Robert Pete Williams
Discovered in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Robert Pete Williams became one of the great blues discoveries during the folk boom of the early '60s. His disregard for conventional patterns, tunings, and structures kept him from a wider audience, but his music remains one of the great, intense treats of the blues.
Williams was born in Zachary, Louisiana, the son of sharecropping parents. As a child, he worked the fields with his family and never attended school. Williams didn't begin playing blues until his late teens, when he made himself a guitar out of a cigar box. Playing his homemade guitar, Williams began performing at local parties, dances, and fish fries at night while he worked during the day. Even though he was constantly working, he never made quite enough money to support his family, which caused considerable tension between him and his wife; according to legend, she burned his guitar one night in a fit of anger.
Despite all of the domestic tension, Williams continued to play throughout the Baton Rouge area, performing at dances and juke joints. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed he acted in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola, where he served two years before being discovered by ethnomusicologists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen. The pair recorded Williams performing several of his own songs, which were all about life in prison. Impressed with the guitarist's talents, Oster and Allen pleaded for a pardon for Williams. The pardon was granted in 1959, after he had served a total of three and a half years. For the first five years after he left prison, Williams could only perform in Louisiana, but his recordings -- which appeared on Folk-Lyric, Arhoolie, and Prestige, among other labels -- were popular and he received positive word of mouth reviews.
In 1964, Williams played his first concert outside of Louisiana, at the legendary Newport Folk Festival. Williams' performance was enthusiastically received and he began touring the United States, often playing shows with Mississippi Fred McDowell. For the remainder of the '60s and most of the '70s, Robert Pete Williams constantly played concerts and festivals across America, as well a handful of dates in Europe. Along the way, he recorded for a handful of small independent labels, including Fontana and Storyville. Williams slowed down his work schedule in the late '70s, largely due to declining health. The guitarist died on December 31, 1980, at the age of 66.
© Cub Koda /TiVo
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Discography
21 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Free Again (Album Version)
Blues - Released by Original Blues Classics on 1 nov. 1961
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Robert Pete Williams
Blues - Released by Fat Possum on 13 nov. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Poor Bob's Blues
Blues - Released by Arhoolie Records on 1 jan. 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Long Ol' Way From Home
Blues - Released by Fuel 2000 on 6 sep. 2006
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Sonet Blues Story
Blues - Released by Universal Music AB on 1 jan. 1973
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rolling Stone (Chicago Version)
R&B - Released by Blues Route on 31 jul. 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
I'm Blue as a Man Can Be
Blues - Released by Arhoolie Records on 1 jan. 1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
When a Man Takes the Blues
Blues - Released by Arhoolie Records on 1 jan. 1994
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Blues Masters, Vol. 1
Blues - Released by Storyville on 20 nov. 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Broken-Hearted Man
Blues - Released by Southland on 30 jan. 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Santa Fé Blues - Last Recordings (Blues Collection)
Blues - Released by EPM on 22 feb. 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Louise
Blues - Released by Wolf Records International GmbH on 8 okt. 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Freight Train Blues
Blues - Released by Vanilla OMP on 23 dec. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Angola Prisoner's Blues
Robert Pete Williams, Matthew Hogman Maxey, Robert Guitar Welch
Blues - Released by Doxy Records on 24 nov. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rolling Stone / Two Wings (All Tracks Remastered)
Blues - Released by Hit Singles Records on 3 okt. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Free Again (HD Remastered)
Blues - Released by Reborn recordings on 25 jan. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Almost Dead Blues (All Tracks Remastered)
Blues - Released by Hit Singles Records on 4 jun. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Free Again (Hq Remastered)
Jazz - Released by Vintage Recordings on 19 nov. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Free Again / I'm Blue As A Man Can Be (All Tracks Remastered)
Blues - Released by Hit Singles Records on 2 sep. 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo