According to the music journalist Jim O'Neal, "the music to one of Bonds's songs, 'Back and Side Blues' (1934), became a standard blues melody when Sonny Boy Williamson I, from nearby Jackson, Tennessee, used it in his classic "Good Morning, School Girl".
[1] The best-known of Bonds's other works are "A Hard Pill to Swallow" and "Come Back Home.
[4][5] Sleepy John Estes, in his earlier recordings, was backed by Yank Rachell (mandolin) or Hammie Nixon (harmonica), but by the late 1930s he was accompanied in the recording studio by either Bonds or Charlie Pickett (guitar).
[1] In the latter part of his career, Bonds played the kazoo as well as the guitar on several tracks.
[8] According to Nixon's later accounts of the event, Bonds suffered an accidental death in August 1947.