Music : King Biscuit Time
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0096297031025
Label: Arhoolie Records
Manufacturer: Arhoolie Records
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Arhoolie Records
Release Date: November 30, 1993
Sales Rank: 38867
Studio: Arhoolie Records
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If you like really great Blues Harmonica, this is an excellent choice. This CD has a good selection of tempos and feeling, but it's definitely all Blues. If you've never heard SBW II, he is quite different than SBW I (no relation), and I prefer his style of early Blues. It's not exactly delta blues, although I think that's what many might classify it as: SBW II seems to have a broader appeal.
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Aleck "Rice" Miller, Sonny Boy Williamson II, was around long enough to have played with Robert Johnson at one end of his career, and with Eric Clapton at the other. He was born at the tail end of the 19th century in Glendora, Mississippi, he taught the basics of blues harmonica to a young Howlin' Wolf, and he was present the night Robert Johnson was poisoned.
And even though he took his moniker from the younger Tennessee bluesman John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Miller's style was nothing like Williamson's.
In fact, no-one really sounded like Rice Miller. His raspy vocal delivery was sly, world-weary, and delightfully evil, and his inimitable harp-playing relied on short, rhythmic bursts one minute and powerful, passionate blowing the next. The liner notes to a 1960s LP of his stated with disturbing seriousness that only a man who had long since sold his soul to the devil in exchange for not having to breathe while performing could sing and play the way Miller did.
And Rice Miller was perhaps the best songwriter the blues has ever seen, displaying an attention to detail which is rare in the blues. His songs were full of mordant wit, with largely autobiographical lyrics that truly hold up to the scrutiny of the printed page.
This CD collects most of Miller's earliest recordings, his magnificent 1951 Trumpet sides. The raw original versions of several songs that whe would later record for Chess are here, including "Cross My Heart", ... Read More
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Sonny Boy somehow gets swept into a corner because he only had a few records that were "hits" in the 1950s, "Don't Start Me To Talkin'" and "Mighty Long Time," his masterpiece on this CD. However, when he died, artists including The Moody Blues, Jack Bruce, Jimmy Reed, Paul Jones of Manfred Mann, John Maysll, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and others recorded tributes to him. He recorded with the Animals and Yardbirds, Jimmy Page, jazzmen Chris Barber and Roland Kirk and others. The real story is that Sonny Boy II (not the same Sonny Boy Williamson who recorded "Good Morning Little School Girl"} was Alex Miller, a blues harp player, songwriter and singer who had been playing in the Mississippi delta since the late 1920s with people like Robert Johnson and Robert Lockwood Jr., Joe Willie Wilkins, Pinetop Perkins, Ike Turner and others. He was THE star of the Delta, so popular he didn't need to record until 1950 when he started to record these sides with Jackosn Mississippi's Trumpet Records. He was an escaped convict who became an international blues star using another man's name (John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson among others) and another's as his alias (his brother Willie Miller). He was truly hiding in the spotlight.
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For hearing the man born as Alec (Rice) Miller as he had rounded into near-complete game shape, in the years immediately preceding the seminal sides he would cut for Chess beginning in the mid-to-late 1950s, there is no better package than this of Sonny Boy Williamson's incandescent, embryonic recordings for the ancient Trumpet label. Many of these songs would get the Sonny Boy makeover when he re-cut them during his Chess years, and it's intriguing to compare between the Trumpet originals and the Chess refineries of such signature songs as "Eyesight To The Blind," "Cross My Heart," "Nine Below Zero," "Mr. Down Child," and "Mighty Long Time." Then again, the tandem treat is to hear a good enough dollop of some of Sonny Boy's more personal material, particularly the slightly haunting "West Memphis Blues," which he wrote about the fire that actually burned down the house he had bought with his wife.
Then, there are the bonuses: one of the last broadcasts of the legendary "King Biscuit Time" on which Sonny Boy would appear before his death; and perhaps the earliest known version Elmore James would cut of his signature "Dust My Broom," this one with Sonny Boy (who was long reputed to have tricked him into cutting it for Trumpet) sliding in with some fills showing he was a deft an accompanist/partner as he was a harmonica virtuoso. Accompanying the cantankerously poetic Sonny Boy, mostly, are such legends of Memphis/Helena blues as guitarist Joe Willie Wilkins (Robert Jr. ... Read More
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Rice Miller was a man of many faces, tones, and zip codes. THis disc packs some of the fiercest, most downhome sounds that Mississippi had to offer. Includes a radio broadcast from the KING BICUIT FLOWER HOUR and definitve versions of such tunes as "She Brought Life Back To The Dead," "Cool Blues," and "Eyesight To The Blind." As well, "Mighty Long Time" is a marvel. Wonderful harp with Willie Love on piano, and Elmore James on guitar for most tracks. Some of the best Sonny Boy available in the States.
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