BILLY BOY ARNOLD

Billy Boy Arnold's career spans no fewer than three historical blues epochs. Mentored as a teenager in 1948 by harmonica master John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, who'd helped define the mid-20th-century Chicago style, Arnold began playing professionally just as Muddy Waters and his contemporaries kicked off the postwar blues insurgency. Then, in 1955, he participated in what was, for all intents and purposes, the birth of rock 'n' roll—in fact, he's often credited with coining one of rock's most iconic stage names. Born in Chicago in 1935, William Arnold grew up idolizing Williamson and other midcentury bluesmen, many of them associated with Chicago label Bluebird. They were developing an urbanized update of the sparse acoustic blues still prevalent in the south—and Williamson, who'd revolutionized the blues harmonica by transforming it into a lead instrument roughly analogous to the saxophone in jazz, was one of the luminaries of this new read more...