Last.fm: Big Joe Williams

Top Artists for the week ending Sunday 16 November 2008

1		Big Joe Williams		24
2		Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians		14
3		Southern Culture on the Skids		6
4		Bigg Robb		5
5		Blind Gary Davis		3
6		Theodis Ealey		2

We only get six this week.  Otherwise we'd have to list the 99 other bands tied for 7th. 

Please note that Big Joe Williams is neither Joe Williams nor Big Joe Turner.  He is, in fact, a distinctly different cat:  he is 100% Delta Blues, born and died in Mississippi.

"Big Joe Williams (October 16, 1903 - December 17, 1982) was an American blues musician and songwriter, known for his characteristic style of guitar-playing, his nine-string guitar, and his bizarre, cantankerous personality. He performed frequently, wandering across the United States and playing stores, bars, alleys and work camps, as well as recording for Okeh, Bluebird Records, Delmark Records, Prestige Records and Vocalion."  (Hey, a dead guy's MySpace page would never lie.)

"He also recorded with other blues singers, including John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Robert Nighthawk and Peetie Wheatstraw."  (Because Wikipedia would never lead you astray either.) 

This busking bluesman was known for banging and thumping on his guitar and generally going out of his way to create a singularly percussive effect.  In one particularly passionate short piece I found on the Interwebs, one writer remembers:

"...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." 

I'd have paid good money to see a show like that.

I found a few choice nuggets at YouTube.  For example here is a mature Big Joe performing live the song Highway 49 from above.

Also, courtesy also of YouTube here is Big Joe performing "Baby, Please Don't Go" from 1963, AND Bob Dylan's cover of it from way back in the day.