Sonny Boy Williamson II

HELP ME - UK Pye International RnB Label
Bye Bye Birdie

I can remember hearing Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson for the very first time as I was descending the stairs down in the cellar of Manchester's Twisted Wheel Club in September 1963. For the first time, a moment of dark, dank pleasure mixed with that fantastic staccato beat :

you gotta help me babe
I can't do it all by myself
you gotta help me baby
I can't do it all by myself
you know if you don't help me darlin
I'll have to do it all by myself

This was followed by one of the most haunting harmonica solos ever played. It was a track that still got played sometimes at the Wheel even as late as 1969 and certainly more often at the Blue Note.


Picture taken from TV set, during Robert Palmer programme who found old archive material from Granada TV


Sonny Boy Williamson was the second 'Sonny Boy' but he was old enough to have played with Robert Johnson - or was he? It was a great moment for me when I bought him a cup of coffee in the Twisted Wheel on Christmas Eve 1964 after he finished his set. He had the bowler hat and the Black and white Chequered suit (Chequer Records bought it for him, he told me). He showed me his smallest harmonica in the world, which he had just played in his nose but I didn't take it from him for a close look! I remember a girl near the stage saying 'he's a dirty old man - playing his harmonica up his nose' - not to everyone's taste, then.