Biography
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Born
18 July 1896
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Born In
McComb, Pike County, Mississippi, United States
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Died
13 August 1940 (aged 44)
King Solomon Hill (1897, McComb, Mississippi - 1949, Sibley, Louisiana) was a bluesman who recorded a small handful of songs in 1932. Hill is speculated to have been Joe Holmes, a self-taught guitarist from Mississippi. He fused the styles of his friends Sam Collins and Ramblin' Thomas (respectively, south Mississippi and east Texas/Louisiana musicians), and elements from Blind Lemon Jefferson, into the eerie bottleneck guitar sound that accompanied his chilling falsetto on his 1932 recordings.
Hill signed to Paramount in 1932 and recorded his four songs in Grafton, Wisconsin. Songs like "Gone Dead Train" and "Down on Bended Knee" feature almost alien vocals certainly unique to their time and place, although the best known song from that sole session was probably "Whoopee Blues". After that Hill returned to the streets and the party circuit, and little else is known of him. He was said to be a heavy drinker and he died of a brain haemorrhage in Louisiana in 1949. As of 2007 King Solomon Hill has eight known recordings.
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