<back - ELMORE JAMES - Born January 27, 1918, in Canton, Mississippi, Elmore James was raised on several different farms in the Durant, Mississippi, area by sharecropping parents. Before acquiring his first guitar, he played several different homemade instruments, including a strand of broomwire nailed to the front porch of his cabin. This was known locally as a 'diddley bow'. In 1932, at the age of 14, Elmore James, also known as Joe Willie, began playing guitar for parties and dances in the Durant area. By 1937 James had moved on to plantations near the Delta town of Belzoni, Mississippi, and taken up with musicians Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson.

Johnson’s guitar prowess made a terrific impact on James, who would echo Johnson’s slide technique. After Johnson's death, James toured the South with Williamson working juke joints and theaters. Elmore James assembled a band in 1939 after parting ways with Sonny Boy Williamson. During the late 1930s or early 1940s James began playing electric guitar. He became a master of using the distortion and sustain of this instrument to create a dense, textured sound. James was inducted into the Navy in 1943, taking part in the invasion of Guam in 1945. He was soon back home in Belzoni, sharing a room with Sonny Boy Williamson and working the local jukes. Elmore James also began a professional partnership with his guitar-playing cousin 'Homesick' James Williamson, working clubs on Beale Street in Memphis. In 1947, James backed up Sonny Boy on KFFA radio’s King Biscuit Time program in Helena, Arkansas. The show was initially broadcast from the Interstate Grocery Building before it moved to the Floyd Truck Lines Building. During his stint on KFFA, James fell under the spell of Robert Nighthawk, refining his style to reflect Nighthawk’s liquid, crying slide guitar. While working clubs with Williamson in Jackson, Mississippi, Elmore James made his first record for Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet label. On August 5, 1951, at the Trumpet Studios, he cut Robert Johnson's 'Dust My Broom' which reached #9 on the national R&B charts within several months of its release. Elmore James moved to Chicago the following year, forming his legendary band the Broomdusters. While never attaining the fame of fellow Mississippi expatriates Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James became one of the city’s most influential guitarists. He recorded for a variety of labels throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, leaving a legacy of Chicago Blues. Elmore James died May 24, 1963 at age 45. He was elected to the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and to the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. MP3 - Stormy Monday | Done Somebody Wrong |