Bill Sims Jr. (June 23, 1949 – February 2, 2019) was an American blues musician.

Early life

He was born and grew up in

Marion, Ohio Marion is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in north-central Ohio, approximately north of Columbus. The population was 35,999 at the 2020 census, slightly down from 36,837 at the 2 ...

, United States, and began playing

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

at the age of four. At age 14, he turned professional and joined the

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed p ...

band the Jacksonian Blues, which he left to attend

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pu ...

. In 1971, Sims joined another rhythm and blues group, the

doo-wop Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chica ...

-influenced Four Mints. He left the band in 1976 to form the Lamorians, an

avant-garde jazz Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Orig ...

band influenced by traditional

African drumming Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest" that exhibits common characteristics in all regions of this vast territory, so that Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) has described the many local approaches as constit ...

. In 1988, he returned to the blues, founding Bill Sims and the Cold Blooded Blues Band. He released his debut album, ''Blues Before Sunrise'', in 1992, and in 1999,

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of ed ...

did a 10-hour documentary on Sims and his

interracial Interracial topics include: * Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races ** Interracial marriage in the United States *** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident * Interracial adoption, placing a child of one raci ...

family (with Sims's partner Karen Wilson). Sims released another album to coincide with this broadcast. Bill Sims Jr. died on February 2, 2019, at the age of 69.

Discography

* ''Blues Before Sunrise'' (1992) * ''Bill Sims'' (1999) * ''Bill on Bob'' (2016)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sims, Bill 1949 births 2019 deaths Songwriters from Ohio American blues singers American blues pianists American male pianists Ohio State University alumni People from Marion, Ohio 21st-century American pianists African-American male songwriters African-American pianists 21st-century African-American male singers 20th-century African-American male singers