One String Sam

Not much is known about One String Sam, an eccentric street musician who walked into Joe's Record Shop on Hastings Street in Detroit in 1956 and recorded two odd and unforgettable tracks, "I Need a Hundred Dollars" and "My Baby Ooo," on a fretless, one- string instrument that was essentially a diddley bow, consisting of a wood plank with a piano wire stretched between two nails, augmented with an electric guitar pickup. Sam, whose real name was Sam Wilson, fretted the instrument with a baby food jar and, placing the jar near the vocal microphone when he sang, created his own e...