Search - Big Joe Williams :: Absolutely the Best

The late Big Joe Williams, a literal giant of the blues, recorded so many quality albums that this title seems like smoke. Yet these 20 cuts do beg for inclusion among his best. Backed by pianist Erwin Helfer at Cobra's tiny Chicago studio in 1957, Williams invokes the magic of the 1930s with his distinctive nine-string guitar and tatter-edged voice on the opening tunes, including his trademark "Baby Please Don't Go." Later there's a match-up with Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, in which they all trade licks, lyrics, and harp notes in an amiable jam through "Chain Gang Blues." It's fun to catch Hopkins and Williams trying to outdo each other--Hopkins tossing off a rippling single-note solo, Williams pushing his voice up into ghost howls. Nonetheless, the best shot at hearing what the blues sounded like on a street corner in the pre-electrification Delta is the last nine numbers. Williams goes it mostly alone on those songs from 1963, stomping his foot, thumb-snapping low notes, and laying down bright flashes of slide behind his shouted words. The strings rattle against the frets under his determined bottleneck playing, lending muscularity to the sadness so many of these performances evoke. It's that physical nature of Williams's art--his crisp, soaring vocal phrases and the stuttering, impetuous breaks of his accenting chords, solos, and slide--that makes even the lowdown themes of sickness and loss that reverberate in tunes like "Razor Sharp Blues" and "I Feel So Worried" convey his dignity and power. --Ted Drozdowski