Big Joe Williams
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 exceptionally 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. According to Charlie Musselwhite, he and Big Joe kicked off the blues revival in Chicago in the '60s.
When appearing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at The Fickle Pickle, Williams played 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 one would likely ever hear.
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 /TiVo
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Big Joe Williams And The Stars Of Mississippi Blues
Blues - Released by JSP Records on 25 apr. 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Joe Williams 1935-1945: The Giant of the 9 Strings Guitar (Blues Collection Historic Recordings)
Blues - Released by EPM on 9 apr. 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Big Joe Williams 1935-1951: Baby Please Don't Go
Blues - Released by Fremeaux Heritage on 26 aug. 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Shake Your Boogie
Blues - Released by Wolf Records International GmbH on 7 aug. 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Big Joe Williams Revisited
Blues - Released by Fuel 2000 on 18 aug. 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Big Joe Williams' Greatest Hits
Blues - Released by Excess Music on 4 mei 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Original Ramblin' Bluesman (1945-1961)
Blues - Released by Jasmine Records on 13 dec. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
My Magic Christmas Songs
Jazz - Released by Happy Holidays Recordings on 11 dec. 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Chewred Up Grass
Jazz - Released by Black & Partner Licenses LLC on 9 apr. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wild Mood Best Tracks
Jazz - Released by Wild Mood Best Tracks Recordings on 24 sep. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Meet Me Around the CornerNothing But the Blues
Big Joe Williams, John Lee Hooker
Blues - Released by History on 2 jan. 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Blues Masters Vol. 2
Blues - Released by Storyville on 20 nov. 1991
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Hell Bound and Heaven Sent Blues
Big Joe Williams, Short Stuff Macon
Blues - Released by Folkways Records on 1 jan. 1968
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Big Joe Williams - Baby Please Do
Blues - Released by Westmill on 25 mrt. 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Delight Beautiful Tracks
Jazz - Released by Daylights Nightlights Recordz TM on 23 mei 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Baby Please Don't Go
Blues - Released by Ten12 Entertainment on 6 nov. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Chewred Up Grass
Pop - Released by Royal Bakerfield Music on 9 apr. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Big Joe Williams - By Baby
Blues - Released by Eastmill on 9 okt. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Milestones of a Legend - Delta Blues, Vol. 6
Blues - Released by Documents 2 on 10 mrt. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sensational Flight Call (Remastered)
Jazz - Released by Sensational Flight Call Recording on 19 feb. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo