Home » Music » R&B History » Chicago's Harmonica Giants

Chicago's Harmonica Giants

© Barney Quick

Of all the cities important in the development of blues, Chicago stands out as the premier harp-blowers’ town. Like so much about Chicago blues, the harmonica element, for all its associations in the modern listener’s mind with the urban north, has very agrarian roots. The towering figures of Chicago harp’s evolution began forming their classic licks at the fish fries and barn dances of the era between the world wars. They also comprise, as a group, the ultimate example of the notion of a bluesman living by his wits; each left home at an early age and fended for himself in one of the roughest environments to be found in midcentury America.

The one who paved the way for the rest was the first Sonny Boy Williamson. He was born in 1914 in Jackson, Tennessee, about an hour’s drive east of Memphis. He hooked up with such luminaries of Beale Street’s jug-band scene as mandolinist Yank Rachell and guitarist Sleepy John Estes as a teenager. They played country suppers throughout the area. On this circuit, they heard about the opportunities for blues performers in Chicago (which, despite the ravages of the Depression, continued to exist, in large part due to Lester Melrose’s record-producing activities at Bluebird, RCA’s “race” subsidiary.) One by one, they made it to the Windy City.

Williamson became a musical hero within a short time. . He cut several sides for Bluebird, accompanied by Estes and Rachell and Big Joe Williams. He was a fixture at the Triangle Inn and the Flame Club, often playing with pianist Eddie Boyd.

Sonny Boy seemed to draw trouble to him. Even though he was good-natured, when he became sauced, people in bars often misunderstood his way of interacting. Sometimes others had to calm the situation down. Whether that was the case or whether he was blindsided by a robber on the night of June 1, 1948 remains a mystery. All that is known for sure is that he was found in an alley between the Plantation Inn and his home with several ice-pick wounds in his head. His harps and wallet were gone.

Even though he was a star in the blues world, another performer was able to usurp his name and become at least as famous. Alec “Rice” Miller started using the Sonny Boy Williamson moniker while he was the featured performer on King Biscuit Time, a Helena, Arkansas radio show, in the early forties. King Biscuit, a flour-manufacturing concern, sponsored this daily broadcast on KFFA on which Miller honked and sang for a wide audience in the mid-South. He cut some sides for the Jackson, Mississippi-based Trumpet label in the early fifties and then headed to Chicago, where he became an integral part of the Chess team. His first Chess hit, “Don’t Start Me To Talkin’,” is a noisy stomper that boasts both Jimmy Rogers and Muddy Waters on guitar. The second Sonny Boy used Robert Lockwood, Jr., an old musical friend from the Southern days, on many of the recordings he did through 1965, when he died. In the early sixties, he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. During his stay in England, he met many of the young white blues enthusiasts there and cut some sides with The Yardbirds (featuring Eric Clapton on guitar) and a budding session guitarist named Jimmy Page.