dead of an apparent heart attack suffered in his sleep the night before. Williamson is buried on New Africa Road, just outside Tutwiler, Mississippi at the site of the former Whitman Chapel cemetery. Trumpet Records owner McMurry provided the headstone with an incorrect date of death

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