James Edward "Snooky" Pryor (September 15, 1919[1] or 1921[2] – October 18, 2006) was an American Chicago bluesharmonica player.[3][4] He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his hands along with the harmonica, although on his earliest records, in the late 1940s, he did not use this method. In 2023, he was inducted in the Blues Hall of Fame.[5][6]
While serving in the U.S. Army he would blow bugle calls through a PA system, which led him to experiment with playing the harmonica that way. However, most [who?] historians credit the idea to Little Walter[citation needed]. Upon discharge from the Army in 1945, he obtained his own amplifier and began playing harmonica at the outdoor Maxwell Street Market, becoming a regular on the Chicago blues scene.
Pryor recorded some of the first post-war Chicago blues in 1948,[3] including "Telephone Blues" and "Snooky & Moody's 'Boogie'", with the guitarist Moody Jones, and "Stockyard Blues" and "Keep What You Got", with the singer and guitarist Floyd Jones.[2] "Snooky & Moody's 'Boogie'" is of considerable historical significance: Pryor claimed that the harmonica virtuoso Little Walter directly copied the signature riff of Pryor's song in the opening eight bars of his blues harmonica instrumental "Juke," an R&B hit in 1952.[8] This claim is historically questionable at best. During the 1950s, Pryor regularly toured in the South.[2] In 1967, Pryor moved to Ullin, Illinois. He quit music and worked as a carpenter in the late 1960s but was persuaded to make a comeback.[9] Blues fans later revived interest in his music, and he resumed recording occasionally until his death in nearby Cape Girardeau, Missouri, at the age of 85.
In January 1973 he performed alongside Homesick James with the American Blues Legends '73 tour, which played throughout Europe. On this tour they recorded an album in London, Homesick James & Snooky Pryor, for Jim Simpson's label, Big Bear Records, with Pryor also recording a solo album, Shake Your Boogie.[10]
Some of his better-known songs are "Judgement Day" (1956), "Crazy 'Bout My Baby" (from Snooky, 1989), "Where Did You Learn to Shake It Like That" (from Tenth Anniversary Anthology, 1989), and "Shake My Hand" (1999).
Pryor's son Richard "Rip Lee" Pryor is also a blues musician and performs in and around his hometown of Carbondale, Illinois.
Discography
Singles
"Stockyard Blues" (A) / "Keep What You Got" (B) (1948), Marvel Records; reissued on Old Swing-Master in 1949
"Telephone Blues" (A) / Snooky & Moody's "Boogie" (B) (1948), Planet Records; reissued on Old Swing-Master in 1949
^"I Started the Big Noise Around Chicago". Interview with Snooky Pryor conducted by Jim O'Neal, Steve Wisner, and David Nelson. Living Blues, no. 123 (Sept.–Oct. 1995), pp. 10–11.
^Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books. p. 157. ISBN1-85868-255-X.
^Record label founded in 1987 by Clifford Antone, owner of Antone's Nightclub, in Austin, Texas, to release live recordings of performances at the club; Profile of Antone's Records. Discogs.com. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
