Sammy Lawhorn

Although never a big name blues artist or even a regular bandleader, guitarist Sammy Lawhorn is one of the most frequently recorded blues sidemen in the genre's history, which certainly has something to do with the fact that he is one of the music's most accomplished and versatile players. His longtime presence in the Muddy Waters band speaks for itself: this great bluesman had an uncanny way of picking brilliant sidemen, even when he was practically on his death bed. While Waters himself was a slide guitar soloist whose high notes could deafen a chipmunk at 40 paces, one of the best aspects of his various bands was the use of a second guitarist, a musical recipe that by the '50s was simmering to perfection in the Waters' partnership with the great Jimmy Rogers. When the latter player left Waters to start a solo career in 1957, there was a lineup of second guitarists coming into the band, each of them superb players. Right around Halloween, 1964, Lawhorn entered the studios with Waters for the first time, ready to unleash both tricks and treats on the first three tracks of what would turn into a large chunk of the Chicago blues discography. Lawhorn would continue in the group for practically a decade. He was one of the many fine musicians to come from Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was basically raised by his grandparents after his parents left for Chicago. Blind street musicians were the source of the first blues music the youthful Lawhorn heard, followed by gigs featuring touring blues stars from the Texas area such as Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, and Lowell Fulson. Lawhorn's first instrument was the "diddley bow," created by connecting bailing wire to the side of his grandparent's home with nails -- house music, literally. When he began traveling to Chicago to...