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Biography
Charles Feathers, (June 12, 1932 – August 29, 1998), was an influential rockabilly and country music performer.

Biography
Malcolm Yelvington (b. Sept. 14, 1918, Covington, Tennessee – d. Feb. 21, 2001, Memphis, Tennessee) was an American country musician. He released a record on Sun Records in 1954, just after Elvis Presley.

Biography
Albert Austin “Sonny” Burgess (born May 28, 1931, on a farm near Newport, Arkansas to Albert and Esta Burgess) is a guitarist and singer of classic rockabilly music.

Biography
Howlin’ Wolf quickly became a local celebrity, and soon began working with a band that included both Willie Johnson and guitarist Pat Hare. His first recordings came in 1951, when he recorded sessions for both the Bihari brothers at Modern Records and Leonard Chess‘ Chess Records. Chess issued Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years in August 1951; Wolf also recorded sides for Modern, with Ike Turner, in late 1951 and early 1952. Chess eventually won the war over the singer, and Wolf settled in Chicago, Illinois c. 1953. Upon arriving in Chicago, he assembled a new band, recruiting Chicagoan Joseph Leon “Jody” Williams from Memphis Slim’s band as his first guitarist. Within a year Wolf enticed guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin’s terse, curlicued solos perfectly complemented Burnett’s huge voice and surprisingly subtle phrasing. Although the line up of Wolf’s band would change regularly over the years, employing many different guitarists both on recordings and in live performance including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers, his brother Abe “Little Smokey” Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie “Abu Talib” Robinson, and Buddy Guy, among others, with the exception of a couple of brief absences in the late ’50s Sumlin remained a member of the band for the rest of Wolf’s career, and is the guitarist most often associated with the Chicago Howlin’ Wolf sound.

Biography
Slim Rhodes and his Mountaineers were a popular act in Memphis going back to the 1930s. So much so, that the Sun Record Company signed them to a recording contract in the 1950s.

Biography
The late Frank Floyd has hard times and raunchy humor to relate on this album, recorded in 1972 after a long period of retirement and released late last year from the Adelphi blues vaults. Floyd recorded his first Chess single of old-time country blues for Sam Phillips in 1951, and with “Swamp Root” had some minor success with Sun Records. As an older performer, and one whose songs harked back to both black minstrelsy and white hillbilly music of the 1920s, Floyd saw his records mistaken for “race music” as Elvis and rock’n’roll took over. Years later, Floyd re-emerged from farm life to play folk heritage festivals, and recorded this in 1972, at age 66. Accompanying himself on harmonica and guitar, and still sounding like he stepped right out of the 1920s — foot tapping, single-note strumming, harmonica wailing — Floyd arranges two of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodels” here, as well as singing some outrageously bawdy songs (“Shampoo,” “Mosquito Bar Britches”). The title track comes from Floyd’s own experiences in late ’20s and ’30s medicine shows — the main entertainment in backroads America at the time. Floyd learned how to please a crowd with jokes and to play harmonica without a rack, the instrument protruding cigar-style from his mouth. Floyd died in 1984, but his performance here effectively captures an era in America’s musical history.

Biography
Cotton became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home to find Williamson in West Helena, Arkansas. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan, and that Williamson Boy took him in and raised him; a story he admitted in recent years is not true. Williamson did however mentor Cotton during his early years. When Williamson left the south to live with his estranged wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he left his band in Cotton’s hands. Cotton was quoted as saying, “He just gave it to me. But I couldn’t hold it together ’cause I was too young and crazy in those days an’ everybody in the band was grown men, so much older than me.”

Biography
Slashing blues, infectious R&B, formulaic rock & roll, moving gospel — keyboardist Billy “The Kid” Emerson played all those interrelated styles during a lengthy career that began in Florida and later transported him up to Memphis and Chicago.

Biography
In a very real sense, Jack Earls typifies everything that is best about the rockabilly music that Sam Phillips recorded. The musicianship on his sole Sun single is limited even by Sun’s modest standards and Earls voice made up in intensity what it lacked in range. However, like all of the best Sun recordings, the whole was worth much more than the sum of the parts. Earls’ raw enthusiasm is contagious. Jack Earls was born in Woodbury, Tennessee on August 23, 1932. His family moved to Nashville and then Manchester, Tennessee. Earls grew up listening to country music and appears to have formed a band soon after he moved in Memphis in 1949 to join his brother Herb. He married in 1950 and always put his family before his career. Indeed, it was probably Earls’ lack of real commitment to touring and promoting his record that dissuaded Phillips from going ahead with a second release. Earls first auditioned for Phillips in 1955 with a group that included four or five guitarists. Phillips was struck with the painful intensity of Earls’ vocals but told him to find another group. Together with Bill Black’s brother, Johnny Black, Earls put together a group that comprised Danny Walquist on drums and Warren Gregory on drums. Black had switched from guitar to bass. It was this aggregation that went back to 706 Union in late 1955 with one of Earls’ instantly memorable songs, “Hey! Jim”. Phillips fell in love with the song and slated it for the top side of Earls’ first single, He had already accepted “A Fool For Lovin’ You” for the countrified flip side.

Biography
As their name suggests, this doo-wop group was formed while each member was in the State Penitentiary, Tennessee, USA. The founding member was lead singer Johnny Bragg (John Henry Bragg, 6 May 1925, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, d. 1 September 2004, Madison, Tennessee, USA), who took on Ed Thurman (b. USA, d. 1973; second tenor), John Drue (b. USA, d. December 1977, Lebanon, Tennessee, USA; first tenor), William Stewart (b. USA, d. 1959; baritone and guitar) and Marcel Sanders (b. USA, d. 1969; bass). The group was paraded around a variety of receptions and civic functions as demonstration of the jail’s enlightened rehabilitation programme, where they played a mix of blues, gospel and pop songs under armed guard. New warden James E. Edwards then arranged for two talent scouts from Sam Phillips’ Sun Records to see the group. They were subsequently driven down to Memphis in June 1953 to record a song written by Bragg and fellow inmate Robert Riley, “Just Walkin’ In The Rain”. The record took hold first on radio and then became a major seller, moving over 250,000 copies, despite a competing version from Johnny Ray that sold eight times that amount. Still, the Prisonaires had arrived, and found themselves in demand for a series of television and concert appearances. They gradually became high-status figures in Tennessee, and never betrayed the trust placed in them by trying to escape their guards on their numerous forays outside the prison. A second single followed in August 1953, the highly spiritual “My God Is Real”, followed by “I Know” and its autobiographical b-side, “A Prisoner’s Prayer”. While recording it they made the acquaintance of Elvis Presley, who later visited them in prison.