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.

Big Joe Williams

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