[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 15025-15026]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


              HONORING MR. WILLIE ``SONNY BOY'' WILLIAMSON

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 19, 2012

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a 
blues musician and legend of the Mississippi Delta, Mr. Willie ``Sonny 
Boy'' Williamson.
  Mr. Speaker, the ``Blues'' is not just a song, it's a story about 
hard times and frustration put to musical rhymes and rhythms; it's a 
means to an end. The Blues was influenced by field hollers, religious 
hymns of hope, and even dance. So let me share a blues story with you 
through the life of Mr. Willie ``Sonny Boy'' Williamson.
  If you happen to hear the names, Alex ``Rice'' Miller, Sonny Boy 
Williamson number 2, Sonny Boy Williamson the second, Willie Miller, 
Sonny Boy Miller, or Little Boy Blue, just know that it's the same 
Willie ``Sonny Boy'' Williamson of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. 
His birth given name however, is Alex Miller. There are different 
reports circulating about when Sonny Boy was born. The dates in 
question are 1897, December 5, 1899, March 11, 1908, and December 5, 
1912. He was born on the Sara Jones Plantation near Glendora, 
Mississippi. Nevertheless, it was not until 1941 that he began to 
assume the name of ``Sonny Boy'' Williamson when Max Moore, owner of 
Interstate Grocer Company's King Biscuit Flour business, started 
calling him by that name in order to promote the show.
  Although researchers and historians alike have debated important 
dates and events surrounding his life, one thing they all agree upon is 
that he is a son of the Mississippi Delta blues, a self taught 
harmonica player, and a legendary blues singer and song writer. He 
began playing the guitar and harmonica at the early age of five. Sonny 
Boy's stepfather and mother, Jim and Millie Miller, never discouraged 
him from playing his blues music or his instruments.
  Mississippi was a very implacable place for blacks in the 1900s with 
the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, efforts to pass life 
changing legislation, and when cotton pickers were paid about forty 
cents a day per one hundred pounds of cotton picked. The blues music 
was filled with lyrics about those times, bad luck, hope, and memories 
experienced or seen by the blues artist. Unrelenting beats accompanied 
the lyrics of the songs as the artist told their story.
  In the early 1920's, Sonny Boy was a young man struggling to make a 
living, so he started performing in juke joints and night clubs 
throughout Mississippi and Arkansas under the name of Little Boy Blue. 
The pay was very meager or sometimes there was no pay at all. By the 
1930s he left a life of sharecropping and cotton picking in 
Tallahatchie County and started becoming a familiar voice and blues 
artist on the local circuits. He played on the street corners, at 
church socials, fish fry's, and anywhere he could attract a crowd, 
sometimes getting paid. Sonny Boy made friends with other blues artists 
like Big Joe Williams, Elmore James, Joe Willie ``Pinetop'' Perkins, 
Robert Lockwood, Jr., and Robert Johnson. He was always looking for 
ways to entertain besides just singing, so he started doing what some 
might call impossible until they saw him do it--he would put his entire 
harmonica in his mouth and play it with no hands, wow, what a talent.
  The 1940s was just as entertaining and by now, Sonny Boy's blues 
future was beginning to take shape. In 1941 he was hired to play on the 
King Biscuit Time show where he did advertisement for King Biscuit 
Flour on a radio station (KFFA) in Helena, Arkansas. The sponsors 
thought he would be perfect to advertise King Biscuit Flour to the 
black audience King Biscuit wanted to reach. He partnered with fellow 
blues artist Robert Lockwood for this gig and they became known as the 
King Biscuit Boys. The show was limited in range, only reaching an 
audience within about a 50 miles radius. As a result, he quietly 
started doing radio shows in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Belzoni, 
Mississippi, outside of the range of KFFA. Then in the late 1940s KFFA 
extended its listening audience through WROX in Clarksdale, Mississippi 
in the late 1940s, which was far enough for Sonny Boy to reach the ears 
of young Riley King, known as B.B. King, over in Indianola, 
