more info about this LP
notes by 'Maggie de Miramon' Blue Goose Records, 54 King Street, New York, N.Y. 10014 Blue Goose BG-2003 (US 1970)
notes by 'Maggie de Miramon' Blue Goose Records, 245 Waverly Place, New York, N.Y. 10014 Blue Goose BG-2003 (repress)
Notes on Bill Williams:Bill Williams, a 72-year old bluesman from Greenup, Kentucky, will be featured on a forthcoming Blue Goose LP. The previously unrecorded Williams ranks among the most polished and proficient living traditional bluesmen, and has a large repertoire embracing ragtime, hillbilly, and even pop material. He is also the only known living associate of Blind Blake, his own favorite guitarist. John Henry, a blues "standard" that was widely recorded by country artists of the 1920's, is performed in the key of G.
Blue Goose Records discographyLarry Johnson discographyRoy Book Binder discography
notes by Stephen Calt "Blue Goose, 54 King Street, New York, N.Y. 10014" Blue Goose BG-2004 (US 1970)
notes by Stephen Calt "Blue Goose, 245 Waverly Place, New York, N.Y. 10014" = Blue Goose BG-2004 (US 1974)
Blue Goose Records discography
notes by Stephen Calt: A 73 -year old guitarist can be forgiven for losing the sureness of touch and loose co-ordination demanded in the lost art of blues-playing, particularly if he offers original or authentic material to an audience which has been largely denied the chance to hear yesterday's greats in person. If he is 73 and yet betrays no hint of his age in his approach to the most complicated and diverse guitar styles, one can only marvel in disbelief. Disbelief is the inevitable reaction to incredible Bill Williams, a former partner of Blind Blake who is without doubt the most technically accomplished living country blues guitarist. Nothing about his effortless playing suggests the now familiar relic of the remote past who must be patronized to demonstrate that country blues are alive and well (they aren't). His present day skills not only put most other oldsters to shame, but are sufficient to have made him a stand- out in any era. Yet at this writing Williams is practically unknown beyond the confines of Greenup, Kentucky, a small town near the Ohio border whose locale figures as background in the writings of novelist Jesse Stuart. In his very obscurity, Williams is a cherished but little-encountered blues archetype - the unsung great who outplays most of his more prestigious contemporaries. In every other respect, however, Williams is a refreshing departure from blues tradition. While the most familiar species of bluesman shamelessly exaggerates his musical feats before anyone gullible enough to listen, the unassuming Bill Williams is horrified by even favorable notoriety. He derives greater satisfaction from the placid virtues of solid citizenship (he is a Kentucky Colonel and an election supervisor) and rugged self-sufficiency (he built his own home and raises much of his own food) than his unsolicited position as the blues' most exciting "find" in a long time. Perhaps because he is by now taken for granted in a community where, as one performer puts it, "You're practically a foreigner if you don't play some kind of instrument", he can't quite believe the furor he has begun to generate among blues enthusiasts. "If someone as dumb as me can play," he insists, "anybody can." His career is no less exceptional than his selfdeprecating attitudes. He came by all of his dazzling technique without any instruction while living sixty miles in the country beyond his native Richmond, Virginia, where he was born in 1897. His brother James. a ragtime guitarist, took pains to safeguard his instrument from Bill's curious hands by tuning his strings so slack that they were unplayable before leaving for work each morning. One day Bill seized the guitar and managed to figure out the chords for Yankee Doodle Dandy, a song he knew from school and still delights in performing, with ragtime embellishments. Bill subsequently met few guitarists in the Richmond area, but his style nevertheless developed the ragtime emphasis and smooth picking patterns one associates with the East Coast musician. He was first exposed to blues through an old recording of St. Louis Blues a 1914 hit which received wide contemporary pop treatment and would, for the general white audience, practically define the entire blues form. Another early acquisition was the Lucky Blues, which Bill adapted from the work of a local guitarist. He also played pieces like John Henry with a bottleneck in open E tuning (a method he has since discarded). Its strongest inclinations, however, were towards the key of C, the one he considered best suited for his voice. This preference was to favor his development as a ragtime virtuoso, for C is the usual key of guitar rags. Although Bill must have displayed phenomenal ability in his youth (when, he says, he was at his true peak), he never played music professionally, and never earned money for entertaining at parties and dances. Unlike most contemporary blues singers, he actually preferred manual labor to the idea of playing for a living, even though his jobs were often so fatiguing as to preclude off-hours practice. At the age of fourteen he became a waterboy on a railroad in