JOHN LEE CURTIS WILLIAMSON * SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON I *

El trabajo de John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson es uno de los más importantes en la historia del blues . Armonicista innovador.  Sin ir más lejos el mísmisimo Little Walter se  podría contar como uno de sus alumnos ( en este caso aventajado ... )Muchos títulos de este enorme  compositor se convertirán en clásicos del género. A pesar de todo ello venimos observando entre los músicos de Blues e incluso los críticos de la escena actual una descriminación absoluta decantando la fama y el reconocimiento hacia el Sonny Boy Williamson II , en realidad el " el usurpador " Rice Miller. Hoy dedicamos nuestro post al verdadero Sonny Boy y os ofrecemos unos cuanto títulos que forman parte de la historia de este tipo de música y que no acaban de ser lo reconocidos que se merecerían . 

En la Wikipedia podemos leer esto acerca de John Lee Williamson 

John Lee era hijo de granjeros de Tennessee y aprendió solo a tocar la armónica, actuando en un medecine show, donde se ganó el apodo de Sonny Boy. Admirador profundo de Sleepy John Estes y, sobre todo, de su armonicista Hammie Nixon, al que imitaba en sus comienzos. Incorporado finalmente a la banda de Estes, Sonny Boy modeló su estilo a partir del sonido de ambos. En 1934, se trasladó a Saint Louis, donde trabajó con Big Joe Williams, Walter Davis y otros. Después, emigró a Chicago, donde recorrió todos los clubs y logró convertirse en el armonicista favorito del público local.

A partir de 1937 comenzó a realizar grabaciones de gran éxito, en un estilo muy parecido a Estes, entre las que destaca "Good morning, little schoolgirl". En los diez años siguientes, grabaría más de 120 temas para el sello Bluebird, y se convirtió en una de las grandes estrellas de Chicago. Su éxito fue tal, que surgieron muchos imitadores que, incluso, se hacían pasar por él, siendo el más conocido Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) al que, por cierto, John Lee estuvo buscando con una pistola en el bolsillo para arreglar cuentas con el impostor.1​

Ejerció una indudable influencia sobre los jóvenes armonicistas como Little Walter, Snooky Pryor, Junior Wells o Billy Boy Arnold, a quienes dio lecciones y consejos, además de apoyar a bluesmen como Muddy Waters.

Su carácter y sus excesos con el alcohol, y con las mujeres que acudían a verlo a los clubs, causaron su muerte: El 1 de junio de 1948, volvía muy borracho a casa, tras una actuación, cuando el marido de una mujer a la que había cortejado durante la misma, le atacó con un punzón de hielo, y le atravesó la cabeza2​

Estilo

Sonny Boy tocaba la armónica en el llamado estilo cross harp, es decir, en un tono una cuarta por debajo del tono en que estaba afinada, lo que permitía conseguir la escala del blues aspirando la mayoría de las notas, en lugar de soplando, permitiendo de esa forma la vocalización y distorsión, mediante la técnica de los "bendings" (bajar el tono de la nota doblando la lengüeta mediante la modificación de la cavidad bucal) , típicas del blues.3​ Fue Williamson quien impulsó esta técnica, así como la del Double stop, es decir, tocar dos notas a la vez, para crear efectos rítmicos.

Fue también quien introdujo en Chicago la formación de banda que más tarde sería típica del blues eléctrico, incluyendo una guitarra eléctrica (Big Bill Broonzy, Big Joe Williams o Robert Nighthawk, normalmente), un piano, un bajo y una batería.

Sonny Boy Williamson I

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This article is about the blues musician who died in 1948. For the Sonny Boy Williamson who died in 1965, see Sonny Boy Williamson II.

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John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He is often regarded as the pioneer of the blues harp as a solo instrument. He played on hundreds of recordings by many pre–World War II blues artists. Under his own name, he was one of the most recorded blues musicians of the 1930s and 1940s and is closely associated with Chicago producer Lester Melrose and Bluebird Records. His popular songs, original or adapted, include "Good Morning, School Girl", "Sugar Mama", "Early in the Morning", and "Stop Breaking Down".

Williamson's harmonica style was a great influence on postwar performers. Later in his career, he was a mentor to many up-and-coming blues musicians who moved to Chicago, including Muddy Waters. In an attempt to capitalize on Williamson's fame, Aleck "Rice" Miller began recording and performing as Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1940s, and later, to distinguish the two, John Lee Williamson came to be known as Sonny Boy Williamson I or "the original Sonny Boy".

         Con Big Bill Broonzy 

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Williamson was born in Madison County, Tennessee, near Jackson, in 1914 His original recordings are in the country blues style, but he soon demonstrated skill at making the harmonica a lead instrument for the blues and popularized it for the first time in a more urban blues setting. He has been called "the father of modern blues harp". While in his teens he joined Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes, playing with them in Tennessee and Arkansas. In 1934 he settled in Chicago. 

Williamson first recorded in 1937, for Bluebird Records, and his first recording, "Good Morning, School Girl", became a standard. He was popular among black audiences throughout the southern United States and in Midwestern industrial cities, such as Detroit and Chicago, and his name was synonymous with the blues harmonica for the next decade. Other well-known recordings of his include "Sugar Mama Blues", "Shake the Boogie", "You Better Cut That Out", "Sloppy Drunk", "Early in the Morning", "Stop Breaking Down", and "Hoodoo Hoodoo" (also known as "Hoodoo Man Blues"). In 1947, "Shake the Boogie" made number 4 on Billboard's Race Records chart.Williamson's style influenced many blues harmonica performers, including Billy Boy Arnold, Junior Wells, Sonny Terry, Little Walter, and Snooky Pryor. He was the most widely heard and influential blues harmonica player of his generation. His music was also influential on many of his non-harmonica-playing contemporaries and successors, including Muddy Waters (who played guitar with Williamson in the mid-1940s) and Jimmy Rogers (whose first recording in 1946 was as a harmonica player, performing an uncanny imitation of Williamson's style). These and other artists, both blues and rock, have helped popularize his songs through subsequent recordings.

Williamson recorded prolifically both as a bandleader and as a sideman over the course of his career, mainly for Bluebird. Before Bluebird moved to Chicago, where it eventually became part of RCA Records, many early sessions took place at the Leland Tower, a hotel in Aurora, Illinois. The top-floor nightclub at the Leland, known as the Sky Club, was used for live broadcasts of big bands on a local radio station and, during off hours, served as a recording studio for Williamson's early sessions and those of other Bluebird artists.

Death and legacy

Williamson's final recording session took place in Chicago in December 1947, in which he accompanied Big Joe Williams. On June 1, 1948, Williamson was killed in a robbery on Chicago's South Side as he walked home from a performance at the Plantation Club, at 31st St. and Giles Avenue, a tavern just a block and a half from his home, at 3226 S. Giles. Williamson's final words are reported to have been "Lord have mercy"

Williamson is buried at the former site of the Blairs Chapel Church, southwest of Jackson, Tennessee. In 1991, a red granite marker was purchased by fans and family to mark the site of his burial. A Tennessee historical marker, also placed in 1991, indicates the place of his birth and describes his influence on blues music. The historical marker is located south of Jackson on Tennessee State Highway 18, at the corner of Caldwell Road.

Name issues

His legacy has been somewhat overshadowed in the postwar blues era by the popularity of the musician who appropriated his name, Rice Miller, who after Williamson's death went on to record many popular blues songs for Chicago's Checker Records and others and toured Europe several times during the blues revival in the 1960s.[citation needed] The recordings made by Williamson between 1937 and his death in 1948 and those made later by Rice Miller were all originally issued under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. It is believed that Miller adopted the name to deceive audiences (and his first record label) into thinking that he was the "original" Sonny Boy. In order to differentiate between the two musicians, many later scholars and biographers have referred to John Lee Williamson (1914–1948) as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Miller (c. 1912–1965) as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

To add to the confusion, around 1940 the jazz pianist and singer Enoch Williams recorded for Decca under the name Sonny Boy Williams and in 1947 as Sunny Boy in the Sunny Boy Trio.

