Willie "Big Eyes" Smith

Born January 19, 1936, in Helena, Arkansas, bluesman Willie “Big Eyes” Smith served for many years as drummer in the Muddy Waters Band. Sharecroppers raised him, and during childhood his neighbors counted Robert Nighthawk and Pinetop Perkins among them. At seventeen he journeyed to Chicago to see his mother and stayed permanently, learning harmonica and drums on his own. With harpist Clifton James and guitarist Bobby Lee Burns he assembled a blues trio. Marriage to his first wife in 1955 prompted a promise to quit performing, yet within twelve months he was supporting Arthur “Big Boy” Spires. After a short-lived effort to lead his own group, Smith resumed drumming in Hudson Shower’s Red Devil Trio. Several lean years that required welfare payments preceded his 1961 entry into Waters’s band, where he remained until 1980, the year he helped establish the Legendary Blues Band. His debut solo album, Bag Full of Blues, finally surfaced in 1995; Nothin’ But the Blues Y’all arrived four years afterward, and Blues from the Heart came out in fall 2000. Electro-Fi issued Bluesin’ It in 2004, while Hightone Records released the agreeable Way Back in 2006.