Sonny Boy Williamson I

John Lee Williamson ranks as the foremost harmonica player of the years preceding World War II. Virtually on his own, he transformed the modest mouth organ into a credible lead voice within blues groups, opening the door for Little Walter’s later breakthroughs and the wave of players who followed. A fatal attack in 1948, suffered while returning from a Chicago tavern, cut short any chance he might have had to stand beside those innovators and pursue fresh paths.

Williamson fully exploited the brief span available to him. Already a harp master during his teenage years, the original Sonny Boy—who saw Rice Miller later borrow the name down in the Delta—studied under Hammie Nixon and Noah Lewis, then toured alongside Sleepy John Estes and Yank Rachell before relocating to Chicago in 1934.

His wide-ranging skills and steady creativity earned a Bluebird contract in 1937. Under Lester Melrose’s supervision, Sonny Boy recorded extensively for Victor, both heading his own dates and supporting other artists in the expansive Melrose circle, among them Robert Lee McCoy and Big Joe Williams, who appeared on several of Williamson’s own sessions.

He launched his remarkable discography with immediate force. The first vocal side he cut for Bluebird, the landmark “Good Morning School Girl,” has been revisited repeatedly in the decades since. That same fruitful session also produced “Sugar Mama Blues” and “Blue Bird Blues,” each now regarded as equally definitive.

The following year delivered further standouts such as “Decoration Blues” and “Whiskey Headed Woman Blues.” Releases from 1939 featured “T.B. Blues” and “Tell Me Baby,” while 1940 yielded “My Little Machine” and “Jivin’ the Blues.” Jimmy Rogers later drew on Williamson’s “Sloppy Drunk Blues,” recorded with pianist Blind John Davis and bassist Ransom Knowling in 1941, adapting it powerfully for Chess in 1954. That year’s rich output also included “Ground Hog Blues” and “My Black Name,” and the well-known “Stop Breaking Down” from 1945 placed the harpist in the company of guitarist Tampa Red and pianist Big Maceo.

Across his RCA tenure from 1937 to 1947, Sonny Boy amassed more than 120 sides, many of which later entered the postwar Chicago blues repertoire. His pioneering call-and-response approach—alternating vocal lines with incisive harmonica phrases—proved an influential advance that virtually every blues harpist who came after adopted.

Williamson did not live to enjoy substantial returns from these advances. He died at 34, still at the height of his popularity after his driving “Shake That Boogie” became a national R&B hit on Victor in 1947, the victim of a fatal beating during a robbery on Chicago’s South Side. His final recording, the vigorous “Better Cut That Out,” later taken up by Junior Wells, appeared as a posthumous hit in late 1948. Among younger players who demonstrated lasting respect, a teenage Billy Boy Arnold gathered the courage to seek lessons at his idol’s door; the obliging Sonny Boy Williamson agreed, a favor Arnold has never ceased to acknowledge. This influence marks the lasting mark left by the blues’ first major harmonicist.