Biography
One-man bands remained a rarity amid the postwar blues circuit, though Joe Hill Louis and Dr. Ross both thrived while working entirely solo, much like the Texas musician Juke Boy Bonner, whose abilities brought scant material return. Born Weldon Bonner amid hardship in the Lone Star State at the height of the Depression, he began playing guitar during his teenage years. A 1947 talent contest victory in Houston secured him airtime on a local station. He relocated to Oakland in 1956 and cut his first single for Bob Geddins’ Irma label—“Rock with Me Baby” backed with “Well Baby”—while Lafayette “Thing” Thomas handled lead guitar duties. Goldband Records proprietor Eddie Shuler offered the next opportunity in 1960, recording Bonner in Lake Charles, Louisiana, alongside pianist Katie Webster, yet the sides produced no career momentum. Stomach ailments plagued him throughout the 1960s, and he used idle hospital hours to compose poems that later became songs. His strongest recordings appeared in the late 1960s on Arhoolie Records, where he accompanied himself on guitar and rack-mounted harmonica while recounting intimate stories drawn from his hardscrabble Houston existence. A handful of European tours followed without substantial payoff. In his final years Bonner labored at a chicken processing plant to cover living expenses, then succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver in 1978.
Albums
