Sonny Boy.
Another harp player, arguably the greatest of them all (some would vote for Little Walter, but not many people would argue that anyone else belongs in the same discussion).
After Junior, it is appropriate on a lot of levels to give it up for Sonny; you could not find two more opposite approaches and personalities: Junior glowered and stalked the stage (and inside the wax of those recordings, like he was going to reach out and touch someone at any second). Sonny was deliberate, mysterious and has a fragility both in his vocal delivery and his stage presence (he looked ancient by the time he was in his prime) and he was one of the original blues oracles — a figure that truly came from another time and place and was bringing hard-won wisdom to anyone with ears to hear it. If Junior dripped intensity, Sonny Boy saved it for his harmonica: even in his later years, body ravaged by abuse (self-induced and the sorts the world is always eager to inflict) and looking like an icicle inside a black suit, he still wailed.
I am most definitely not one of those suckers who whines (or even believes) that everything, or even most things, were better back in the day. But let’s not kid ourselves: there is no harm or shame in acknowledging that for a variety of reasons, we are not capable of producing human beings like this these days. That’s mostly a good thing for all involved, because we would not want to wish the hardship and darkness so many of these geniuses suffered (for their art; for their lives) in order to think, sound and feel like this. We are, arguably, a better class of person across the board, but as our lives improve, certain aspects of our art inevitably suffer. Fortunately for us, we don’t need to relive those times to recreate these sounds: they are all there, preserved and indelible inside the black grooves.
“Help Me” (Listen to that voice; listen to that harmonica (listen to the impossibly smooth brushwork on the snare): some people write symphonies, some write novels, not many can do both in under four minutes):
“Fattening Frogs For Snakes” (Same message as before: this is poetry disguised as a treatise from the mind of a man who had learned many (too many for his liking) lessons the hard way, and for our sake he turned it into something ecstatic; it’s the miracle of our best art reduced to its most simple terms):
“Bring It On Home” (They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery; in that case outright thievery is the most earnest. Listen below, you may have heard this one before) :
“Eyesight To The Blind” (The Who, on the other hand, were self-respecting enough to credit their sources, and their use of this one for Tommy is inspired and appropriately worshipful):
“Keep It To Yourself” (Let’s have a look at the old soldier as he strolled down the home-stretch, still cooler than all the young pups clinging sloppily to his coat-tails):
