Biography
J.W. Warren entered the world on June 22, 1921, in Enterprise, Alabama, as the child of John and Matilda Warren; the two letters that formed his name stood for nothing else. He passed nearly all of his days in the vicinity of Ariton, Alabama, where he first took up guitar at roughly sixteen and soon performed blues numbers at nearby juke joints and barbecues. After a stint at a sawmill he enlisted in the U.S. military while still a teenager and remained in uniform for fourteen years. Once discharged he came back to the Ariton district, took up farming, and again played the local jukes, frequently sharing bills with fellow resident Big Mama Thornton. Warren maintained that he had supplied the “hound dog” for her signature hit “Hound Dog,” though that assertion remains unverified. He named Blind Boy Fuller as his primary influence yet cultivated a personal style within the traditional blues repertoire he preferred. Folklorist George Mitchell captured him at his Ariton residence on September 15, 1981, and again on March 27, 1982; those tapes later appeared on small-label issues, among them the Swingmaster LP Bad Luck Bound and the Fat Possum CD Life Ain’t Worth Livin’. In 1994 the Music Maker Foundation also recorded him, placing individual tracks from the session on assorted anthologies. Because he seldom ventured beyond his hometown, performances at folk venues and festivals stayed infrequent. Warren died at his Ariton residence on August 5, 2003.
Albums