John Adam Estes (25 January 1904 - 5 June 1977), commonly known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a U.S. blues guitarist and vocalist born in Ripley, Tennessee.
In 1915, Estes's father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee. Not long after, Estes was hit in the right eye by a stone, and his sight was never good after that. After working as a field hand in his teens, he began to perform professionally by 1919, mostly at local parties and picnics, often in the company of Hammie Nixon, a harmonica player, and James "Yank" Rachell, a guitarist and mandolin player. He would continue to work with both musicians, off and on, for more than fifty years.
Estes made his debut as a recording artist in Memphis in 1929, at a session organized by Ralph Peer for Victor Records. He later recorded for the Decca and Bluebird labels, with his last pre-war recording session taking place in 1941. He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording "Runnin' Around" and "Rats in My Kitchen," but otherwise was largely out of the public eye for two decades.
Though only modestly skilled as a guitarist (he was frequently teamed with more capable musicians, like Rachell, Nixon, and the piano player Jab Jones), Estes was a fine singer, with a distinctive "crying" vocal style. He sounded so much like an old man, even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead, and because fellow musician Big Bill Broonzy had written that Estes had died. By the time he was tracked down, by Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he had become completely blind and was living in abject poverty. He resumed touring and recording, though his later records are generally considered less interesting than his pre-war output.
Many of Estes's original songs were based on events in his own life or on people he knew from his home town, such as the local lawyer ("Lawyer Clark Blues"), local auto mechanic ("Vassie Williams' Blues"), or an amorously inclined teenage girl ("Little Laura Blues"). He also dispensed advice on agricultural matters ("Working Man Blues") and chronicled his own attempt to reach a recording studio for a session by hopping a freight train ("Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues)"). His lyrics combined keen observation with an ability to turn an effective phrase, and he was less reliant than many of his contemporaries on borrowed verses and boilerplate swagger.
Some accounts attribute his nickname of Sleepy to a blood pressure disorder and/or narcolepsy. Others, such as Bob Koester, claim he simply had a "tendency to withdraw from his surroundings into drowsiness whenever life was too cruel or too boring to warrant full attention."
Estes died on June 5, 1977 and is buried at Durhamville Baptist Church in Durhamville, Tennessee.