James Cotton came up under the masters Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller), Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters, and emerged in the mid-1960s with his own hard-hitting blues style, one that came to epitomize the term high-energy blues for harmonica players. Born July 1, 1935, on the Bonnie Blue Plantation in Clayton, Mississippi, Cotton got his first harmonica from his mother, Hattie Cotton, and learned to play what she played, using the harp to imitate the sounds of cackling hens and trains. But he soon heard a new, enticing harmonica sound on the radio when he started listening to King Biscuit Time on KFFA radio from nearby Helena, Arkansas. By the time he was nine, his uncle had introduced him to King Biscuit Time star Sonny Boy Williamson, who was so impressed that he took the nine-year-old prodigy into his home. Cotton lived with Williamson in Helena and then West Memphis until the early ’50s, when Sonny Boy left for Milwaukee. In West Memphis Cotton worked with Sonny Boy’s band members, including Willie Love, Willie Nix, and Joe Willie Wilkins, as well as Howlin’ Wolf’s band. In 1952 he went into the studio for the first time to play harp on Wolf’s Chess single Saddle My Pony. He returned to the same studio ‘Sam Phillips’ Mempis Recording Service, to cut his first two singles in 1953 and 1954 for Phillips’ Sun label.
In 1954 Muddy Waters was in Memphis for an appearance at the Hippodrome and needed a harp man to replace Junior Wells, who had left the band; he heard about Cotton, hired him for the gig, and took him on the rest of the tour, on back to Chicago. Cotton stayed with Muddy for 12 years, touring the country and overseas and gigging regularly in Chicago as well. Cotton was primed to go out on his by 1966, and put together the first of a series of top-notch bands to tour the country and record for Vanguard, Verve, Capitol, Alligator, Antone’s, Telarc and other labels. He persevered through health problems and a 1994 throat surgery, and although unable to continue singing on stage, he maintained his harp skills and has continued to amaze and entertain audiences with his good-natured demeanor and dynamic performances.
— Jim O’Neal