Personalities | Snooky Pryor | Fifties | Jazz & Blues

(Harmonica, vocals, b. 1921)

James Edward Pryor was born in Lambert, Mississippi. He learned harmonica at the age of 14 and left home in 1937 to work as an itinerant musician. He settled in Chicago in 1940. After Army service during the Second World War he got the idea of amplifying his harmonica, and was the first to develop that sound. He recorded for small Chicago labels throughout the 1950s but left music in the early 1960s, only to be ‘rediscovered’ in the early 1970s.

Styles & Forms | Fifties | Jazz & Blues
Personalities | Jimmy Reed | Fifties | Jazz & Blues

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

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