Songs with the name Willie

Johnny Otis's "Willie and the Hand Jive" (1958) rides a boogie rhythm very close to the one underneath "Bo Diddley" — handclaps, jabbing guitar, a shuffle that was all over rhythm and blues radio at the time. The Willie of the title is a dancer whose hands do the talking, and the record is a full-throated slice of late-fifties R&B party music, with Otis egging the crowd on over the top of it.

A decade later, two very different Willies arrived in 1969. Brook Benton's "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" is a Southern soul ballad in which the narrator recalls the couple who lived down the road — a quiet, wistful story-song delivered in Benton's warm baritone. Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp," from Hot Rats, is nearly the opposite: a screeching, blues-rock vamp built on Captain Beefheart's snarling vocals and long, electric violin and guitar improvisation. Stevie Ray Vaughan later cut "Willie the Wimp" (1986), a hard-charging Texas blues about a Chicago funeral, thick with his biting Stratocaster tone and swaggering vocal delivery.

The oldest song here is also the loveliest: "Willie O' Winsbury" is a traditional Scottish ballad about a king's daughter and the low-born lover she takes. Anne Briggs recorded it in 1971 almost unaccompanied, her voice — clear, unornamented, slightly raw — carrying the whole tale. It's a cornerstone of the British folk revival, and a reminder that Willie has been a ballad hero for centuries before anyone plugged in a guitar.