Mississippi. On Saturdays, the KFFA King Biscuit Entertainers would 
visit grocery stores performing on King Biscuit's flatbed truck 
throughout Northern Mississippi delta towns like Sardis and Clarksdale. 
In 1944, his picture appeared on Sonny Boy Corn Meal and he became a 
household name.
  Sonny Boy figured out he had a knack for the radio and he could make 
money doing it. So, he started his own KWEM radio show in 1948 until 
1950. He moved to West Memphis, Arkansas in 1949 to live with his 
sister and her husband, Howlin' Wolf, another blues legend from White 
Station, Mississippi. This was his golden opportunity where he brought 
along other struggling great blues artists before they were greats. 
These were friends like James Cotton, Houston Stackhouse, Elmore James, 
B.B. King, Arthur ``Big Boy'' Crudup, Robert Nighthawk and others to 
perform on the show.
  Sonny Boy finally got to record one of his many stories about the 
blues; it came in 1951 with his first single on Trumpet Records titled 
``Eyesight to the Blind,'' where he was singing about a woman. Using 
the word ``good'' to describe him was not good enough; people often 
said that with this song he could make a blind man think he could see 
her. He was the primary artist for Trumpet Records. Henry and Lillian 
McMurry in Jackson, Mississippi were the owners. In 1955, he began 
recording for Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois after Trumpet Records 
went bankrupt. His years at Chess Records were his most successful in 
his career as a blues artist. In fact, he recorded about 70 songs from 
1955 to 1964 for Checker Records, a subsidiary of Chess Records. In 
1959 he finally got the opportunity to record a compilation of stories 
about the blues with his first LP record titled Down and Out Blues. It 
featured such hits as Dissatisfied, Your Funeral and My Trial, Don't 
Start Me to Talkin, and All My Love in Vain.
  In the 1960s, he toured Europe several times during the height of the 
British blues excitement; having much influence on the Blues music he 
recorded with The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, guitarist Jimmy Page, The 
Animals, and even Mississippi Slim of Greenville. In the summer of 
1964, he did a BBC TV show with jazz musician Chris Barber. He also 
recorded with Roland Kirk, another jazz musician, who could play three 
horns at the same time. It was reported in the Led Zeppelin biography 
that while in England, Sonny Boy accidently set his hotel room on fire 
while trying to cook a rabbit in a coffee percolator.
  Homesick for the Mississippi Delta area, the local blues circuit he 
started on, to see old friends, down home cooking and living, to hang 
out with newcomers to the blues scene, and to play on KFFA again--all 
beginnings he wanted to cash in for better endings, Willie ``Sonny 
Boy'' Williamson returned to Helena, Arkansas to live until his death 
in June 1965 from a heart attack. Sonny Boy Williamson was born on the 
Sara Jones Plantation near Glendora, Mississippi and buried on New 
Africa Road just outside of Tutwiler, Mississippi at the site of the 
former Whitman Chapel Cemetery. These towns are approximately 15 miles 
apart. His headstone was paid for and donated by Mrs. Lillian McMurry, 
owner of Trumpet Records, another one of his beginnings.
  Over the course of Sonny Boy Williamson's career, he recorded over 
150 songs, from 1951 to 1965. He wrote and composed most of his own 
songs, many of which were recorded more than once. A musical prodigy in 
his own right and style, he was able to make each performance unique 
and different through impromptu styles of arrangements, tempos and 
lyrics.
  Sonny Boy Williamson may have been characterized by a hip flask, 
British bowler sittin' high on his head cocked to the side, tailor made 
two-tone suits, a foul mouth, fast women, short tempered, and a grey 
goateed image, but don't forget about the characterization of his 
musical ability. He was highly original with his own signature 
harmonica style and vocal gift for moaning out a rich blues saga. Just 
as I stated earlier, there is no doubt about it, he had the blues.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mr. Willie 
``Sonny Boy'' Williamson, a world renowned blues legend

[[Page 15026]]

and artist from the Mississippi Delta. He is truly worthy to be 
recognized.

                          ____________________