Big Joe Williams
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Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his
nine-string guitar A nine-string guitar is a guitar with nine strings instead of the commonly used six strings. Such guitars are not as common as the six-string variety, but are used by guitarists to modify the sound or expand the range of their instrument. Variant ...
. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "
Baby Please Don't Go An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...
", " Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama", among many others, for various record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. He was inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame The Blues Hall of Fame is a music museum located at 421 S. Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Initially, the "Blues Hall of Fame" was not a physical building, but a listing of people who have significantly contributed to blues music. Started in 1 ...
on October 4, 1992. The blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (''Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story'', ''Virginia Piedmont Blues'') described Williams's performance: :When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzzing, sizzling, African-sounding music I have ever heard.


From busking to Bluebird

Born in
Oktibbeha County Oktibbeha County is a county in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census the population was 51,788. The county seat is Starkville. The county's name is derived from a local Native American word meanin ...
, a few miles west of
Crawford, Mississippi Crawford is a small town in Lowndes County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 641 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. During the 1840s, a Baptist minister named Peter Crawford lived in the area. When the town was platted in ...
, Williams as a youth began wandering across the United States busking and playing in stores, bars, alleys and work camps. In the early 1920s he worked in the
Rabbit Foot Minstrels The Rabbit's Foot Company, also known as the Rabbit('s) Foot Minstrels and colloquially as "The Foots", was a long-running minstrel and variety troupe that toured as a tent show in the American South between 1900 and the late 1950s. It was establi ...
revue. He recorded with the Birmingham Jug Band in 1930 for Okeh Records. In 1934, he was in
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
, where he met the record producer
Lester Melrose Lester Franklin Melrose (December 14, 1891 – April 12, 1968) was a talent scout who was one of the first American producers of Chicago blues records. Career Lester Franklin Melrose was born in Sumner, Illinois, the second of six children ...
, who signed him to
Bluebird Records Bluebird Records is a record label best known for its low-cost releases, primarily of kids' music, blues and jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. It was founded in 1932 as a lower-priced RCA Victor subsidiary label of RCA Victor. Bluebird became known ...
in 1935. He stayed with Bluebird for ten years, recording such blues hits as "
Baby, Please Don't Go "Baby, Please Don't Go" is a traditional blues song that was popularized by Delta blues musician Big Joe Williams in 1935. Many cover versions followed, leading to its description as "one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in ...
" (1935) and " Crawlin' King Snake" (1941), both of which were later covered by many other musicians. He also recorded with other blues singers, including Sonny Boy Williamson,
Robert Nighthawk Robert Lee McCollum (November 30, 1909 – November 5, 1967) was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr. Nighthawk was in ...
and
Peetie Wheatstraw William Bunch (December 21, 1902 – December 21, 1941), known as Peetie Wheatstraw, was an American musician, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers. Early life and career William Bunch was the son of James Bunch and Mary (Burns) Bunc ...
. Around this time he was reportedly married to St. Louis blues singer
Bessie Mae Smith Bessie Mae Smith was an American blues singer from St. Louis, who recorded for the Okeh, Vocalion and Paramount record labels under a variety of names between 1927 and 1941. She is reported to have been married to Delta bluesman Big Joe Willia ...
, who he sometimes credited with writing “Baby Please Don’t Go”. During the early 1930s, Williams was accompanied on his travels through the Mississippi Delta by a young
Muddy Waters McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago b ...
. Williams recounted to Blewett Thomas, "I picked Muddy up in Rolling Fork when he was about 15. He went all 'round the Delta playin' harmonica behind me. But I had to put him down after a while. All these women were comin' up to me and sayin', 'Oh. your young son is so nice!' See, I had to put Muddy down because he was takin' away my women."


Festival fame

Williams remained a noted blues artist in the 1950s and 1960s, when his guitar style and vocals became popular with
folk blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in ...
fans. He recorded for
Trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
, Delmark,
Prestige Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.) Prestige may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Films * ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnet ...
,
Vocalion Vocalion Records is an American record company and label. History The label was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Company, a maker of pianos and organs, as Aeolian-Vocalion; the company also sold phonographs under the Vocalion name. "Aeolian" was ...
and other labels. 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. music festivals. Williams also had an influence on a young
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
during the early Sixties. According to Lenni Brenner ("How Dylan Found His Voice: Big Joe Williams, the Lower East Side, Peyote and the Forging of Dylan's Art"), Williams encouraged Dylan to move away from singing traditional songs and write his own music. Williams later said, "Bob wrote me thanking me for the advice I had given him about music. What he earned, what he done, he got it honest. They ask me, 'Is he real?' and I tell them that they should let him live his own life." Williams and Dylan also recorded several duets in 1962 for Victoria Spivey's label, Spivey Records. Marc Miller described a 1965 performance in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. 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 William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...
). 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.
Williams's guitar playing was in the Delta blues style and yet was unique. He played driving rhythm and virtuosic lead lines simultaneously and sang over it all. He played with picks on his thumb and index finger. His guitar was heavily modified. Williams added a rudimentary electric pickup, 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 (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 1920s and 1930s, Williams gradually added the extra strings to prevent other guitarists from playing his guitar. In his later years, he occasionally used a 12-string guitar tuned to open G. Williams sometimes tuned a six-string guitar to a modification of open G: 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. This tuning was used exclusively for slide playing.


