One String” Sam Wilson “ "One String Sam walked into Joe's Record Shop on Hastings Street about 20 years ago and recorded two sides. He played a fretless, one-string, home-made, monochord instrument. He was seen playing the streets for a few years, then he disappeared." Sheldon Annis, 1973 The legendary One-String Sam had languished in utter obscurity since his mid-'50s recording of "l Need $100" was released to an unsuspecting world by Detroit's miniscule JVB label. Located in an Inkster housing pro- ject in 1973, Sam was added to the Motor City Blues Revue and turned his 15 minutes onstage into a rousing, crowd-pleasing tour-de-force, fretting his one string guitar with a baby-food jar that - stuck up next to the microphone - doubled as an echo chamber for his wailing vocal plaints. The surprise hit of the festival, One-String Sam remained on-site until the end, entertaining his new fans with a series of impromptu performances backstage and on the festival field itself. ...but the biggest kick of all was the tumultuous reception afforded the amazing One String Sam, alone on stage with his primitive board-plank-and- bailing-wire instrument, his other-worldly voice and captivating demeanor. He used a baby-food jar to bridge his one string, and another, slightly larger jar as a combination slide and echo chamber, raising it from fretting the string to sticking it at the side of his mouth next to the microphone for extra-special vocal effects. As it happened, One String Sam enjoyed the greatest applause of any artist at the festival and turned out to be the star of the entire weekend, hanging around the grounds and entertaining small hordes of young music-lovers here and there with his startling art and effervescent personality. An immediate hit with thousands of people who'd never even heard his name before, One String Sam responded as if he'd been pleasing audiences of this size all his life and just went on and had himself a natural ball. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.