I'm co-producing a documentary film and a screen play and co-researching a biography on "Sonny Boy Williamson" (Alex "Rice" Miller 1913-65) with Mojo Visions LLC, based in Seattle, WA.
I'm working on it with various business and research partners, including guitar pick-up manufacturer EMG, noted author Adam Mitchell, award winning investigative journalist Bill Donoghue (also blues historian 'fessor Mojo) and others.
We've interviewed over 150 subjects (list available upon request), many of whom have since passed and acquired over 1,000 items directly related to Miller's life and his essentially important musical legacy.
Adam felt that someone here may be able to steer us to potential sources or resources for our research and productions.
We are very close to completion of the screen play, which we intend to present in the next month, but our work and acquisition of materials for the documentary and biography are ongoing. The biography is also ready to publish, once we decide the time is right for it.
I may have already spoken to you some time ago, but rest assured that we have not been spinning our wheels. I started my involvement in this research in late 2011 and Mr. Donoghue started doing his research in the mid-90's, interviewing Miller's then two surviving siblings.
Researching a story as uniquely important as this one, shrouded in so much mystery and so poorly documented over the course of the subject's life, deserves very thorough attention.
Thanks for reading this and please respond with any comments, referrals or questions to my contact info below.
Best wishes, Jim Basnight BCD Entertainment 20736 NE Puget St. Indianola, WA 98342 (206) 660-2471 jim@jimbasnight.com jimbasnightmusic.com sonnyboy.com Facebook and Twitter
Last Edited by Sonny Boy on May 14, 2015 11:28 AM
A project like this is long overdue! And I personally thank you for doing this. Alex "Rice" Miller was nearly a household name at one point in the 60's in the UK and Europe with the impact he and all the other legends of the American Folk Blues Festivals were having on the youth of Europe in that period!
I'm so excited about this. I have spoken to lots of cat's here in the UK over the years about their experience of seeing the Folk Blues Festivals and seeing Sonny Boy especially. Here is what Judd Lander (Harmonica player on Culture Clubs song karma chameleon)told me about his meeting with Sonny Boy back in the day.
''It was on Sonny Boy Williamson's visits to London via the 1963 festivals and gigs performances at the Cavern Club, that we met up!
It was this period that led to him spending a year in Europe including recording the Sonny Boy Williamson and The Yardbirds album, which was first released on Star-Club Records in 1965), which included "Bye Bye Bird" a song he wrote with Willie Dixon.
In all honesty, my encounters where rather brief (but very helpful). In the 60's my band The Hideaways where the resident band at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and we where always playing on the same bill as Sonny Boy. I would pester him backstage every time he visited, I soon came to realise his love of Scottish Whiskey … and use this as a way to bribe him.
In conversation, he would tell me off at my feeble attempt of harmonica playing, and explained how to open the throat and how to use vibrato too embellish a sustained note and how to crack a phrase ending – this technique I would use in my harmonica contribution on the Karma Chameleon .
Also Sonny Boys unique ability to hit certain notes, was partly down to the harmonica he used he said!
As stated, due to Sonny Boys love of Whisky and the distraction of all the young girls that frequented the Cavern, my impromptu lessons amounted to minutes rather than hours, on the various occasions we met – And when he got bored with all of my pestering, he would give me a cheeky little wink doff his bowler then disappear!''
You can find the above entire gig at;
http://tela.sugarmegs.org/alpha/a.html
Once again, I really look forward to your projects coming to fruition!
Last Edited by marine1896 on May 14, 2015 12:29 PM
Thanks for the Judd Lander "Sonny Boy" story. Please email it to me, along with more info on you and Mr. Lander to jim@jimbasnight.com so I can best archive it. Really appreciate the encouragement.
shbamac ; scroll down to American folk blues festival there are three concerts 1963, 64 and 80. The Sonny Boy one is poor sound, but it exists and really for hardcore collectors and completest's like me, but it's still good stuff. Actually I have a slightly cleaned up version but not much better.