Back to Mississippi

Williams died December 17, 1982, in
Macon, Mississippi Macon is a city in Noxubee County, Mississippi along the Noxubee River. The population was 2,768 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Noxubee County. History In 1817, Jackson's Military Road was built at the urging of Andrew Jackson to ...
. He was buried in a private cemetery outside Crawford, near the Lowndes County line. His headstone was primarily paid for by friends and partially funded by a collection taken up among musicians at
Clifford Antone Clifford Antone (October 27, 1949 – May 22, 2006) was the founder of the eponymous Austin blues club Antone's and independent record label Antone's Records and Tapes, as well as a mentor to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Kim Wilson, G ...
's nightclub in
Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
, organized by the music writer Dan Forte, and erected through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on October 9, 1994. The harmonica virtuoso
Charlie Musselwhite Charles Douglas Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944) is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the white bluesmen who came to prominence, along with Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop, as a pivotal f ...
, a one-time touring companion, delivered the eulogy at the unveiling. Williams's epitaph, composed by Forte, proclaims him "King of the 9 String Guitar." Remaining funds raised for Williams's memorial were donated by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund to the Delta Blues Museum in order to purchase one of the last guitars Williams used from his sister Mary May. The guitar purchased by the museum is a 12-string guitar that Williams used in his later days. The last nine-string (a 1950s Kay cutaway converted to Williams's nine-string specifications) is missing at this time. Williams' previous nine-string (converted from a 1944 Gibson L-7 presented to him by Wilson Ramsay, known as Beef Stew, a name given to him by Williams) is in the possession of Williams's road agent and fellow traveler, Blewett Thomas. Another of Williams's nine-string guitars is kept under the counter of the Jazz Record Mart in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
, which is owned by Bob Koester, the founder of Delmark Records. Williams can be seen playing the nine-string guitar in ''American Folk-Blues Festival: The British Tours, 1963–1966'', released on DVD in 2007. In 2003, Williams was honored with a marker on the
Mississippi Blues Trail The Mississippi Blues Trail was created by the Mississippi Blues Commission in 2006 to place interpretive markers at the most notable historical sites related to the birth, growth, and influence of the blues throughout (and in some cases beyond) t ...
in Crawford.


Discography


Studio albums

*''Piney Woods Blues'' (1958) *''Tough Times'' (1960) *''Blues on Highway 49'' (1961) *''Nine String Guitar Blues'' (1961, later re-released as ''Walking Blues'') *''Mississippi's Big Joe Williams and His Nine-String Guitar'' (1962) *''Blues for Nine Strings'' (1963) *''Back to the Country'' (1964) *''Ramblin' and Wanderin' Blues'' (1964) *''Classic Delta Blues'' (1964) *''Studio Blues'' (1966) *''Big Joe Williams'' (1966) *''Thinking of What They Did to Me'' (1969) *'' Hand Me Down My Old Walking Stick'' (1969) *''Big Joe Williams'' (1972) *''Blues from the Mississippi Delta'' (1972) *''Don't Your Plums Look Mellow Hanging on Your Tree'' (1974)


Live album

*''At Folk City'' (1962)


Collaborative albums

*''Three Kings And The Queen'' (1962, P.1964 Spivey LP 1004) with Victoria Spivey, Lonnie Johnson, Roosevelt Sykes, Bob Dylan *''Stavin' Chain Blues'' (1966), with J.D. Short *''Hell Bound and Heaven Sent'' (1964), with John Wesley (Short Stuff) Macon *''Three Kings And The Queen, Volume Two'' (1970, P.2013) (Spivey LP 1014) with Victoria Spivey, Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, Lonnie Johnson


Selected compilations

*''Crawlin' King Snake'' (1970) *''
Malvina My Sweet Woman ''Malvina My Sweet Woman'' is an album by American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Big Joe Williams. Content The album consists of ten home recorded songs from 1951/52 preserved on acetates and nine songs recorded live in March 1 ...
'' (1974) *''Big Joe Williams'' WarnerBlues Les Incontournables (1998)


Posthumous albums

*''Shake Your Boogie'' (1990) *''Going Back to Crawford'' (1999), recorded 1971, with Austen Pete, John "Shortstuff" Macon, Glover Lee Connor and Amelia Johnson


Quotations

*"When I went back down South, boy, they'd put me up on top of a house to hear me play."


References


External links

*
Illustrated Big Joe Williams discography
by Michael Bloomfield (1980) * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Big Joe 1903 births 1982 deaths American blues guitarists American male guitarists American blues singers American rhythm and blues musicians People from Oktibbeha County, Mississippi Blues musicians from Mississippi Blues revival musicians Country blues musicians Delta blues musicians Juke Joint blues musicians Electric blues musicians Bluebird Records artists Delmark Records artists American street performers 20th-century American singers 20th-century American guitarists People from Macon, Mississippi Guitarists from Mississippi 20th-century American male singers Arhoolie Records artists Mississippi Blues Trail Trumpet Records artists Vocalion Records artists Okeh Records artists Blues rock musicians