Willie Lee Harris

Willie Lee Harris was born in Artesia, Mississippi, a small farming community near Columbus, in 1917. He was taken to St. Louis four years later by an older sister and has made it his home ever since. Self taught, he took up the harmonica in the late 1920s an has played with Big Joe (Williams) sporadically from that time. Joe recalls Willie Lee as one of the earliest harmonica players with whom he worked; of ten asked to accompany him on records, Willie Lee would never leave St. Louis tod do so. In that city he often worked with singer-guitarist Elija Jones (who died about 1985, Willie rembemered)