Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

×

Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

Close

Big Joe Williams Biography: 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. As protégé David “Honeyboy” Edwards described him, Big Joe 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. Big Joe was born in Crawford, MS and settled in St. Louis by 1925 where he married blues singer Bessie Mae Smith and worked with Walter Davis, Robert Lee McCoy and Henry Townsend. Little is known of his early years although by he apparently began traveling young, supposedly running away from home to join the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Along the way he worked the lumber mills, levee camps, plantations, gambling dens and brothels. By the late 20’s he earned a considerable reputation in Mississippi. Honeyboy recalls his first sight of Big Joe: “…Big Joe Williams was playing at Black Rosie’s dance. Joe wasn’t wasn’t nothing but a hobo then, running down the streets. I went over to Rosie’s and there he was playing. He was in his thirties, had a red handkerchief around his neck, and he was playing a little pearl-necked Stella guitar; he was playing the blues. He played “Highway 49?, and I just stood and looked at him. I hadn’t heard a man play the blues like that! …Nine strings, he always had those nine strings on his guitar. That’s something he invented himself. He bored holes at the top of the neck of the guitar and made himself a nine-string guitar. That’s what he played all the time.” …He was playing “Brother James”, all of them old numbers like that. “Brother James”, “Highway 49?, Stack O’ Dollars.” …’Baby Please Don’t Go”, Milkcow Blues.” In St. Louis it was Walter Davis who got Big Joe signed to Bluebird as well as Robert Lee McCoy. Bg Joe’s first session for Bluebird, on February 25, 1935, yielded 6 tunes. This initial session finds Joe playing solo except for “Somebody’s Been Borrowing That Stuff” with Henry Townsend on second guitar. Joe wouldn’t be heard solo on record again for some time. As John Miller noted: “Big Joe’s playing on these two sessions is quite amazing. Everything is in Open G tuning, so a certain sameness of tonality and very pared back harmonic content results, but Joe’s rhythmic imagination and ability to execute his ideas in the moment has never been equaled in this genre. His right hand approach combines powerful thumb popping of bass notes and lines with vigorous runs in the treble and an array of strumming and brushing techniques that has to be heard to be believed.” The second session, on October 31, 1935, resulted in four more tunes, and was done with a line-up of Joe joined by Dad Tracy on one-string fiddle and Chasey Collins on washboard. That second session included the first recorded version of “Baby Please Don’t Go.” Big Joe backed Chasey Collins on two numbers at the same date; “Atlanta Town” and “Walking Blues” are superbly sung blues with excellent playing by Joe and makes one wish Collins had recorded more. Rootin' Ground Hog 78Sonny Boy I and Big Joe first recorded together May 5, 1937. This was a marathon recording session. Robert Lee McCoy cut six sides at this session with backing by Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Joe Williams. The May 5th sessions were also Sonny Boy Williamson’s first and Nighthawk and Joe Williams backed him on this legendary session that produced such enduring classics as “Good Morning Little School Girl”, “Blue Bird Blues” and “Sugar Mama”. In addition Big Joe Williams recorded eight sides under his own name with Nighthawk and Sonny Boy backing him and Nighthawk also backed Walter Davis on an eight-song session. Big Joe backed Sonny Boy again for two sessions in March and June 1939 which yielded 18 sides. In the 1940’s Sonny Boy backed Big Joe on sessions on March and June 1941. Big Joe and Sonny Boy reunited for a four-song session together on July 12, 1945 with Jump Jackson on drums and a twelve-song session on July 22 1947 with Ransom Knowling on bass and Judge Riley on drums. As Tony Russell noted about these sessions: “The half-dozen tracks they cut at a session in 12/41, including definitive interpretations of ‘[Baby] Please Don’t Go’, ”Highway 49? and ‘Someday Baby’, confirm them as one of the great blues partnerships. They continued recording together until 1947, the delicate architecture of their duets solidly buttressed by bass and drums. It isn’t off said, but it seems likely that driving trio and quartet sides like ‘Drop Down Blues’ (1945) or ‘King Biscuit Stomp’ (1947) were listened to attentively by some of the younger musicians then finding their voice in Chicago’s clubs or on Maxwell Street.”

