Elmore James Jr

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Chicago bluesman Elmore James Jr. is the son of the legendary musician Elmore James, who was known as the King of the Slide Guitar. Elmore James died in 1963. Elmore James, the king of the raw and loud slide guitar of '50s Chicago blues, left something down in his old stomping grounds in Mississippi before moving north -- little Earnest Johnson. In the mid '60s, Johnson took the stage name Elmore James Jr., and he hopes to show the State Theatre during his show Friday what his biological father taught him. James Jr. was born in 1939 in James' hometown of Richmond, Miss., to a woman who ran a restaurant. His mother's husband, who he thought of as his dad back then, tended to be mean, James Jr. said from his home in Chicago. "I noticed that my (assumed) dad and his people didn't treat me and my older sister like the rest of the kids, you know what I'm saying?" He and his sister would be beaten for no reason, wouldn't be fed at the table until the others had eaten and were treated unfairly. "We thought we were just being bad, or maybe some people just didn't like kids," James Jr. said. "I used to cry sometimes." But around 1951, the traveling musician came to town, and James Jr.'s mother secretly smuggled him and his sister to spend the day with him. Elmore James was making a name for himself in Chicago, and making good money. He'd take the kids shopping but didn't tell them his secret. Around that time, the man James Jr. thought was his dad died, "so momma came out, sa

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