Wild Child Butler born 1 October 1936

George "Wild Child" Butler (October 1, 1936 – March 1, 2005) was an American blues harmonica player, and vocalist with a full, rich-toned voice whose songs arose from his long experience in the Blues. 

Born in Autaugaville, Alabama, Butler spent part of his youth in the state capital Montgomery, where he played harmonica as a child with Big Mama Thornton, a family friend. At first, he played the instrument upside down - with the high end to the left rather than the right - "because no one showed me how to hold it the right way". 

Disenchanted with farm work, he left Montgomery to seek a living as an itinerant musician, and travelled widely in the US south. By his early 20s, he was married and living in Chicago or Detroit, where he played in clubs and at house parties with Big Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sunnyland Slim and others. 

Later, in the 1960s, he worked mostly in Texas and Louisiana, and it was for Jewel Records in Shreveport, Louisiana, that he made his first important recordings (though the sessions were in Chicago and supervised by that city's blues godfather, the bassist and composer Willie Dixon). His prospects as the ‘Wild Child’ looked good. Willie Dixon produced all his tracks, playing bass on many of them, and employing quality side-men like ‘Shakey’ Horton, Jimmy Dawkins and Cash McCall. Sales were not great, but George picked up some work as a side-man himself, touring and recording with Lightnin’ Hopkins. 

As Butler recalled, his old-fashioned singing struck Dixon as "way-out strange". After a couple of sessions, the producer was apparently sufficiently impressed to comment: "You are the moan of the suffering woman, the groan of the dying man. You ain't nothing but the blues. Keep this work up and you gonna help keep the blues alive." 

                           

The records came out with the byline George "Wild Child" Butler, the nickname he had acquired as a baby, when, his mother Beatrice told him later, he would bother her lady friends by crawling over to them, stroking their legs and pulling at their skirts. "Beatrice," the visitors would say, "this child is wild." 

The music Butler and Dixon created was admirable, but it was 10 years too late: that sort of hard-hitting, unpretentious blues had little or no market at the end of the 1960s, and even the gesture of recording a number called Hippy Playground could do nothing to win over fans of the Grateful Dead or Big Brother & The Holding Company. Blues enthusiasts paid attention, though, and Butler was able to record fairly often over the next 35 years, making half a dozen albums in the US and one in Britain. 

He cut an album for Mercury in 1969 which sank with little trace, while a 1976 LP for T.K., Funky Butt Lover, did equally little for his fortunes (it was later reissued in slightly altered form on Rooster Blues as Lickin' Gravy). and another, ‘Funky Butt Lover’ in 1976 for the TK label, again without much success, although the second of these re-appeared many years later, with the piano of Pinetop Perkins overdubbed, re-titled as ‘Lickin’ Gravy’ on the Rooster Blues imprint. 

In 1981, George relocated to Windsor Ontario, just across the lake from Detroit, and settled into a life of relentless gigging, leading his band on regular trips south of the border and touring as a harp player with Jimmy Rogers‘ band. Though a seasoned listener could readily spot evidence of his admiration for men like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and Lightnin' Hopkins, Butler distinguished himself by not relying on the standard blues repertoire but creating his own stories instead. It's A Pity, which he first sang in 1991 on the album The Devil Made Me Do It, was a rare bluesman's reaction to his country's confrontation with Iraq. His last album, Sho' Nuff, was issued in 2001. 

Over the years, Butler had spells of working for Howlin' Wolf, Waters and Hopkinson, as well as with Jimmy Rogers, Sam Lay, Jimmie Lee Robinson, Big Jack Johnson and others. Latterly, he made his home in Windsor, Ontario. Butler died on March 1, 2005, in Windsor, Ontario, of a pulmonary embolism, at the age of 68. He was buried there shortly thereafter. A version of Howlin’ Wolf‘s ‘Spoonful’, which George recorded with Kenny Wayne Shepherd for his ’10 Days on the Road’ project, was a fine posthumous tribute to the ‘Wild Child’. 

(Edited from The Guardian, Wikipedia, AllMusic & All About Music)