Sonny Boy Williamson II

Alex Ford Miller (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.

Alex Miller was born on the Sara Jones Plantation near Glendora, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The date and year of his birth are a matter of some uncertainty. Miller claimed to have been born on December 5, 1899, but at least one researcher, David Evans, claims to have found census record evidence that he was born around 1912.

Miller lived and worked with his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, and mother, Millie Ford, until the early 1930s. Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas and encountered Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood Jr., also known as Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his later Chess Records sides. He was also associated with Robert Johnson during this period.

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 1930s. He captivated audiences with tricks such as holding his harmonica between 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 player and singer John Lee Williamson (see Sonny Boy Williamson I). Alex Miller claimed to have been the first to use the name, and some blues scholars believe that Miller's assertion he was born in 1899 was a ruse to convince audiences he was old enough to have used the name before John Lee Williamson, who was born in 1914. Whatever the true origins of the name, Miller became "Sonny Boy Williamson," and Lockwood and the rest of his band were the King Biscuit Boys. His growing renown took him places such as 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, near Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1977.

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

In the 1940s Williamson married Mattie Gordon, 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. His use of space, his timing, and his tone make him one of the greatest blues-harp players.

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", "Help Me", "Your Funeral and My Trial", and the infamous "Little Village", with its R-rated dialogue with Leonard Chess.de:Sonny Boy Williamson II.