Billy Boy Arnold emerged as the youngest recording star among Chicago’s impressive corps of blues harmonica players in the 1950s, when he cut a series of invigorating blues for Vee-Jay Records, including "I Wish You Would," "I Ain’t Got You," and "Rockinitis." Arnold, one of the few bluesmen of his era who was actually born in Chicago (Sept. 16, 1935), hailed from a family of musicians and educators: his brother Jerome was one of Chicago’s top bass players and another brother, Augustus, plays harmonica and writes books under the name Julio Finn. Arnold himself is regarded as quite an oral historian, one whose interviews are distinguished by his musicological and sociological perspectives on the blues. As a 12-year-old Arnold idolized John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson so much that he started going to Williamson’s home to learn harmonica, and he has paid tribute to Sonny Boy in interviews and in his musical performances ever since. In 1955, after Arnold had been playing on the streets with guitarist Ellas McDaniel for a few years, he and McDaniel went to Chess Records with a batch of songs, including one that ended up with the title "Bo Diddley" after Arnold suggested using the name in the lyrics. McDaniel himself was billed as Bo Diddley when the record came out with Arnold playing harp on the two-sided classic, "Bo Diddley"/"I’m a Man." Arnold took his own songs to Vee-Jay and became a popular attraction in the Chicago clubs over the next few years, when harmonica was at a peak of popularity with the black blues audience. As times and styles changed, harp men fell out of fashion in the ’60s, and although Arnold recorded an album for producer Sam Charters on the Prestige label, along with a few other sessions, by the 1970s he was only an occasional presence on the club scene. In the meantime, however, the Yardbirds, the Animals, David Bowie and other rock acts had covered his Vee-Jay recordings, establishing his name with a new audience that came to blues through rock ‘n’ roll. Arnold, who had been working as a bus driver and parole officer, returned to a busier performing and recording schedule in the ’90s, sporting a style that still sounded fresh, just as it had in the ’50s. Two strong albums on the Alligator label, followed by releases on Stony Plain and Electro-Fi, have kept his name going, and in 2011 two of his Vee-Jay recordings, "I Ain’t Got You" and "I Wish You Would," were included on the Jasmine CD "50 of the Most Influential Blues Songs of the 20th Century."
