"Who is 'One String Sam'?" You might be asking.
In 1956, an unknown street musician named "One String" Sam Wilson walked into Joe’s Record Shop on Hastings Street in Detroit, carrying a plank of wood containing a single string. The shop also had a recording studio in the back, and Sam proceeded to record two songs on his diddley bow, “I Need a Hundred Dollars” and “My Baby Ooh.”
One String Sam used an empty baby food jar as a slide and would sometimes hold it up to his mouth when he sang, giving his vocals a strange echo sound. The music was pure Southern deep-country blues with a call-and-response feel between his vocal and that single string.
The two tracks were released as a 10-inch single by the JVB Recording Company (JVB release #40) and made its way into jukeboxes throughout the Detroit area.
Sam continued busking for a few more years, disappeared into obscurity and was then rediscovered in 1973, still living in the slums of Detroit. He also still had that diddley bow. Promoters asked him to perform again, and he took the stage at the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues Festival, where he played the two songs he recorded 17 years earlier.
Sam played a handful of shows, including the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues Festival, dates with B.B. King and the Blues Extravaganza in Toledo, Ohio.
When asked to put his autograph alongside that of J.B. Hutto, Bo Bo Jenkins and A.C. Reed on this poster, One String Sam goofed off with the pen, pretending to sign his name in the air. It was then that Boz realized Sam was most likely illiterate and couldn’t write his own name.
One String Sam’s performance at the ’73 Ann Arbor Blues Fest was recorded and eventually released on the album Motor City Blues (1998, Total Energy Records). His original 1956 recordings are available on Document Records’ Rural Blues No. 1.
Not much is known about One String Sam, an eccentric street musician who walked into Joe's Record Shop on Hastings Street in Detroit in 1956 and recorded two odd and unforgettable tracks, "I Need a Hundred Dollars" and "My Baby Ooo," on a fretless, one- string instrument that was essentially a diddley bow, consisting of a wood plank with a piano wire stretched between two nails, augmented with an electric guitar pickup. Sam, whose real name was Sam Wilson, fretted the instrument with a baby food jar and, placing the jar near the vocal microphone when he sang, created his own echo chamber. The result was an eerie, spooky, and riveting version of country blues. Sam played on the streets in Detroit for a few years, but eventually vanished. He was relocated in nearby Inkster in 1973 and added to the roster of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival that year, where he performed "I Need a Hundred Dollars" and "I Got to Go" before vanishing once again into blues history. His entire recorded output consists of the two sides recorded in 1956, plus the two tracks recorded at the 1973 festival in Ann Arbor. The Hastings Street tracks (which were originally released on JVB Records) can be found on Document's Rural Blues, Vol. 1, while the festival tracks are on Motor City Blues, released in 1998 by Total Energy Records.
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