Background
He was born Robert Henry Warren in Lake Providence, Louisiana in 1919, but moved with his parents to Memphis, Tennessee at the age of three months.
He was born Robert Henry Warren in Lake Providence, Louisiana in 1919, but moved with his parents to Memphis, Tennessee at the age of three months.
In the 1930s, he worked in West. C. Handy Park, Memphis, with Howling Wolf, Robert Junior. Lockwood and Little Buddy Doyle and he appeared on the Helena, Arkansas based King Biscuit Time radio show with Sonny Boy Williamson around 1941. In 1942, he moved to Detroit, where he worked for General Motors while also performing as a musician.
Warren was mostly inactive in music in the 1960s, but revived his career to play the Detroit Blues Festival in 1971 and the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1973 and tour Europe with Boogie Woogie Red in 1972.
From 1974 to 1976 he was also a featured performer, along with Willie Doctorate. Warren, with the Progressive Blues Band, a popular blues band that played in many of Detroit"s blues venues. He suffered a fatal heart attack at his home on July 1, 1977, and was buried at Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in Macomb County, Michigan.
On the Staff, Federal and Swing Time labels he was marketed as Johnny Williams. His chief influences were Little Buddy Doyle and Willie "61" Blackwell, especially in his approach to lyrics, and stated that another musician he particularly admired was Memphis Minnie, who he knew in Memphis in the 1930s.
The Penguin Guide to Blues described him as having brought "a hip, literate humour to the blues lyric".