Wilmington, Delaware. Then he was packed off to relatives in the small town of Lester, Colorado, in his family's old-fashioned belief that labor in the mines would steady his delicate "nerves". But mine conditions proved so unnerving that he virtually fled to Pensacola, Florida, where he became a timber-cutter. While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920's Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake's regular second guitarist, always picking his accompaniments instead of strumming in the usual fashion of the back-up musician. Blake was particularly taken with Low and Lonesome, but never borrowed Bill's blues motifs, although his own repertoire was then limited to a few basic pieces. When they parted company Bill worked out arrangements of Blake's trademark songs (including My Girlfriend Left Me and Too Tight) in a nostalgic recollection of his friend, for whom he had both personal and professional regard. Today he ventures only the just criticism that "my man Blake", as he calls him, tended to repeat himself too often in the key of C. In 1922 Bill left Bristol with no special destination and jumped off a freight train in Greenup. He accepted a job with the C&O Railroad in nearby Russell, Kentucky, and has lived in the area ever since. His railroad routes - to Covington, Ky. and Columbus, Ohio - have largely circumscribed his subsequent career. As the population of this region is almost exclusively white, Bill hasn't played for any Negro dances since coming to Greenup. Not surprisingly, his material betrays this immersion into the white musical community. However, by applying the inventive and vigorous picking techniques of the true blues or rag guitarist to whatever songs he chooses to adapt, he is able to enhance even the most commonplace pieces. To assuage his audience on those occasions when his usual accompanists failed to keep playing dates, Williams transposed a number of traditional fiddle tunes to guitar: Mockingbird, Long Way To Tipperary (a pop song of World War I vintage) Turkey In The Straw, and Old Joe Clark. These guitar interpretations are unique. Other songs were taken from the popular recordings of Charlie Poole and Riley Puckett, a skilled hillbilly guitarist who once expressed personal admiration for Bill's playing. There is also some Merle Travis influence on Bill's techniques, but this influence may be mutual, since he recalls meeting the younger Travis after his own style matured. Some of Bill's most arresting pieces are too exotic to fit into any known category, and ultimately make the labels "ragtime" or "blues" guitarist inadequate to describe him. He learned one of his real showpieces, the minor-keyed Pocahontas, from an Italian railroader he met in the 1920's and in turn tutored in blues-playing. (Although the man spoke no English, his version had English lyrics.) Bill's exquisite arrangement of Lazy River far removes it from its usual bland pop moorings and his own picking style, and would have done credit to ultrasophisticated bluesmen like Lonnie Johnson. Even the "hard" blues, I'll Follow You, represents a total departure from all known East Coast blues-playing; but is surprisingly reminiscent of the mainstream Texas sounds of Willie Reed and Will Day. Besides these unconventional works, Bill offers finger-picked renditions of Christmas carols and the Star-Spangled Banner, demonstrating his professed ability to master any tune his listener can hum. Perhaps as uncanny as Bill's versatility is his very preservation of the gifts that most country bluesmen have long since lost with time or disinterest. Within the last twenty years, or long after the commercial demise of country blues, Bill was figuring out classics like I'll Follow You and Chicken, a minstrel song probably dating to the turn of the century. Before his retirement from the railroad in 1958 his continued practicing was partly attributable to a Sunday morning shift as camp cook that often left him with free time on his hands and no company besides his guitar. Eight years ago a doctor told him that the exercise afforded by guitar-playing was perfect therapy for his arthritic wrist. This advice, coupled with constant local demands for his appearances at social gatherings, has probably kept Bill's music from declining. Today he shows no signs of slowing down, although he insists that the performing grind is undermining his health, and periodically announces his "retirement". If Bill is increasingly reluctant to perform publically he is even more so to record. Despite a rare command of material that enables him to produce many perfect first takes in a recording studio, he would much prefer less formal performances for friends. But for the unselfish zeal of Charlie Parsons, a local guitar teacher and coauthor of a book on guitar technique, Bill would have remained forever in contented oblivion. A demonstration tape Parsons practically tricked him into recording proved so convincing that Blue Goose immediately scheduled a session - over Bill's protests that he would need three years to get in shape for recording. Once company officials arrived in Greenup, Bill asked: "What you fellows doin' here recording me?" His album should provide the best answer. PRODUCED FOR BLUE GOOSE RECORDS, a Div. of Yellow Bee Productions Inc. by Nick Perls Cover photo & Art: Nick Perls Mastering & Recording: Nick Perls Notes: Stephen Calt SEND FOR FREE CATALOGUE All compositions of Bill Williams on this LP are copyright to Yellow Bee Music, Inc. (BMI)
