Ransom Knowling
b. 24 June 1912. Knowling played bass, and was best known for his extensive work as a session player, used by producer Lester Melrose on hundreds of blues records in Chicago in the '30s and '40s, by artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red and Sonny BoyRice Miller Williamson. His rock-solid bass work was also used to add a more urban sound to the work of country blues singers like Tommy McClennan. In later years he claimed never to have liked the blues, preferring more sophisticated sounds, but he owes virtually all his fame to that idiom. Although known to have died, details of Ransom's death are scant.