Drop Down Mama

The Sleepy Poet

Recorded July 17, 1935 in Chicago featuring Sleepy John Estes (guitar and vocals), accompanied by Hammie Nixon (harmonica).

Born John Adam Estes, to a sharecropper family in Ripley Tennessee on the 25th January 1904, his life was complicated from the start. One of a family of ten, at the age of six he lost his right eye in a baseball accident. As his father was a guitarist, he grew up with similar interests and made himself cigar-box guitars to play from the early days.

Totally blind in 1950, Estes had initially gained the nickname “Sleepy” from a chronic blood pressure disorder which led to fits of narcolepsy causing him to drop off to sleep without warning, sometimes standing up! He was “rediscovered” in 1962 during the blues revival, long after his varied career of the 1920’s and 30’s.

Estes suffered a stroke while preparing for a European tour, and died on June 5, 1977, at his home of 17 years in Brownsville, Tennessee. He was buried at Elam Baptist Church Cemetery in Durhamville, Tennessee.

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