Today, September 16, is the birthday of one of the last living giants of Chicago blues harmonica: Billy Boy Arnold turns 91.
William “Billy Boy” Arnold was born in Chicago in 1935, one of sixteen children in a large family. As a teenager, in 1948, he took informal harmonica lessons from none other than Sonny Boy Williamson I — shortly before Sonny Boy himself was murdered. Learning directly from a legend at the very start of his musical life says a lot about the path he would follow.
He first recorded in 1952, “Hello Stranger,” for the Cool label — that’s where he got the nickname “Billy Boy,” given to him by the label itself. Three years later, on March 2, 1955, he was in the same session where Bo Diddley recorded “I’m a Man” for Checker Records, his harmonica helping shape the sound of the rock and roll that was being born. That same day, he recorded an original of his own, “You Got to Love Me.”
It was through Vee-Jay Records, in the late 1950s, that Arnold recorded the two songs he’s best remembered for today: “I Wish You Would” and “I Ain’t Got You.” Years later, the Yardbirds covered both; David Bowie covered “I Wish You Would” on his 1973 album Pin Ups; the band Sweet did their own version in 1982. Few blues harmonica players can say they unknowingly helped write part of the soundtrack of the so-called British Invasion.
As happened to so many bluesmen of his generation, stages grew scarce in the 1960s. Arnold kept playing when he could, but also worked as a bus driver and a parole officer to support his family. It wasn’t until the 1970s that his career as a performer really picked back up — he recorded a session for BBC Radio 1 with John Peel in 1977 and started touring Europe again.
From there on, he never stopped: albums on Alligator Records (“Back Where I Belong,” 1993, and “Eldorado Cadillac,” 1995), then on Stony Plain and Electro-Fi through the 2000s and 2010s, including tribute albums to Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Bill Broonzy. In 2021, he published the memoir “The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold,” co-written with Kim Field. And in May 2024, at 88 years old, he was finally inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, in the Classics of Blues Recording category, for “I Ain’t Got You” — the very song the Yardbirds would make famous decades later.
Today people in the scene call him “the dean of Chicago blues harmonica” — and unlike so many names we dig up here in the Journal, he’s still with us to tell this story firsthand. Below, footage of him playing “I Wish You Would” alongside Phil Alvin:
Every time I hear a story like this — a kid who learned harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson I and decades later watched his own song become a rock anthem in the hands of the Yardbirds and David Bowie — I remember why this chain that is the blues matters so much. Happy birthday, Billy Boy Arnold.
— Ale Ravanello