Sleepy John Estes (read more)
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John Adam Estes (25 January 1904 - 5 June 1977), commonly known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a U.S. blues guitarist and vocalist born in Ripley, Tennessee.
In 1915, Estes’s father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes was hit in the right eye by a stone, and his sight was never good after that. After working as a field hand in his teens, he began to perform professionally by 1919, mostly at local parties and picnics, often in the company of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James “Yank” Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. He would continue to work with both musicians, off and on, for more than fifty years.
Estes made his debut as a recording artist for in Memphis in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records. He later recorded for the Decca and Bluebird labels, with his last pre-war recording session taking place in 1941. He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording “Runnin’ Around” and “Rats in My Kitchen,” but otherwise was largely out of the public eye for two decades.
Though only modestly skilled as a guitarist (he was frequently teamed with more capable musicians, like Rachell, Nixon, and the piano player Jab Jones), Estes was a fine singer, with a distinctive “crying” vocal style. He sounded so much like an old man, even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead, and because fellow musician Big Bill Broonzy had written that Estes had died. By the time he was tracked down, by Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he had become completely blind and was living in abject poverty. (read more)
In 1915, Estes’s father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes was hit in the right eye by a stone, and his sight was never good after that. After working as a field hand in his teens, he began to perform professionally by 1919, mostly at local parties and picnics, often in the company of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James “Yank” Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. He would continue to work with both musicians, off and on, for more than fifty years.
Estes made his debut as a recording artist for in Memphis in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records. He later recorded for the Decca and Bluebird labels, with his last pre-war recording session taking place in 1941. He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording “Runnin’ Around” and “Rats in My Kitchen,” but otherwise was largely out of the public eye for two decades.
Though only modestly skilled as a guitarist (he was frequently teamed with more capable musicians, like Rachell, Nixon, and the piano player Jab Jones), Estes was a fine singer, with a distinctive “crying” vocal style. He sounded so much like an old man, even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead, and because fellow musician Big Bill Broonzy had written that Estes had died. By the time he was tracked down, by Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he had become completely blind and was living in abject poverty. (read more)
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