BIG JOE WILLIAMS - And Friends Going Back to Crawford @224kbps
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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.
~~ Barry Lee Pearson
-- Joe Lee "Big Joe" Williams, famous for his emotional singing, his 9 string guitar, and his composition "Baby Please Don't Go," was not only one of the pioneer Mississippi blues singers/guitarists, but also a talent scout and record producer. Big Joe produced this remarkable set of recordings in his hometown of Crawford, Miss. in 1971 by gathering talented relatives, neighbors, and acquaintances to hopefully present their songs to the wider world. Although belatedly, this CD brings you some of the most moving, pure, and authentic country blues ever put on records. Thanks, Big Joe!
Tracks
1. back home blues
2. baby please don't go
3. saturday night women
4. been in crawford too long
5. sugar diabetes blues
6. run here jailer with the key
7. take me out of the bottom
8. bird nest
9. corrina
10. i walked all night long
11. sugar on the bottom
12. bad luck
13. checkin' out
14. my last girl - don't treat her wrong!
15. can't listen no more
16. don't stay long
17. i'm wild about my jelly roll
18. moanin' fo day
19. i'm leaving this town
20. i don't know why
21. my baby stopped drinking water
22. good times here better down the road
23. shake it enough for me
24. mary frances
25. my baby don't stand no foolin'
26. she have broken my heart
..year - 1971 (Recordings)
..label - Arhoolie Recs.
..buy - http://www.arhoolie.com/titles/9015.shtml
..official website - n/a
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