Sonny Boy Williamson II

Alec Miller (bet. 1897 and 1899-May 25,1965) a.k.a. Sonny Boy Williamson II, Rice Miller, Willie Williams, Willie Miller, "Little Boy Blue", "The Goat" and "Footsie," was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter.

Sonny Boy Williamson was born near Glendora, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi between 1897 and 1909, on either April 7, Dec. 5, or March 11, 1908, according to a headstone erected on his unmarked grave near Tutweiler, Mississippi twelve years after he died.

Williamson lived and worked with his sharecropper step-father and mother, Jim Miller and Millie Ford, until he was 30. Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas, and he encountered Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Joe Williams, Elmore James, and Robert "Junior" Lockwood (his guitarist on his later Chess Records sides).

He was also associated with Robert Johnson, who died in 1938 as a result of drinking poisoned liquor at a show the two were playing. A first bottle was given to Johnson, but slapped from his hand by Williamson, who warned him about bottles with broken seals. The second bottle, which probably contained arsenic, was defiantly guzzled by Johnson.

Wiliamson developed his style and raffish stage persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Sonny Boy, with an amplified harmonica, in Greenville, Mississippi in the '30s. He captivated audiences with tricks such as holding his harmonica beween his top lip and nose and playing with no hands.

Williamson lived in Twist, Arkansas for a time with Howlin' Wolf's sister Mary Burnett, and taught Wolf to play harmonica. (Later, for Chess, Williamson did a parody of Howlin' Wolf entitled "Like Wolf.") In 1941 Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show on radio station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas with Lockwood.

The owner, Max Moore, billed him as Sonny Boy Williamson, apparently after the Jackson, Tennessee harmonica legend John Lee Williamson (see Sonny Boy Williamson). Some scholars maintain that Miller was the first to use the name, and most critics regard Miller as the greater of the two performers. Whatever the true origins of the name are, Miller became "Sonny Boy Williamson", and Lockwood and the rest of his band were the King Biscuit Boys. His growing renown took him places like West Memphis, Arkansas, where he did a KWEM radio show selling the elixir Hadacol.

Williamson's First Recording was in 1951 for Lillian McMurray of Jackson, Mississippi's Trumpet Records. McMurray later erected Williamson's headstone in 1977.

When Trumpet went bankrupt in 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, who sold him to Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Williamson recorded about 70 songs for Chess Records from 1955 to 1964. In the 1960s he toured Europe in the wake of the British blues craze, recording with The Yardbirds and The Animals.

Williamson married Mattie Gordon in the 1940s, who remained his wife until his death on May 25, 1965 (or June 23, 1965, according to the headstone) in Helena, Arkansas. Williamson was characterized by a hip-flask of whiskey, a pistol, a knife, a foul mouth, and a short temper. He had always worn fancier suits than he could afford, and his tour of Europe allowed him further embellishment, adding a finely tailored black suit and a bowler hat to his unique, grey-goateed image. Rice Miller was, however, notable as one of the finest and most atypical of blues songwriters, and his laconic harmonica style and sly vocals mark him as a true artist.

Some of his hits include "Fattenin' Frogs for Snakes," "Don't Start Me To Talkin'," Keep It To Yourself," "Bye Bye Bird," "Nine Below Zero," and the infamous "Little Village," with its R-rated dialogue with Leonard Chess.