Songfacts®:

• In "Help Me," Sonny Boy Williamson tells his woman she needs to help him with things or else he's going to find someone else. He lists basic household chores ("I might mop the floor but you help me babe") among his demands, as well as basic companionship ("when I talk, you talk with me"), and intimacy ("Darlin' I know we stripped bare, But I don't feel like lying down").
• "Help Me" wasn't a big hit (it topped out at #24 on the Billboard R&B Chart), but is considered a blues standard, which means it's been widely covered and holds status as one of the most important songs of the genre. Williamson wrote the song with Willie Dixon and Ralph Bass.
• Originally released as a standalone single in 1963, the song was also included on the Williamson compilation More Folk Blues in 1987.
• In 1987, the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame inducted the song into its "Classics of Blues Recordings."
• Sonny Boy Williamson recorded the song on January 11, 1963, in Chicago. The single's B-side was "Bye Bye Bird."
• Williamson played harmonica and sang on the track, with Matt Murphy on guitar, Milton Rector on bass, Al Duncan on drums, and either Lafayette Leake or Billy "The Kid" Emerson on organ.
• Canned Heat and Ten Years After both covered "Help Me" on their respective self-titled debut albums. Johnny Winter included a live cover on his 2001 album, Lone Star Shootout, and Joan Osborne covered the song on her 1995 debut album, Relish.
  
  In addition to these notable covers, hundreds of other artists have recorded the song.
• Sonny Boy Williamson was a stage name for Alex (possibly Aleck) Miller. Early on, he went by Rice Miller or Little Boy Blue, but when he was asked to impersonate a different blues singer named Sonny Boy Williamson, Miller obliged, and he eventually just co-opted the name. That original Williamson was actually born a few years later but was the first to make an impact, recording harmonica-heavy songs like "Shotgun Blues" in the late '30s and early '40s. But the identity thieving Williamson became much more popular a was far more widely recorded. When the original Sonny Boy Williamson died in 1948, he had the name all to himself.
  
  Williamson II, as he's known in the history books, got his recording career started when he performed on Elmore James' "Dust My Broom." He was successful in the 1950s and '60s and bridged generations, starting in the American blues scene and later recording with '60s British rock acts the Yardbirds and the Animals.