Willie brown musician biography example

Willie Lee Brown (1899 or August 6, 1900 – December 30, 1952) was an American bluesguitar player and vocalist. He performed and recorded with other blues musicians, including Son House and Charlie Patton, and influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Brown is considered one of the pioneering musicians of the Delta blues genre.

Brown worked as a side player, performing mostly with House, Patton, and Johnson. He recorded six sides for Paramount Records in Grafton, Wisconsin in 1930, which were subsequently released on 78-rpm discs. He made three recordings for the Library of Congress in 1941, accompanied by House. In 1952, Brown briefly joined House in Rochester, New York, but soon returned to Tunica, Mississippi, where he died the same year.

Although normally an accompanist, Brown recorded three highly rated solo performances: "M & O Blues", "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" and "Future Blues". He disappeared from the music scene during the 1940s, together with House, and died before the blues revival of the 1960s.

In Blues & Rhythm May 2022 the respected Blues researcher Bob Eagle makes a very strong case for another Willie Brown being the Future Blues artist.

Life and career

He learned to play the guitar as a teenager. He played with such notables as Charley Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson. He was not a self-promoting frontman, preferring to "second" other musicians. Little is known for certain about the man whom Johnson called "my friend Willie Brown" (in his "Cross Road Blues") and whom Johnson once indicated should be notified in event of

there's more than one Willie Brown: (August 6, 1900 - December 30, 1952) was an American Delta Blues guitarist and singer.

Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he played with such notables as Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson. He was not known to be a self-promoting frontman, preferring to "second" (accompany) other musicians. Little is known of the man whom Robert Johnson called "my friend boy Willie Brown" (in his prophetic "Cross Road Blues") and who Johnson indicated should be notified in event of his death. Brown is heard with Patton on the Paramount label sessions of 1930, playing "M & O Blues," and "Future Blues." Apart from playing with Son House and Charlie Patton it has also been said that played with artists such as Luke Thomson and Thomas "Clubfoot" Coles. At least four other songs he recorded for Paramount have never been found.
"Rowdy Blues", a 1929 song credited to Kid Bailey, is disputed to have Brown on backup, or Brown himself using the name of Kid Bailey. Willie Brown does his song "Future Blues" on the album Son House & The Great Delta Blues Singers (1994), recorded between 1928 and 1930, on the Document (USA) label.

The WPA (Works Progress Administration) directed John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax to record artists in the south during the Great Depression for the Library of Congress. Willie Brown can be heard on a field recording done by Alan Lomax for the Archive of American Folksong by the Library of Congress in 1941, "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor," though, as before, there is some question in the community of scholars as to whether this was the same Willie Brown.
He died in Tunica, Mississippi at the age of 52.
Willie Brown was featured as the central character in the movie Crossroads (1986).

the other is/was a Scottish hammered dulcimer player. found on raretunes & internet archive. From Rutherglen. Younger brother of Fra

We worry about the scarcity of character in our politicians, so much so that we deem it an “issue.” But what about the equally unpardonable shortage of characters in America’s elective life?

Where are those who enliven the halls of government? Those who turn our heads? Those who aren’t shocked into obsequiousness by the latest tremor of public opinion and instantaneous accounting? Not the ideologues or demagogues, but the stylists with some voltage in them? Well, you say, there still is Willie Brown.

And thank heavens.

By any measure, Willie L. Brown Jr. is an extraordinary and consequential politician. And in the sterile landscapes at the end of our century, he’s unique. By that is meant, he is uniquely interesting.

So a biography of Brown, while timely, bears a special burden, as I see it. Can a writer dig out truths good and bad about such a grand character, probe and correct the myths, without destroying the mythology? Or, put another way, can Brown be drawn into perspective without cutting him down to size?

Yes, and James Richardson does it well: At a ripe moment, a craftsman conveys the artist, or certainly the public face of him.

This is the first book-length undertaking about Brown and arrives exactly as the worn-thin image of California’s most demonized politician has been freshly recharged. Instead of presiding as the speaker of a state Assembly in decline, Brown now presides as mayor of a rebounding and exuberant San Francisco.

And don’t forget the dripping irony of this: Republicans made the case for term limits to drive out power brokers like Brown, with the result of securing at least this one’s revival. The longest-serving speaker in state history, Brown didn’t want to leave the California Legislature; he was made to.

Richardson is a staff writer for the Sacramento Bee and he allows only once, at the very conclusion of