Aleck "Rice" Miller (December 5, 1899 - May 25, 1965), a.k.the. Sonny Son Williamson II, Rice Miller, Willie Williams, Willie Miller, "Little Boy Blue", "The Goat" & "Footsie," was an Western blues harmonica player, singer and songster.

Rice Miller was natural on the Sara Jones Plantation touching Glendora, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. the date & month of his birth come a matter of occasionally uncertainty. Miller claimed to keep close at hand been natural in December Five, 1899, however at least a single research worker, David Evans, claims to own observed nose count record grounds to believe that he was natural in the area of 1912.

Miller lived & worked by having his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, and mother, Millie Ford, until a early Thirties. Beginning in the Thirties, he traveled about Mississippi & Arkansas & found Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood Jr., also referred to as Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar in his late Chess Records sides. He was too associated by owning Robert Johnson during this period.

Wiliamson developed his style & raffish stage persona in the period of these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Cub, by using an amplified mouth harp, within Greenville, Mississippi in the 1930s. He captivated audiences by having tricks like holding his harp between his top lip & nose & swimming by using there are no paws.

Williamson sleep in Twist, Arkansas for a period by using Howlin' Wolf's sister Mary Burnett and taught Wolf to play harp. (Late, for Chess, Williamson did the parody of Howlin' Wolf entitled "Like Wolf.") Around 1941 Miller was hired to play the King Biscuit Time show on radio station KFFA within Helena, Arkansas with Lockwood.

A creator, Max Moore, billed him when Sonny Son Williamson, apparently fallowing a Jackson, Tennesview mouth organ streaming video player & singer John Lee Williamson (see Sonny Boy Williamson I). Alex Miller claimed to have been a 1st to use a title, & occasionally blues scholars imagine that Miller's assertion he was innate inside 1899 was a artifice to convince audiences he was old plenty to own utilized the title prior to John Lee Williamson, world health organization was born around 1914. Whatever truth origins of the title, Miller became "Sonny Boy Williamson," & Lockwood & a rest of his band were a King Biscuit Boys. His growing celebrity took him pages like West Memphis, Arkansas, where he did a KWEM radio indicate selling a elixir Hadacol.

Williamson's number 1 recording was within 1951 for Lillian McMurray of Jackson, Mississippi's Trumpet Records. McMurray late erected Williamson's headstone, touching Tutwiler, Mississippi, in 1977.

While Horn went break around 1955, Sonny Boy's recording contract was yielded to its creditors, world health organization sold it to Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Williamson recorded astir Lxx songs for Chess Records from either 1955 to 1964. In the 1960s he toured Europe during a height of the British blues craze, recording by owning The Yardbirds and The Animals. It was when you took Williamson's tour of a UK in the 60s that he adopted the bowler hat & carried his mouth harp's inside stage in the briefcase, late to get his trade mark. In a period of this tour he allegedly stabbed the human when you took the street fight & left the united states suddenly.(Robert Palmer's Deep Blues)

In the 1940s Williamsaround married Mattie Gordon, who remained his married woman until his demise on Can 25, 1965 (or even June 23, 1965, based on data from a headstone) in Helena, Arkansas. Williamson was characterized by the hip-pocket flask of whisky, the side arm, the knife, the putrid mouth, & the short temper. He experienced universally worn fancier lawsuits than he can afford, & his tour of Europe allowed him more embellishment, adding the finely tailored melanise lawsuit & the bowler hat to his unique, grey-goateed image.

Rice Miller wwhen, but, notable as one of a finest & virtually all untypical of blues ballad maker & his crisp harp style & tricksy vocals mark him as a avowedly creative person. His apply of space, his timing, & his tone produce him one of a greatest blues-harp players.

Occasionally of his hits include "Fattenin' Frogs for Snakes", "Don't Start Me To Talkin'", "Keep It To Yourself", "Bye Bye Bird", "Nine Below Zero", "Help Me", "Your Funeral and My Trial", & a notorious "Little Village", by having its R-rated dialogue by owning Leonard Chess.