Big Joe Williams may have been the most cantankerous human being who ever walked the earth with guitar in hand. At the same time, he was an incredible blues musician: a gifted songwriter, a powerhouse vocalist, and an exceptional idiosyncratic guitarist. Despite his deserved reputation as a fighter (documented in Michael Bloomfield's bizarre booklet Me and Big Joe), artists who knew him well treated him as a respected elder statesman. Even so, they may not have chosen to play with him, because -- as with other older Delta artists -- if you played with him you played by his rules.

As protégé David "Honeyboy" Edwards described him, Williams in his early Delta days was a walking musician who played work camps, jukes, store porches, streets, and alleys from New Orleans to Chicago. He recorded through five decades for Vocalion, Okeh, Paramount, Bluebird, Prestige, Delmark, and many others. As a youngster, I met him in Delmark owner Bob Koester's store, the Jazz Record Mart. At the time, Big Joe was living there when not on his constant travels. According to Charlie Musselwhite, he and Big Joe kicked off the blues revival in Chicago in the '60s.

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.

Anyone who wants to learn Delta blues must one day come to grips with the idea that the guitar is a drum as well as a melody-producing instrument. A continuous, African-derived musical tradition emphasizing percussive techniques on stringed instruments from the banjo to the guitar can be heard in the music of Delta stalwarts Charley Patton, Fred McDowell, and Bukka White. Each employed decidedly percussive techniques, beating on his box, knocking on the neck, snapping the strings, or adding buzzing or sizzling effects to augment the instrument's percussive potential. However, Big Joe Williams, more than any other major recording artist, embodied the concept of guitar-as-drum, bashing out an incredible series of riffs on his G-tuned nine-string for over 60 years.

by Barry Lee Pearson

 

Slicni muzicari / Similar Artists	Uticaj od ... /Influenced By	Uticaj na ... /Followers
* Honeyboy Edwards * Muddy Waters * Bukka White * Tommy Johnson * John Hammond, Jr. * Johnny Shines * Furry Lewis * Son House * Mercy Dee Walton * Cat Iron * Jesse Fortune * Robert Lockwood, Jr. * Helen Humes	* Charley Patton * Robert Johnson * Blind Lemon Jefferson	* Memphis Willie B. * Steve James * Herman E. Johnson * Muddy Waters * Honeyboy Edwards * Scott H. Biram

1958 Piney Woods Blues — Delmark 1961 Blues on Highway 49 — Delmark 1961 Nine String Guitar Wizard — Collectables 1961 Tough Times — Arhoolie 1963 Blues for 9 Strings — Bluesville 1964 Big Joe Williams at Folk City [live] — Prestige/Bluesville 1964 Studio Blues — Bluesville 1966 Stavin' Chain Blues — Delmark 1967 Hell Bound & Heaven Sent — Smithsonian Folkways 1968 Live at Folk City — Bluesville 1969 Hand Me Down My Old Walking Stick — Sequel 1969 Big Joe Williams & Sonny Boy Williamson — Blues Classics 1970 Big Crawlin' Snake — RCA 1972 Blues from Mississippi — Blues On Blues 1974 Ramblin' Wandering Blues — Storyville 1975 Big Joe Williams [Storyville] — Storyville 1975 Big Joe Williams, Pete Williams — Storyville 1975 Don't Your Plums Look Mellow — BluesWay 1978 Back to the Roots (R) — Ornament 1981 Thinking of What They Did to Me — Arhoolie 1988 Malvina My Sweet Woman (M) — Oldie Blues 1998 No More Whiskey — Evidence 2001 Highway Man — Southland 2002 Po' Jo — Fabulous 2002 Meet Me Around the Corner — Past Perfect 2003 Chicago 63 [live] — Acrobat Country Blues — Specialty Dont Leave Me — Polydor Mississippi Delta Blues — Spivey Nine String Guitar Blues — Delmark

1961 Walking Blues — Fantasy 1964 Back to the Country — Testament 1965 Early Recordings 1935-41 — Mamlish 1966 Classic Delta Blues — Milestone/Original Blues Classics 1974 Legacy of the Blues, Vol. 6 — GNP 1975 Early Recording — Mamlish 1990 Shake Your Boogie [live] — Arhoolie 1991 Blues Masters — Storyville 1991 Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1935-1949) — Document 1991 Delta Blues: 1951 — Trumpet 1993 Blues from the South Side — Pilz 1995 Final Years — Gitanes 1995 Mississippi's Big Joe Williams and His Nine-String Guitar — Smithsonian Folkways 1996 Giant of the 9-String Guitar — EPM Musique 1996 Blues Classics — L&R 1996 Have Mercy! [Rykodisc] — Rykodisc 1996 Wild Cow Blues — Magnum America 1998 These Are My Blues — Testament 1998 Baby Please Don't Go [Wolf] — Wolf 1998 Ramblin' & Wanderin' — Aim 1999 Going Back to Crawford — Arhoolie 1999 Crawlin' King Snake — Catfish 2000 Big Joe Williams and Friends — Purple Pyramid 2000 Watergate Blues [live] — Chrisly 2001 Field Recordings — ZYX 2001 Jackson, Mississippi Blues — ZYX 2001 Absolutely the Best — Fuel 2000 2001 Les Incontournables — WEA 2003 The Blues: Baby Please Don't Go 1935-1951 — Fremeaux & Associes 2003 I Got Wild — Delmark 2004 Revisited — Varese 2004 Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues — JSP 2004 Baby Please Don't Go [Snapper] — Snapper Music Group 2004 Blues Cafe Presents — Blues Cafe 2006 The Sonet Blues Story — Verve 2007 Have Mercy! [Collectables] — Collectables 2007 Shake Your Boogie: Live at the Old Capitol Building 1974 — Wolf 2007 Baby Please Don't Go [Blue Label] — Blue Label 2007 Delta and Chicago Blues Founder — Saga Blues Big Joe Williams, Vol. 2, 1945-1949 — Blues Documents The Best of the Blues — Storyville