Willie Monroe Vincent (December 9, 1926 – June 22, 1981), who used the stage name Polka Dot Slim and was also credited as Vince Monroe, Mr. Calhoun, and Poka-A-Dot Slim, was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

singer and

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

player.

Biography

Born in

Woodville, Mississippi Woodville is a town in and the county seat of Wilkinson County, Mississippi, United States. Its population as of 2020 was 928. History This historic town, one of the oldest in Mississippi, is set among the rolling hills and pastures of Wilkins ...

, United States, he performed as a singer and harmonica player from his youth, in a style that combined

New Orleans rhythm and blues New Orleans rhythm and blues is a style of rhythm and blues that originated in New Orleans. It was a direct precursor to rock and roll and strongly influenced ska. Instrumentation typically includes drums, bass, piano, horns, electric guitar, and ...

with elements drawn from Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller). His first recordings were made in the late 1950s in Crowley, Louisiana for Jay Miller, who released them under two different pseudonyms on two different labels. Biography

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

. Retrieved 22 February 2019 In 1964, he recorded "A Thing You Gotta Face" and "Ain't Broke Ain't Hungry", produced by

Sax Kari Sax Kari (February 6, 1920 – October 1, 2009), born Isaac Columbus Toombs Jr., sometimes known as Isaac Saxton Kari Toombs or simply Saxton Kari, was an American multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, A&R man and promot ...

and released as a single on the

Instant In physics and the philosophy of science, instant refers to an infinitesimal interval in time, whose passage is instantaneous. In ordinary speech, an instant has been defined as "a point or very short space of time," a notion deriving from its ety ...

label. Polka Dot Slim was a regular performer for many years in clubs and bars in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

. Researcher John Broven described him in the 1970s as one of "the last of the rural country bluesmen still playing in New Orleans", along with

Boogie Bill Webb Boogie Bill Webb (March 24, 1924 – August 22, 1990) was an American Louisiana blues and Rhythm and blues, rhythm-and-blues guitarist, singing, singer and songwriter. His music combined Mississippi country blues with New Orleans rhythm and ...

and

Babe Stovall Jewell Stovall, better known as Babe Stovall (October 14, 1907 – September 21, 1974), was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist. Stovall was born in Tylertown, Mississippi, United States, in 1907, the youngest of eleven children ( ...

. Polka Dot Slim later moved to

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, where he died in 1981.

References

1926 births 1981 deaths Country blues musicians American blues singers {{US-singer-stub