With a jaunty bowler hat, a raffish grin and an endless amount of tall stories,
harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson was one of the great characters
re-discovered by the folk and blues boom of the 1960s. Born Alex Miller on a
plantation in rural Mississippi, he taught himself mouth harp and took to the
road after his father died in 1932, playing with the likes of Elmore James,
Robert Johnson and Big Joe Williams under the names Rice Miller and Little Boy
Blue. Hired to play on the King Biscuit Time radio show in Arkansas in 1941,
producers changed his name to Sonny Boy Williamso...