Tony Hollins (June 25, 1909 – January 1957) was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

singer, guitarist and songwriter.

Biography

Hollins is thought to have been born in

Oktibbeha County, Mississippi Oktibbeha County is a county in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census the population was 51,788. The county seat is Starkville. The county's name is derived from a Choctaw word meaning "icy creek". T ...

, and was raised at Lucky's Plantation. In the 1920s, he dated

John Lee Hooker John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues that he develo ...

's sister Alice. On visits, he impressed Hooker with his skill on the guitar, helped teach him to play, and gave Hooker his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of " Crawlin' King Snake" and " Catfish Blues". Charles Shaar Murray, ''Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century'', Canongate Books, 2011
/ref> Hollins primarily worked as a

barber A barber is a person whose occupation is mainly to cut, dress, groom, style and shave hair or beards. A barber's place of work is known as a barbershop or the barber's. Barbershops have been noted places of social interaction and public discourse ...

Clarksdale, Mississippi Clarksdale is a city in and the county seat of Coahoma County, Mississippi, Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States. It is located along the Sunflower River. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, a settler who founded the city in the mid-19t ...

. He made his first recordings for

OKeh Records OKeh Records () is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name originally was spelled "OkeH" from the init ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

in 1941, including " Crosscut Saw Blues", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Traveling Man Blues", both songs later performed by Hooker, in the latter case renamed as "When My Wife Quit Me".Biography by Jason Ankeny, ''Allmusic.com''
Retrieved 20 October 2016 Hollins failed to maintain a career as a musician and returned to Clarksdale. However, he went back to Chicago in the late 1940s, and recorded for

Decca Decca may refer to: Music * Decca Records or Decca Music Group, record label * Decca Gold, classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group * Decca Broadway, musical theater record label * Decca Studios, recording facility in West ...

with

Sunnyland Slim Albert Luandrew (September 5, 1906March 17, 1995), "Blues pianist and singer Sunnyland Slim was born Albert Luandrew in Vance, Mississippi, September 5, 1906 (most sources say 1907, but the Social Security Death Index and 1920 census data give t ...

in 1951.Gene Tomko, "Tony Hollins", in Edward Komara, Peter Lee, ''The Blues Encyclopedia'', Routledge, 2004, p.450
/ref> He is believed to have died in Clarksdale early in 1957, although one source places his death in Chicago in 1959.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollins, Tony 1909 births 1957 deaths African-American guitarists African-American male singer-songwriters American male singer-songwriters American blues guitarists American male guitarists Blues musicians from Mississippi Country blues musicians Guitarists from Mississippi 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century African-American male singers 20th-century American male singers 20th-century American singers Singer-songwriters from Mississippi People from Oktibbeha County, Mississippi