King Solomon Hill

King Solomon Hill is the name assigned to a blues singer and guitarist who recorded a handful of songs in 1932. His unique guitar and voice make them among the most haunting blues recorded. After much speculation and controversy, he has been identified as Joe Holmes (1897, McComb, Mississippi – 1949, Sibley, Louisiana), a self-taught guitarist from Mississippi.

The Mississippi blues artist Big Joe Williams took a fancy to the name King Solomon Hill and laid claim to it in interviews with Bob Koester, stating that the Hill sides were his first recordings. This story was published by Samuel Charters in his pioneering history The Country Blues. Williams had not known Blind Lemon Jefferson, so he claimed that the song "My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon" was about another singer. In a footnote, Charters admitted that the story was open to question, as the style, especially the singing, on the King Solomon Hill sides was so different from Williams's usual style. In his later work The Bluesmen, Charters dismissed Williams's story and commented on the strong resemblance between King Solomon Hill and Sam Collins, which led some blues enthusiasts to believe that they were the same man.

The identification of Hill as Joe Holmes was made by the prominent blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow and strongly contested by another prominent blues scholar, David Evans. Wardlow eventually found four informants who had known Joe Holmes and identified his voice on the records of King Solomon Hill. One informant lived in a section of Sibley, Louisiana, known as Yellow Pine, within which is a community formerly known as King Solomon Hill, centered on a hill on which stood King Solomon Hill Baptist Church. A retired postal worker confirmed that King Solomon Hill would have been a valid postal address in 1932. The community is now known as Salt Works. No informant remembers Holmes using the name King Solomon Hill, so Wardlow concluded that it was Paramount Records who chose to use his address as his recording name.

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