Sonny Boy Nelson

Sonny Boy Nelson (December 23, 1908 – November 4, 1998) was an American Delta blues musician.

Biography He was born Eugene Powell, in Utica, Mississippi, United States, the child of an interracial affair. His white father soon abandoned the family. His family moved to a plantation at Lombardy near Shelby, Mississippi. He learned to play the guitar by the age of seven. He and his half-brother Ben (playing mandolin) performed as a novelty act at picnics and suppers and for prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. In 1915, his half-brother Bennie "Sugar" Wilson may have been the inspiration for Nelson to learn to play the mandolin-banjo. Nelson became friends with the Chatmon family (see Sam Chatmon), as both families worked together on the Kelly Drew Plantation, in Hollandale, Mississippi.

In 1935, he married the singer Mississippi Matilda. She and Nelson separated in 1952,

Nelson died in November 1998, in Greenville, Mississippi, at the age of 89.