Big Joe Williams

“Shake Your Boogie”

CD/CASS 315
CD upc: 096297031520
CASS upc: 0929703154

REVIEWS

Big Joe played a 9-string guitar which he pounded, slapped and drove like a demented downhill slalom through a thicket of seminal Delta blues, singing in a gutsy, raw, emotion-exhausting voice. Many of his songs were loosely constructed around the beaten chassis of a familiar Mississippi tune or riff, but in his hands they were totally personal, often topical masterpieces. And in spite of a shoe-string budget for Arhoolie founder Chris Strachwitz when he recorded the bulk of these tracks back in 1960, the re-mastered CD sound just jumps out of the speakers and tears chunks off you with its teeth. If I had to pick a CD to try and hook a newcomer to country blues, this would surely be one of the candidates.”

(Ian Anderson — Folk Roots)

But he sat, puffed, reminisced, and played for me on his home-adapted, wired up, nine-string acoustic guitar. One could hardly have guessed from his earlier Bluebird recordings that Big Joe would have survived to become respected as a major blues artist in the 1960s. Yet he really epitomized, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the rambling, anarchic, individual, unlettered, Ievee camp, creative blues singer. If the stereotype of the 'itinerant blues singer' needed justifying, it was Big Joe who truly represented it. Hoboing, literally, catching the Greyhound when he could, bumming a ride, always out of luck and money, he would turn up in St. Louis, Chicago or out on the West Coast, unannounced.

That was the case when Bob Geddins recorded 'She Left Me A Mule To Ride' in the fall of 1959. Equipment failure spoiled the session but a year later Chris Strachwitz recorded the celebrated `Tough Times' album which constitute the first dozen titles of this CD. He had got into a spot of trouble and had been bailed in Oakland, later to be transferred to the Greystone 'correctional facilities' at Pleasanton, California. His anxieties are touchingly expressed in 'Greystone Blues,' like 'Mean Stepfather' an autobiographical blues. In a sense though, they all are, for no one played or sang a standard such as 'Forty-Four Blues' like Big Joe. His playing on this item is scintillating. He used the same theme for a remarkable blues-ballad `Brother James' who was killed riding a ''29 Ford.' It would have been good to have heard more of Joe's wife Mary, who sang splendidly on the gospel song, 'I Want My Crown.' A decade after 'Mule' was cut, Strachwitz recorded Big Joe again, making the session that was issued on Arhoolie 1053 and which is also in its entirety on this CD.

It is hard to tell the passing of the years, though there is perhaps greater range in Joe's voice, especially on 'Louisiana Bound'. Like the former set this includes a boogie track, though the CD title notwith-standing this is not where his work is most important, even though it is an exciting performance. Titles like 'Death Of Martin Luther King' and 'Army Man In Vietnam,' like the early 'President Roosevelt' are typical of Big Joe's singular perception of national figures and world events. On these two titles and a couple of others Charlie Musselwhite played sympathetic harmonica. It is tempting to discuss every track, but the conclusion remains the same: this is one you've got to have. Sixty-seven minutes of blues genius.”

(Paul Oliver — Blues & Rhythm)