Here's a record I bought in the 1950's when going through my 'duffel coat, roll-neck sweater, corduroy trousers and sandals' phase. (A real "mouldy fig", as the sharp suited 'modern' jazz fans called us 'trad' fans.)応援ポチっ頼んます。だあけみ
It is one of the recordings sponsored by "The Jazz Appreciation Society" and features Sleepy John in typical form and accompanied by Hammie Nixon on harmonica.
Born John Adam Estes, to a sharecropper family in Ripley Tennessee on the 25th. Jan. 1904, his life was complicated from the start. One of a family of ten, at the age of six he lost his right eye in a baseball accident. As his father was a guitarist, he grew up with similar interests and made himself cigar-box guitars to play from the early days.
He went totally blind in 1950, and had gained the sobriquet "sleepy" from a chronic blood pressure disorder which led to fits of narcolepsy, which caused him to drop off to sleep without warning, sometimes standing up!
He was "rediscovered" during the blues revival in 1962, after a long and varied career through the 1920's and 30's.
He died on the 5th. June 1977
PR
