Born January 27, 1918, in Richland,
Mississippi, Elmore James was raised on several different farms in the
Durant, Mississippi, area by sharecropping parents. Before acquiring his
first guitar, he played several different homemade instruments, including
a strand of broomwire nailed to the front porch of his cabin. This was
known locally as a "diddley bow." In 1932, at the age of fourteen, Elmore
James, also known as Joe Willie, began playing guitar for parties and dances
in the Durant area.
By 1937 James had moved on to plantations
near the Delta town of Belzoni, Mississippi, and taken up with musicians
Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Johnson. Johnson's guitar prowess made
a terrific impact on James, who would echo Johnson's slide technique in
his own recordings. After Johnson's death, James toured the South with
Williamson working juke joints and theaters. He assembled a band in 1939
after parting ways with Williamson. During the late 1930s or early 1940s
James began playing electric guitar. He became a master of using the distortion
and sustain of this instrument to create a dense, textured sound that provided
the blueprint for postwar Chicago blues.
James was inducted into the Navy in 1943,
taking part in the invasion of Guam before being mustered out in 1945.
He was soon back home in Belzoni, sharing a room with Sonny Boy Williamson
and working the local jukes. James also began a professional partnership
with his guitar-playing cousin "Homesick" James Williamson, working clubs
on Beale Street in Memphis. In 1947, James backed up Sonny Boy on KFFA
radio's King Biscuit Time program in Helena, Arkansas. The show was initially
broadcast from the Interstate Grocery Building before it moved to the Floyd
Truck Lines Building. During his stint on KFFA, James fell under the spell
of Robert Nighthawk, refining his style to reflect Nighthawk's liquid,
crying slide guitar.
While working clubs with Williamson in
Jackson, Mississippi, James made his first record for Lillian McMurry's
Trumpet Label. On August 5, 1951, at the Trumpet Studios, James cut the
Robert Johnson chestnut "Dust My Broom" which reached number nine on the
national R&B charts within several months of its release. James established
residency in Chicago the following year, forming his legendary band the
Broomdusters. While never attaining the fame of fellow Mississippi expatriates
Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, James became one of the city's most influential
guitarists. He recorded for a variety of labels throughout the 1950s and
early 1960s, leaving a legacy of slow blues, boogies, and full-fledged
rave ups that dominate the musical vocabulary of Chicago blues.
Elmore James died May 24, 1963, in Chicago,
Illinois, at the age of forty-five. Elmore James's grave is located near
his native Durant, Mississippi.
By
Sean Styles