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Good Morning, School Girl

Sonny Boy Williamson I recorded "Good Morning, School Girl" in 1937 during his first recording session for Bluebird Records The song is an uptempo blues with an irregular number of bars. Although identified with Chicago blues, a write-up in the Blues Hall of Fame notes "it was a product of Sonny Boy’s west Tennessee roots and his pre-Chicago ensemble work".The melody has been traced to “Back and Side Blues”, a 1934 blues song recorded by Son Bonds. "Good Morning, School Girl" features Williamson's vocal and harmonica with accompaniment by Big Joe Williams and Robert Lee McCoy (also known as Robert Nighthawk) on guitars.

Blues renditions

In October 1948, Leroy Dallas recorded a version of the song, titled "Good Morning Blues".Texas bluesman Smokey Hogg recorded his version, calling it "Little School Girl". In 1950, the song reached number five on the Billboard R&B chart. Memphis one-man-band Joe Hill Louis recorded an electric version titled "Good Morning Little Angel" in February or March 1953. 

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, several versions of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" were recorded as acoustic country-style blues, including versions by John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, and Doctor Ross. In 1965, Junior Wells with Buddy Guy recorded it as a Chicago blues, with a distinctive guitar and bass line, for their influential Hoodoo Man Blues album. McDowell included a 1971 performance on Live in New York and in 1978, Muddy Waters recorded an updated rendition for I'm Ready.

Rock and R&B adaptations

Larry Williams version

Early rock and roll singer and pianist Larry Williams recorded "Little School Girl" on January 6, 1958 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California.Although it uses some of Williamson's lyrics and melody, music writer Gene Sculatti notes the more dance-inspired version.[8] Specialty Records released the song as the B-side to "Ting-A-Ling", with the writer credit listed as "L. Williams".

Songwriter(s) Don Level, Bob Love

In 1961, Don Level and Bob Love, as the rhythm and blues duo "Don and Bob", recorded a different version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" for Argo Records, a Chess subsidiary.[9] Although they use the phrase "good morning little schoolgirl", the song has different chord changes and lyrics, including references to popular dance styles of the time.

When the Yardbirds were looking for a song to follow up to their first single, "I Wish You Would", they chose the Don and Bob tune. The group's guitarist Eric Clapton explained in an early interview:

[The Yardbirds were] working about every single night of the week. Trouble was finding new material for a disc. We remembered this 'Good Morning Little School Girl' from a rather obscure R and B artiste—a friend of ours had it on a long-player. So we rushed in and recorded it.

The single was released on October 20, 1964, in the UK, where it reached number 49 in the singles chart. Epic Records, the Yardbirds' American label, did not issue the single in the US, but in 1965 included the song on their first American album, For Your Love. Later, in his autobiography, Clapton described the early recordings:

[They] sounded pretty lame. We just sounded young and white, and even though our second single, a cover of a rock version of 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl', sounded much better, I felt just that we were falling short of the mark in some way. This was not something I felt just about the Yardbirds, but about other bands that I admired, like Manfred Mann, the Moody Blues, and the Animals, all of whom were far better live than they were on recordings.[13]

The group recorded a live version at the Marquee Club in London, which was released on the British debut album, Five Live Yardbirds, in December 1964.[11] On the live version, Clapton and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith provided the vocals instead of lead singer Keith Relf.[14] The Yardbirds single version was credited to "Demarais" or "H.G. Demarais" (Dee Marais, a Shreveport, Louisiana, record label owner/distributor and business associate of Leonard Chess), although some later reissues list Sonny Boy Williamson as the songwriter.[15] Album credits for live version are either listed as Demarais or "Level–Love".[16]

Recognition and legacy

In 1990, Sonny Boy Williamson I's "Good Morning, School Girl" was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classics of Blues Recordings – Single or Album Track" category. Numerous artists have recorded or performed the song through the years, such as: Paul Butterfield (1964), Rod Stewart (1964), Junior Wells (1965), Chuck Berry (1967), Grateful Dead (1967), Taj Mahal (1969), Ten Years After (1969), Johnny Winter (1969), Van Morrison (1993), Paul Rodgers with Jeff Beck (1993), Huey Lewis and the News (1994), Jonny Lang (1997), the Derek Trucks Band (1998), Devil In A Woodpile (1998), Gov't Mule (2012), and Widespread Panic (2012). Motörhead (live only). The Allman Brothers Band played it in the first set of their final concert at the Beacon Theater in New York on October 28, 2014.