He was born Eddie Jones in Greenwood MS in 1926 and crammed some intensely powerful music into a life cut short by hard living. Many regard his true legacy as the most compelling performer to ever venture onto a stage.
After Guitar Slim came along things got really wild. He loved to wear outlandishly colored suits with matching shoes and co-ordinated hair. Occasionally he ventured out into traffic---trailed by his 350-foot guitar cord.
Heavily influenced by slide legend Robert Nighthawk, other mentors included T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. After perfecting his act, Slim moved to New Orleans in 1950 and began exploring newer guitar sounds featuring lots of distortion---a decade before Hendrix took up the task.
Slim signed with Specialty Records in 1953, and had a massive hit with “The Things I Used To Do”, followed by “The Story Of My Life”, “Sufferin’ Mind”. “I Done Got Over It”, “Letter To My Girlfriend (aka Prison Blues)”, and “Certainly All”. On Atco, he charted with “It Hurts To Love Someone” and “Down Through The Years”.
By the late fifties, Slim’s full-fisted lifestyle was inflicting a dreadful toll. Earl King recalled how he was drinking “a pint of gin and chasing it with a fifth of black port every day.”
When Guitar Slim passed away in
February 1959, those who knew him--like Albert Collins, Chuck Berry, and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons--- placed him on the same level as B.B. King and Ray Charles.