PRODUCED FOR BLUE GOOSE RECORDS, a Div. of Yellow Bee Productions Inc. by Nick Perls Cover photo & Art: Nick Perls Mastering & Recording: Nick Perls Notes: Stephen Calt SEND FOR FREE CATALOGUE All compositions of Bill Williams on this LP are copyright to Yellow Bee Music, Inc. (BMI)
notes by Stephen Calt "Blue Goose, 245 Waverly Place, New York, N.Y. 10014" Blue Goose BG-2013 (US 1974)
mini LP CDnotes by Stephen Calt = Air Mail Archive AIRAC-1341 (Jp 4/2007)
notes by Stephen Calt: For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep. This memorial album and its soon to be released sequel will constitute the remainder of Bill's musical legacy. At the time of his death Williams unquestionably ranked as one of America's two or three finest traditional guitarists, and his passing serves as a bleak reminder that the forms he specialized in have all but perished in their original settings. Yet he would have sounded exceptional even in the heyday of country blues and ragtime, and the debut album that drew such comments as "incredible" from reviewers would have done credit to a far younger musician. It is difficult to eulogize Bill's musicianship, however, for there has never been a provision for anyone quite like him within the customary framework of blues or folksong research. Having made no 78 recordings in the Twenties, he had no status as a living or "lost" legend. Nor was he the product of any discernable blues tradition: the musician he most resembled was himself. He was sometimes labelled an "East Coast bluesman", but he had spent the last fifty years of his life in midwestern Greenup, far removed from his Richmond, Virginia origins. Ultimately, Bill was not even a blues guitarist in the strict sense of the word. In the fashion of Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, and Sam Chatmon, he worked within a myriad assortment of folk forms (blues, spirituals, ragtime, and hillbilly music) coupled with numerous adaptations of pop pieces. He was somewhat bewildered, in fact, by the disproportionate attention his blues received from younger listeners, and liked to chastize his New York admirers for their preoccupation with the form. "I know they're crazy about blues here in New York," he stated during his last recording session, "but if you go anywhere else in this country, you'll find people mostly like patriotic tunes." A "patriotic" tune, in Bill's lexicon, was any pop or white folk standard. To the end of his life he enjoyed playing such diverse pieces as the Star-Spangled Banner (which he considered the most challenging piece in his repertoire) and Jingle Bells. Although he once recalled that in his native Richmond, "... all you hear ... was blues, because everybody down there played blues," his original guitar effort was the "patriotic" Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his teenage repertoire included such works as Casey Jones (a vaudeville hit from 1909) and Long Ways To Tipperary (an English import popular during World War One), both learned from his older brother James, who strummed his instrument. His Greenup audience, which often heard Bill at square dances accompanying a white fiddler and banjo player, "never paid no attention to blues ..." But for all his dutiful patriotism he was never basically a traitor to the blues idiom: he approached nearly all of his material from a blues perspective, rendering it with what he called "diminished chords" (partial chords), and always fingerpicking with a heavy rhythmic bounce. "There's songs that you could strum a guitar," he told Rob Fleder in an interview for Sing Out, "but I never did believe in the strumming ones so I didn't do much strumming. Once in a while I'd get tired of using my finger, and they'd be dancing and making a lot of noise so I'd strum it." Unlike most blues guitarists, however, he put an equal premium on key variations. With the self-depreciation that was so typical of him, he said: "I never did like to see nobody play for no dancing or party or nothing and just play in one key. You can't call anybody no musician - course, I'm not really a musician as far as that goes - a person can't call himself a musician that plays in just one key." As Bill never played professionally (or even for hire), there was no practical reason for his versatility or even his departures from blues norms. Most of his peers in Richmond, he noted, were limited to blues in the key of E, and in the course of his provincial existence, he met few guitarists of any stature. He recalled once seeing Blind Lemon Jefferson (as did, it would seem, nearly every performer of his generation) and the hillbilly great Riley Puckett, but only in passing. His oft-recounted association with the legendary Blind Blake meant much less to himself than to blues researchers, and there were only tenuous musical connections between them. He always seemed to have greater difficulty with the handful of given Blake motifs he played than with daredevil works