Big Joe Williams
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Biography
Big Joe Williams was a gifted Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist, noted for his unique rhythmic playing of a nine-string electric guitar. He was born into a family of blues performers and left home at 19 to live the life of a travelling bluesman playing for workers at logging camps, railways, stores, bars and anywhere he could perform.
He was influenced by Charley Patton and in the 1930s travelled with the young Muddy Waters and David 'Honeyboy' Edwards around the Mississippi Delta. In 1935 Williams recorded his best-known song, 'Baby Please Don't Go'. It would go on to be covered by artists such as Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. Other well-known Williams songs were 'Crawlin' King Snake' and 'Peach Orchard Mama'. Many of his songs featured harmonica from John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson.
After WWII Williams reinvented himself as a touring folk/blues artist and became popular in Chicago, where he lived beneath the Jazz Record Mart. His hard-living lifestyle and cantankerous personality were captured in guitarist Michael Bloomfield's 1980 memoir 'Me and Big Joe'.
His post-war albums included 'Piney Wood Blues' (1958), 'Blues On Highway 49' (1961) and 'Hand Me Down My Old Walking Stick' (1969). He died in 1982 aged 79.
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Albums
Top Tracks
- Track Popularity
- Highway 49
- Levee Break Blues
- Rock Me, Mama (Live)
- Tell My Mother
- Wanita
- Throw a Boogie Woogie by Big Joe Williams
- When I First Left Home
- Whistling Pines
- Wild Cow Blues
- Wild Cow Moan
- Woody Woodpecker
- Prison Bound Blues featuring Big Joe Williams
- Don't Want No
- Worried Man Blues
- Worried and Lonesome
- Worry You Off My Mind
- You Are My Sunshine (Live)
- You Can Stay Out
- Bye Bye Baby
- Sloppy Drunk B
- A Man Ain't Supposed To Cry
- Highway 49 by Big Joe Williams
- Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
- If You Steal My Chickens, You Can't Make 'Em Lay featuring Big Joe Williams
