Big Choo-Choo Williams
Big Choo-Choo Williams is a mysterious figure about whom little is known. The harmonica-playing hobo was a well known musician around the Mississippi Delta in the late 1920s. He never recorded or established an official residence, traveling around the Delta by rail (from which he derived his nickname), playing house parties and on street corners. The little we know about Big Choo-Choo Williams comes from other Mississippi bluesmen who knew him, including Son House and Willie Brown. Big Choo-Choo may have influenced a number of early blues harmonica players, but his most notable protege was Earl "Lil' Choo-Choo" Johnson, who traveled with Williams as a boy and learned harmonica from the hobo bluesman. Johnson's nickname, Lil' Choo-Choo, was given to him by blues great Charley Patton as a result of his association with Big Choo-Choo Williams. Williams' death has never been documented; he was last seen at a house party on Stovall's Plantation on New Year's Eve, 1929.