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and go up and down the string ‘till I’d get a sound. And so, that gave me the idea of wanting
to play the guitar”. Many Delta blues guitar players started in exactly the same way!

Eventually, around the age of 12, Rogers got a real guitar, so learned to play it whilst also
practising the harmonica. One man who gave him a few pointers on guitar playing was

Arthur Johnson, the uncle of one of Muddy Water’s future band members, Luther ‘Guitar
Junior’ Johnson. He was also heavily influenced by Big Bill Broonzy, and Joe Willie Wilkins,
who played with Sonny Boy Williamson II in the King Biscuit Boys.

Following his stay in Memphis, and later St. Louis, he travelled with his Grandmother to
Chicago, in 1939, for a short while, before returning to Helena, Arkansas. In St. Louis he
had got to know bluesmen Roosevelt Sykes

and Walter Davis. It was in Helena that he
met Wilkins and Williamson, and
occasionally got the opportunity to sit in
with them, gaining some essential
experience. His wanderings are noted in a
song he later wrote, entitled “Chicago

Bound”.

5 years later he returned to Chicago, this
time on his own, settling on the South Side.
He took a succession of jobs, including at a
chicken packing plant, shoe manufacturer,
meat packing company, and construction,

whilst pursuing music in his spare time,
playing both harmonica and guitar - indeed,
hanging around the clubs where John Lee
‘Sonny Boy Williamson I’ was appearing,
from time to time he got the opportunity to
sit in when the blues veteran was too

inebriated to continue!

However, by now he wanted to regard the
guitar as his primary instrument, and had
fitted a DeArmond pickup to his acoustic
guitar, and amplified it through a small
Gibson amplifier, to ensure that he could be heard when playing the street corners, and

Maxwell Street Market, often with guitarists Claude ‘Blue Smitty’ Smith, and John Henry
Barbee, and harmonica player John Wrencher. Occasionally they were offered an unpaid
club date, where the hat was passed round amongst the punters - incidentally, having
visited Beale Street, Memphis, and New Orleans a few years ago, that is still the norm -
excellent bands playing for tips!

He became friendly with blues pianist Albert “Sunnyland Slim” Laundrew, who engaged

him as backup, on guitar and harmonica for his gig at Chicago’s Club 21, where Rogers’
playing impressed a man by the name of Jesse Jones. He worked at the Sonora Radio
Cabinet Company, on Chicago’s West Side, and got Rogers a job there.