Track Listings
1. Baby Please Don't Go
2. Highway 49
3. Shaggy Hound Blues
4. Ramblin' And Wanderin' Blues
5. Don't The Apples Look Mellow Hangin'
6. Mean Mistreater
7. Prison Bound
8. Stack O'Dollars
9. I've Been Buked And I've Been Scorned
10. I Feel So Worried
11. Ain't Nothin' Like Whiskey
12. Brand New Car
13. So Soon I Will Be Goin' My Way Back Home
14. Shake 'Em On Down
15. Jump Baby Jump
16. Everybody's Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone
BIG JOE WILLIAMS BIOGRAPHY
Born in Crawford, Mississippi, as a youth Williams began
wandering across the United States busking and playing stores,
bars, alleys and work camps. In the early 1920s he worked
in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels revue, and recorded with the
Birmingham Jug Band in 1930 for the Okeh label.
In 1934 he was in St. Louis, where he met record producer
Lester Melrose who signed him to a contract with Bluebird
Records in 1935. He stayed with Bluebird for ten years,
recording such blues hits as "Baby, Please Don't Go"
(1935) and "Crawlin' King Snake" (1941), both
songs later covered by many other performers. He also recorded
with other blues singers, including John Lee "Sonny
Boy" Williamson, Robert Nighthawk and Peetie Wheatstraw.
Williams remained a noted blues artist in the 1950s and
1960s, with his guitar style and vocals becoming popular
with folk-blues fans. He later recorded for the Trumpet,
Delmark, Prestige and Vocalion labels, among others. He
became a regular on the concert and coffeehouse circuits,
touring Europe and Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
and performing at major U.S. festivals.
Marc Miller described a 1965 performance in Greenwich Village:
Sandwiched in between the two sets, perhaps as an afterthought,
was the bluesman Big Joe Williams (not to be confused with
the jazz and rhythm and blues singer Joe Williams who sang
with Count Basie). He looked terrible. He had a big bulbous
aneuristic protrusion bulging out of his forehead. He was
equipped with a beat up old acoustic guitar which I think
had nine strings and sundry homemade attachments and a wire
hanger contraption around his neck fashioned to hold a kazoo
while keeping his hands free to play the guitar. Needless
to say, he was a big letdown after the folk rockers.
My date and I exchanged pained looks in empathy for what
was being done this Delta blues man who was ruefully out
of place. After three or four songs the unseen announcer
came on the p. a. system and said, "Lets have a big
hand for Big Joe Williams, ladies and gentlemen; thank you,
Big Joe".
But Big Joe wasn't finished. He hadn't given up on the audience
and he ignored the announcer. He continued his set and after
each song the announcer came over the p. a. and tried to
politely but firmly get Big Joe off the stage. Big Joe was
having none of it and he continued his set with his nine-string
acoustic and his kazoo.
Long about the sixth or seventh song he got into his groove
and started to wail with raggedy slide guitar riffs, powerful
voice, as well as intense percussion on the guitar and its
various accoutrements. By the end of the set he had that
audience of jaded '60s rockers on their feet cheering and
applauding vociferously. Our initial pity for him was replaced
by wondrous respect. He knew he had it in him to move that
audience and he knew that thousands of watts and hundreds
of decibels do not change one iota the basic power of a
song.
Big Joe's guitar playing is decidedly in the Delta Blues
style and yet is unique. He played driving rhythm and virtuosic
lead lines simultaneously and sang over it all. He played
with picks both on his thumb and index finger, plus his
guitar was very heavily modified. Williams added a rudimentary
electric pick-up, whose wires coiled all over the top of
his guitar. He also added three extra strings, creating
unison pairs for the first, second and fourth strings. His
guitar was usually tuned to Open G, like such: (D2 G2 D3D3
G3 B3B3 D4D4), with a capo placed on the second fret to
set the tuning to the key of A. During the Twenties and
Thirties, Big Joe had gradually added these extra strings
in order to keep other guitar players from being able to
play his guitar. In his later years, he would also occasionally
use a 12-string guitar with all strings tuned in unison
to Open G. It is little known that Big Joe sometimes tuned
a six-string guitar to an interesting modification of Open
G. In this modified tuning, the bass D string (D2) was replaced
with a .08 gauge string and tuned to G4. The resulting tuning
was (G4 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4), with the G4 string being used as
a melody string by Big Joe.
This tuning was used exclusively for slide playing.
He died December 17, 1982 in Macon, Mississippi. He was
inducted into the W. C. Handy Blues Hall of Fame on October
4, 1992.
