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The longtime drummer with the Muddy Waters Band, bluesman Willie "Big Eyes" Smith was born in Helena, AK, on January 19, 1936; raised by his sharecropper grandparents, as a child his neighbors included the likes of <a href="spotify:artist:1ycL0Ct3hz0glGDIwsUyNG">Robert Nighthawk</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:6h3s7UekUkRHes73EG5N55">Pinetop Perkins</a>. At 17 he traveled to Chicago to visit his mother, and never returned home; instead Smith taught himself harmonica and drums, and with harpist <a href="spotify:artist:4E38ho0p7iobKMNdF9IlWj">Clifton James</a> and guitarist Bobby Lee Burns formed a blues trio. Upon marrying his first wife in 1955, Smith agreed to retire from performing, but within a year he was backing <a href="spotify:artist:0Ik5YnoDJIO8Z2pJJDPNrw">Arthur "Big Boy" Spires</a>; after a brief attempt at fronting his own band, he returned to his drum kit, joining Hudson Shower's Red Devil Trio. After a few lean years that forced him to go on welfare, Smith joined <a href="spotify:artist:22JuR9OeENcP54XN5TlNWS">Waters</a> in 1961 and remained with the blues giant until 1980, when he co-founded <a href="spotify:artist:6I7OMbNzGV9i6nhwxocHU4">the Legendary Blues Band</a>. His first solo recording, Bag Full of Blues, did not appear until 1995; Nothin' But the Blues Y'all followed four years later and Blues from the Heart was issued in fall 2000. Bluesin' It appeared in 2004 from Electro-Fi while the pleasant Way Back was released in 2006 by Hightone Records. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
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