[5] Harris's date and place of birth are unknown, but there is a general consensus among blues historians that he probably originated in the Mississippi Delta area.
[5] He was one of the earliest "discoveries" made by the white businessman H. C. Speir,[2] who ran a music and mercantile store on Farish Street, in a black neighborhood of Jackson, Mississippi.
It is thought that around this time, Harris was a performer with a traveling medicine show, probably with F. S. Wolcott's Rabbit Foot Minstrels.
His second and final session occurred over three days in October 1928,[5] in Richmond, Indiana, in which he recorded a cover version of Jim Jackson's big-selling track "Kansas City Blues".
[12] To add to the confusion, some of the Gennett recordings were later reissued on the subsidiary labels Champion, Supertone, and Conqueror, with the tracks "Electric Chair Blues" and "Kansas City Blues" credited to Alonso Boone, and two other 10-inch 78-rpm shellac singles were credited to Bud Johnson.