Joe Hill Louis (September 23, 1921 – August 5, 1957), born Lester Hill, was an American singer, guitarist, harmonica player and one-man band. He was one of a small number of one-man blues bands (along with fellow Memphis bluesman Doctor Ross) to have recorded commercially in the 1950s. He was also a session musician for Sun Records. He recorded as Chicago Sunny Boy for Meteor Records in 1953.
Louis was born Lester (or possibly Leslie) Hill in Raines, Tennessee. His nickname "Joe Louis" arose as a result of a childhood fight with another youth. At the age of 14 he left home to work as a servant for the Canales', a wealthy Memphis family. He also worked at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis in the late 1930s. From the early 1940s onwards he worked as a musician and one-man band. By the late '40s, his one-man musical attack was a popular attraction in Handy Park and on WDIA, the groundbreaking Memphis radio station where he hosted a 15-minute program billed as The Pepticon Boy.
It was future politician Drew Canale who would be the first to record Joe Hill Louis, recording four tunes in Nashville in November of 1949 that he would sell to Columbia Records before the year ended. Also known as the Be-Bop Boy, his music was released on a variety of labels through the 1950s, such as Modern, Checker, Meteor, and Big Town. Louis most notably recording for Sam Phillips' Sun Records, for whom he recorded extensively as a backing musician for a wide variety of other singers as well as under his own name.
His most notable electric blues single, "Boogie in the Park" (recorded in July 1950 and released the following month), featured Louis performing "one of the loudest, most overdriven, and distorted guitar stomps ever recorded" while also playing a rudimentary drum kit. It was the only record released on Sam Phillips's early Phillips label before he founded Sun Records. Phillips and Memphis dee-Jay Dewey Phillips pooled their efforts and resources to record, press, and distribute 300 copies of this record. Louis's electric guitar playing is also considered a predecessor of heavy metal music.
His most notable recording at Sun Records was probably as guitarist on Rufus Thomas's "Bear Cat", an answer record to Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog", which reached number 3 on the R&B chart and resulted in legal action for copyright infringement. He also shared writing credit for the song "Tiger Man", which has been recorded by Thomas and Elvis Presley, among others. Around 1950 he took over the Pepticon Boy radio program on WDIA from B. B. King.
 |
| L-R. Joe Hill Louis, BB King, Ford Nelson, Rufus Thomas, Wlla Monroe, Nat D. Williams, Starr McKinney. |
In the summer of 1957 Joe was doing some yard work for the Canales’ when he cut his finger which then became infected by the fertilizer he was using. He didn’t bother to get it treated and a few days later he collapsed on Beale Street. Rushed to the hospital, on Aug. 5, 1957, he died a painful death from tetanus (lock jaw) at John Gaston Hospital, where Bessie Smith had died two decades earlier.
Joe Hill Louis was remembered as a likable, humorous sort of fellow, a ladies man, and a nice guy. His music may have been too crude and distorted to be commercial, although crude and distorted didn’t hurt the careers of John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Howlin’ Wolf, all who where enjoying good record sales during the years that Louis’ discs were first released. Most likely his lack of touring, and a lack of promotion are what kept him in obscurity to all but Memphis residents to whom he was a familiar site on Beale Street, Handy Park, and on WDIA. He died too young to reap the benefits of the sixties blues revival, but his records sound better than ever today, he was a unique guitarist, and the one man band style served his unique sense of timing well, in a gloriously clattering musical racket. Although he’s best remembered for putting Sam C. Phillips in the record biz, Joe Hill Louis was more than just historically important, he was one of the greats.
(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & The Hound NYC)