Page 28 - BiTS_05_MAY_2025

the music business. By this time he was also playing some piano, and was soon asked
to join The Dixie Rhythm Boys, as vocalist and pianist. None of the other band

members sung, so that was his main job in the band. Bandleader Willie Hurd was a
good gig hustler, who kept them working, helping to get Eddie known as a good
musician, which also gave him the opportunity to obtain solo gigs, both as a guitarist
and pianist, but increasingly as the latter.

There was plenty of work around, including on Beale Street, but few opportunities to
record, which is what Eddie really wanted to do. By the late 1930s he knew that many
musicians were heading north, and decided that he would try his luck there as well -

“I had got a little confidence in myself as a musician. I heard that the market was open
in Chicago and that it wasn’t so racist up there”.

However, he didn’t initially make Chicago
his home, spending around 18 months

Johnny Shines living and working around Caruthersville,
South Missouri, then later Catron, in the
midst of the Cotton Belt, and 3 months
back in Memphis, before taking the
Greyhound Bus north again. This time he

moved in with his uncle, on the West Side,
for about 3 months, before moving to the
South Side with Memphis Slim, whom he

had known in Memphis, in order to work
at Slim’s club.

Singer/guitarist Johnny Shines had a

regular gig at Jerry’s Cozy Corner, on
Maxwell and Morgan, so Eddie hooked up
with him for a while, before beginning a

working relationship with John Lee
Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson 1),
both as a duo and with a small band. They

worked together until Williamson died in
1948. However, Eddie took as many solo
dates as possible, serving his own
advancing career and also earning more

money than as a member of a band. Eddie
had also been working in a steel mill
(supplying the automobile industry) to supplement his music income - indeed, he

needed to do that simply to keep enough money coming in.

In spite of his increasing popularity in the ‘Windy City’ Eddie did not get the
opportunity to record until July 1945, when he recorded with Sonny Boy John Lee

Williamson, for the Victor/Bluebird race catalogue, under the guidance of Lester