John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson

John Lee Williamson was the original Sonny Boy, a name another harmonica player later borrowed. As a teenager he played with Yank Rachell and Sleepy John Estes in Tennessee and Arkansas, moved to Chicago in 1934, and cut his first record for Bluebird in 1937. Muddy Waters played guitar with him in the mid-1940s. Aleck Rice Miller began using the name in the early 1940s, which is why scholars now number them I and II. Williamson was killed in an apparent robbery walking home from a Chicago club on June 1, 1948, and his killer was never traced.

What the plaque says

John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson "Sonny Boy" Williamson (1914 - 1948), the music innovator responsible for the acceptance of the harmonica as an authentic blues tool, is buried in old Blair's Chapel CME Cemetery, 5 miles southwest. The most influential blues harmonica player of his day, he made a powerful contribution to American music and is recognized as a master of the blues genre. In his mouth and hands, the harmonica learned to wail and chirp, laugh and cry, in spanking new rhythms and to daring new beats.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park — 8.5 mi
  The largest group of Middle Woodland mounds in the United States, about two thousand years old, with the second tallest mound in the country, a museum and paved trails.
• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 24 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• Historic Bemis — 2.0 mi
• Mabel Louise "Big Maybelle" Smith — 4.3 mi
• Mother Liberty CME Church — 4.4 mi
• Monroe Dunaway Anderson / Anderson, Clayton & Company — 4.6 mi