(Blues) Big Joe Williams - Piney Woods Blues

Styles: Acoustic Delta Blues, Prewar Country Blues
Recorded: 1958
Released: 1997
Label: DMK
File: mp3 @ 320kbps
Size: 90.9 MB
Time: 39:47
Art: Full Covers

1. Baby Please Don't Go - 3:04
2. Drop Down Mama - 2:28
3. Mellow Peaches - 3:08
4. No More Whiskey - 3:12
5. Tailor Made Babe - 3:35
6. Big Joe Talking - 3:35
7. Someday Baby - 2:59
8. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl - 3:12
9. Peach Orchard Mama - 3:42
10. Juanita - 3:24
11. Shetland Pony Blues - 3:08
12. Omaha Blues - 3:27

Personnel:
Big Joe Williams - Nine-String Guitar, Vocals
J.D. Short - Harmonica, Guitar tr.2,4,8,11


Notes: Big Joe Williams covered ground like kudzu. He was constantly on the move, back and forth between Mississippi and St Louis or Chicago, or out to New York or LA, as if he was hoping to win a Handy Award for Rambling. But he always kept his links with South, and at end of his life he returned to his birthplace in Crawford, Mississippi. He first left there in his teens to work on travelling shows, in jugbands and with contemporaries like Honeyboy Edwards. In the '30s and '40s based in St Louis, he made numerous recordings, including many with Sonny Boy Williamson I. He spent much of the '50s in obscurity, from which he lifted himself by making contact with Delmark Records and finding fresh audience as a living voice from the dead past of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Throughout the '60s and into the '70s he was a stalwart of the campus and club circuits. He recorded indefatigably, but was not too much of an egoist to talk up the talents of friends and relations, many of whom thus gained an opportunity to make recordings of their own. What is most striking about this albums, made before Big Joe had become accustomed to the folkclub and concert circuit, istheir understatendess. It may be an odd word to use of such an outgoing performer, but he does seem to take care to let his songs make their point without exaggeration or fluorish. Perhaps it's relevant that he was partnered on four tracks of this album by J.D. Short, a musician he knew well and respected enough to work with rather than dominate.