Sonny Boy Williamson - King Biscuit Time
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CD Details
Artist: Sonny Boy WilliamsonEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1993-11-30
Music Label: Arhoolie Records
Product features:
- King Biscuit Time Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) | Format: Audio CD
- Do It If You Wanna
- Cool, Cool Blues
- Come On Back Home
- Stop Crying
- Eyesight To The Blind
- West Memphis Blues
- I Cross My Heart
- Crazy About You Baby
- Nine Below Zero
- Mighty Long Time
- She Brought LIfe Back To The Dead
- Stop Now Baby
- Mr. Downchild
- Sonny Boy's Christmas Blues
- Pontiac Blues
- Too Close Together
- Radio Program a)V-8 Ford; b) Stormy Monday; c)Right Now; d) Come Go With Me
- Dust My Broom - Elmore James
Music reviews of King Biscuit Time
Music Review: Seminal!
Rating: 5 Stars
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", "Nine Below Zero", "Too Close Together", and the classic "Eyesight To The Blind". And since Miller was already in his early 50s at the time and had established a style of his own many years before, these performances are every bit as impressive as his later Chess sides.
Miller is backed by drums, piano, bass and electric guitar, and slide guitar legend Elmore James is credited as one of the guitarists on several tracks, alongside pianist Willie Love and the "eternal sideman", Joe Willie Wilkins. Wilkins taught B.B. King guitar in the 40s, and recorded with Little Walter, Big Walter Horton, Elmore James, Roosevelt Sykes and several others.
The fidelity here doesn't match Miller's Chess sides, but there is so much power and grit in these sixty year old recordings that it really doesn't matter all that much.
This CD reissue also includes Elmore James' first single, the famous rendition of Robert Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", which features Rice Miller on harp, as well as a thirteen-minute KFFA broadcast from 1965, the year Rice Miller died. That one includes his versions on "V-8 Ford", "Right Now", "Come Go With Me", and T-Bone Walker's "They Call It Stormy Monday".
"King Biscuit Time" is a tremendous collection of Sonny Boy in his prime, and a must-have for any and all fans of blues harmonica.
4 1/2 stars - highly recommended.
Description of King Biscuit Time
King Biscuit Time Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) | Format: Audio CDBlues CDs
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