Background
He was born in Indianola, Mississippi.
He was born in Indianola, Mississippi.
After running away from home at the age of seven, Gillum spent the next few years in Charleston, Mississippi, working and playing for tips on street corners. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1923, meeting up with the guitarist Big Bill Broonzy. The duo started working club dates around the city, and by 1934 Gillum started recording for American Red Cross Records and Bluebird Records.
Gillum appeared on many of the highly popular "Bluebird beat" recordings produced by Lester Melrose in the 1930s and 1940s, under his own name and as a sideman.
In 1940, he was the first to record the blues classic "Key to the Highway" (featuring Broonzy on guitar), utilizing the now-standard melody and eight-bar blues arrangement. (The song had first been recorded a few months earlier by Charlie Segar, with a different melody and a 12-bar blues arrangement) Gillum"s version of the song was covered by Broonzy a few months later, and his version has become the standard arrangement of this now-classic blues song.
Gillum"s records were also some of the earliest featuring blues with electric guitar acompaniment, when 16-year-old fledgling jazz guitarist George Barnes was featured on several songs on the 1938 Gillum session that produced "Reefer Headed Woman" and others He joined the United States Army in 1942 and served until 1945.
Gillum recorded an early version of "Look on Yonder Wall" (1946) with Big Maceo on piano, which was later popularized by Elmore James.
After the Bluebird record label folded in the late 1940s, he made few recordings. His last, slightly sad recordings were on a couple of 1961 albums with Memphis Slim and the singer and guitarist Arbee Stidham on Folkways Records. On March 29, 1966, during a street argument, Gillum was shot in the head and was pronounced dead on arrival at Garfield Park Hospital in Chicago.
He is buried at Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
Gillum"s daughter, Ardella Williams, is a blues singer in Chicago.