×

Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

Close

As Big Joe sailed into the 50’s, recording opportunities weren’t as plentiful probably due to the fact he did nothing to update his sound to the changing musical times. Among the most notable recordings was an eight-song session in 1951 cut for the Jackson, MS based Trumpet label. Joe is in terrific form on numbers like “Delta Blues”, the evocative “Whistling Pines” and “Over Hauling Blues.” In the 50’s he also recorded for Specialty and Vee-Jay. Just prior to the folk-blues boom, Big Joe recorded extensively for Delmark at sessions in 1958 and 1961. Piney Woods Blues and Stavin’ Chain are among his best from this period, both recorded at the beginning of 1958 and feature the excellent J.D. Short who was a cousin of Big Joe. Piney Woods BluesBy the 1960’s Joe was became much in demand as the blues revival picked up steam. He performed at festivals, clubs and coffeehouses through the country as well as playing overseas as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. He recorded prolifically during this period for labels such as Bluesville, Spivey, Storyville, Folkways, Testament, Takoma, Arhoolie, Adelphi among others. Among his best albums from the 1960’s are Tough Times on Arhoolie which has been reissued on CD as Shake Your Boogie which adds some tracks from a 1969 session. He recorded songs like “Mean Stepfather” and “Brother James” before but rarely as powerful as these versions. We play several interesting sides from the 1960’s including a pair from Blues Roots: The Mississippi Blues Vol. 1 on Storyville recorded circa 1964/65. These sides were recorded in St. Louis and Chicago by Pete Welding. Most of these men like Coot Venson and Arthur Weston were musical associates of Big Joe while Bert and Russ Logan were uncles of his.

Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Big Joe Williams were involved in a jam session for World Pacific cut in Los Angles in 1960. This material has been reissued under many titles including Down South Summit Meetin’, First Meetin’, Southern Meetin’ among others. They also recorded together live at the Ash Grove in Hollywood in 1961 which was issued as Blues Hoot. From these sessions we spin “Ain’t Nothin’ Like Whiskey” and “Blues For Gamblers.” Also from this period we spotlight Big Joe’s pal Shortstuff Macon. The liner notes to his Folkways album had this to say: “Short Stuff has now begun traveling the sparse and fickle concert circuit with Big Joe Wiilliams, who, in a trip back to Mississippi, ‘discovered’ him, liked his ‘deep down’ music, remembered his father and mother, and decided to take him with him. Since then, the two bluesmen have been making do with whatever work they could get—living from day to day, hour to hour, on the whims and generosity (sometimes curiosity) of friends interested in blues, college student aficionados, and the small, folk record companies.” That comes from the notes to Hell Bound And Heaven Sent in 1964 with backing from Big Joe. From that album we spin the excellent “Short Stuff’s Corrina.” The same year they cut sides for the Spivey label which were issued on a album called Mr. Shortstuff. He appears again on the album Goin’ Back to crawfor4Crawford from 1971. Goin’ Back to Crawford was produced by Big Joe in his hometown of Crawford, MS in 1971 by gathering talented relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances to hopefully present their songs to the wider world. Big Joe performs on seven of his own tracks and backs several of the artists including Shortstuff Macon who died two years after these recordings.

In the 1970’s Big Joe continued to record for labels like Storyville, Sonet, Bluesway, L+R and others. By 1982 he was back in Mississippi where he passed in December of that year. Joe 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’s nightclub in Austin, Texas, organized by California music writer Dan Forte, and erected through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on October 9, 1994. Joe’s old pal Charlie Musselwhite, delivered the eulogy at the unveiling. Williams’ headstone epitaph proclaims him “King of the 9 String Guitar.

×

Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

Close

Product Description: By the time these sessions were recorded in the early '60s (as Studio Blues and Blues for Nine Strings), the sounds of Big Joe Williams's thundering voice and his extraordinary nine-string guitar had been heard from the levee camps of the Delta to the freight yards of old Chicago. Once rediscovered by the folks at Prestige/Bluesville (like so many blues artists), he was placed in the studio with an understandably nervous young harp player named Larry Johnson and legendary bassist Willie Dixon. What resulted was a down-home jam session in which Big Joe dragged the others to wherever his personal muse led. Highly personalized versions of ancient ballads are the norm here, with Big Joe's fluid fingerpicking weaving its way around Dixon's deep, syncopated groove. It's incredible how tight the trio is and how original each song sounds considering the improvised nature of the sessions. But then, the great ones always make it sound easy.

Review: Unless you are a serious blues historian or blues aficionado, this 22-track collection of tracks by Big Joe Williams is all you are ever going to need. All of these tunes were recorded in New York on October 7, 1961, and issued as two separate LPs on Prestige's Bluesville imprint. The first ten tracks here were released as Studio Blues (catalog number 1083) and the rest as Blues for 9 Strings (catalog number 1056). Right, they are presented here in reverse release order, but they were all recorded during the same session. Williams is accompanied throughout by Willie Dixon on bass and Larry Johnson on harmonica. Williams plays his trademark nine-string guitar with its wild tuning on all but three tunes here. All of his well-known numbers are presented, though they are obviously later dates, but they lack no passion or proficiency given that this was the real beginning of the blues revival on this side of the Atlantic. The folk revival had not yet begun to wane, and many young men were heading for the East Coast in station wagons to find the bluesmen they had heard on either Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music or similar recordings. Williams and his friends show incredible stamina in running through these songs, and producer Kenneth S. Goldstein does a great job of presenting them raw and rugged. This is a party record if there ever was one. ~ Thom Jurek (AMG)

Note: Credit to garet jax, the original uploader.

×

Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

Close

×

Big Joe Williams - Walking Blues - 1961 (1992)

Close