James "Sugar Boy" Crawford has been played on NTS shows including Diddy Wah, with Jock-A-Mo first played on 5 October 2015.

James "Sugar Boy" Crawford, Jr. (October 12, 1934 – September 15, 2012) was an American R&B musician based in New Orleans. He was the author of "Jock-A-Mo" (1954), which was made into a hit. The song was later recreated as "Iko Iko",[1] by the Dixie Cups, and was recorded by many other artists, including Dr. John, Belle Stars, the Grateful Dead, Cyndi Lauper, and (as "Geto Boys") by Glass Candy.

Starting out on trombone, Crawford formed a band, which a local DJ, Doctor Daddy-O, named the Chapaka Shawee (Creole for "We Aren't Raccoons"), the title of an instrumental that they played. The group was signed by Chess Records president Leonard Chess and was renamed Sugar Boy and his Cane Cutters.

His song "Jock-A-Mo" became a standard at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but Crawford disappeared from public view. In a 2002 interview for Offbeat magazine, told how his career came to an abrupt halt in 1963, after a severe beating at the hands of state troopers incapacitated him for two years, forcing him to leave the music industry. In 1969, he decided to sing only in church.[1] In 2012 he made a guest appearance singing gospel in an episode of the HBO series Treme. He died one month before the episode aired.

Crawford appeared on the 1995 album Let Them Talk, by Davell Crawford, his grandson .[2] He made some stage appearances with Davell, including one at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival[1] in 1996 and at the seventh annual Ponderosa Stomp in April 2008.[3]

Among the artists Crawford recorded with was Snooks Eaglin.

Crawford died after a brief illness in a hospice in 2012, aged 77