Even in a blues world populated by colorful and idiosyncratic characters, Big Joe Williams loomed as one of the most inimitable – and irascible. Born to ramble, he left his Crawford, Mississippi, home at age 12 or his early teens, worked across the South in levee camps, minstrel shows, and other settings, and spent most of his career traveling between Crawford, St. Louis, Mobile, Chicago, and Omaha, with hundreds of stops in between. Joe, who was born on October 16 in either 1899 or 1903, according to various documents and driver’s licenses, never learned to read or write but no one knew better how to negotiate the highways of America, how to improvise a blues, or how to get a record deal (for himself or for any number of friends and relatives). Big Joe recorded a number of prewar blues classics for Bluebird and Columbia, including the much-covered Baby Please Don’t Go and several follow-ups, and during the postwar years when the record industry bypassed most country bluesmen of his generation, Joe was still able to hustle recording opportunities. He had singles on Bullet, Trumpet and Vee-Jay and also did sessions for Specialty and Cobra that ended up on reissue albums decades later. Joe knew right where to go when the folk blues movement began in the late 1950s, and his propulsive rhythms, irregular timings, robust vocals, and unique nine-string guitar were featured on constantly reinvented body of work on albums for Delmark, Arhoolie, Testament, Prestige/Bluesville, Folkways, and other companies. Joe expanded his touring base to eventually include Europe, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. He died on December 17, 1982, in Macon, Mississippi.
— Jim O’Neal
www.stackhouse-bluesoterica.com
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