Only 3 legends like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Robert Cray have achieved 6 nominations in a year to the Blues Music Awards, and above them, Watermelon Slim is the only one who has achieved that feat 2 consecutive years, and 17 nominations in total in 4 years.
William Homans, known as Watermelon Slim for his thin build and for 28 years working in watermelon fields, has one of the most impressive careers and lives of the blues. In addition to growing watermelons, he has worked driving trucks, operating wheelbarrows, selling firewood, officiating funerals, or even committing crimes in order to survive. One of his life experiences has been the Vietnam War, since he was wounded in a hospital bed where he began to play the guitar with the lid of a rusty coffee can and his Zippo as a slide.
He recorded his first album in 1973, an anti-war album called “Merry Airbrakes”; and although he has never stopped playing, it was not until 1999 that he recorded a new album and resumed his professional career. From the multi-award-winning “The Wheel Man” to his incursion in the contry-and-western with “Escape from the Chicken Coop”, Slim has not stopped publishing albums, always with great success by critics and audiences.
