George "Wild Child" Butler

Accounts confirm that George Butler truly earned his mother's "wild child" label through early escapades. Still, he picked up basic harp technique at twelve amid those youthful antics. By the late '50s he was already fronting bands on the professional circuit. His recording prospects remained limited until a 1966 relocation to Chicago led to a contract with the Shreveport, LA-based Jewel Records label; bassist Willie Dixon and guitarist Jimmy Dawkins supported those dates.

Commercial breakthroughs proved elusive. The harpist's 1969 Mercury release vanished quickly, and his 1976 T.K. album Funky Butt Lover fared no better, though Rooster Blues later reissued it in slightly altered form under the title Lickin' Gravy. Around 1981 Butler relocated north to Ontario, Canada, where he sustained his performing career. Roughly a decade afterward he recorded the first of two projects for British producer Mike Vernon; the London sessions yielded These Mean Old Blues, a collection of original songs. Stranger, drawn from another English date, appeared in 1994.