like Pocahontas or The Chicken (both of which appeared on his first album). Whether Bill's perfunctory recollections of Blind Blake were plausible or not is still open to question. For example, he once remarked that Blake had joked about wanting to marry his sister, and had begun a correspondence with her after moving to Chicago to make records. When the sister was located near Richmond she proved to have no knowledge whatsoever of Blake's existence. Perhaps Bill's very claim to have known Blake in the first place was a figment of imagination or an elaborate private joke, for it was often difficult to tell when he was being serious. In order to produce groans from his listeners (whose eventual skepticism made no impression on him) he would make ominous threats to quit guitar-playing, or harp upon how much he despised the activity, even though it appeared to occupy most of his leisure time. Towards the end of his first recording session in Greenup, he made a dramatic announcement that a compelling appointment in nearby Vanceburg would make it impossible for him to complete his album. When first offered a tour of folk clubs in the east, he similarly pretended to balk at the prospect of traveling. With the air of a used-car salesman he would offer to teach his entire repertoire to younger guitarists for forty dollars, making progressively lower offers as his high- pressure sales pitch met with resistance. The purpose of this ruse (if anything, he would have given lessons for free) was never clear. He liked to be mildly scandalous in respectable company, as when he would suddenly recite a ribald toast or recount episodes of barnyard bestiality, giving the impression that it was his favorite outdoor sport. His assortment of quirks seemed no less formidable than his guitar techniques; one recalls his incurable habit of grinding his teeth while playing guitar (which posed a considerable engineering problem during his recording sessions, as it produced a squeaking sound), his perpetual insomnia, and his Spartan diet (he seemed to subsist entirely on cheese, crackers, and baking soda). Locally, it was rumored that Bill had become slightly "touched in the head" after having suffered a fall. That Bill's musical faculties remained spectacularly intact at an age when most of his contemporaries had gone musically senile is amply illustrated by the songs on this album. Perhaps the true measure of his capabilities was his knack for converting a shopworn staple like Salty Dog into a guitar masterpiece instead of playing it in routine fashion. The predominant key of Bill's works was C, and he usually tuned a half step (sometimes a full step) low on the guitar. Railroad Bill, a ragtime song in C, is a salute to a once-notorious Alabama train robber and one of the most famous pieces in black folk tradition. Bill's susceptibility to unabashedly sentimental songs (he was capable of shedding tears while listening to a maudlin lyric like Lonnie Johnson's There Is No Justice) is illustrated by his renditions of I'll Be With You When The Roses Bloom Again and Blue Eyes (a piece associated with A.P. Carter), two traditional white ballads in the key of C. While the prohibition era recalled by the former piece (which is said to actually date to the nineteenth century) now seems remote, Greenup County still bans the sale of liquor. Darktown Strutter's Ball which is played in the key of F, was Bill's recapitulation of the famous ragtime hit by black composer Shelton Brooks, which originally appeared in 1917 and was popularized by Sophie Tucker. The spiritual Some Of These Days (not to be confused with another Brooks standard) ranks with the classic Jaybird Coleman recording I'm Gonna Cross The River Of Jordan (cf. Yazoo L-1022) and is played in the key of C. That's The Human Thing To Do, a pop vehicle, is played in the key of E. Blake's Rag was Bill's impression of an unrecorded Blind Blake instrumental and remains something of a curiosity because Blake never recorded any ragtime instrumentals in the same key (Germany). Bubblegum, a blues in D, is likewise an evocation of an unrecorded Blake theme. Mockingbird, one of Bill's supreme instrumental efforts (he considered it almost as difficult to play as the Star- Spangled Banner) was an American pop song of 1855 vintage; though it became a white fiddle standard (from whence Bill derived it), its original composer was a black Philadelphian who played the piece on guitar. Bill's interpretation is played in the key of A. Salty Dog and Corn Liquor Blues (the latter was inspired by a Papa Charlie Jackson recording) are both in the key of G, while the twin ragtime standards, Pallet On The Floor and Nobody's Business, are played in their usual key of C. While many of Bill's songs are traditional, they ultimately illustrate less about blues traditions than about the wizardry that was once Bill Williams. Produced For BLUE GOOSE RECORDS, A div. of Yellow Bee Productions, Inc. by Stephen Calt & Nick Perls All songs writen by Bill Williams are copyright by Yellow Bee Music (BMI) ® 1974 Cover Design: Bob Aulicino Notes: Stephen Calt Engineering and recording: Nick Perls SEND FOR FREE CATALOGUE All Blue Goose LP's are available by writing to Blue Goose
Produced For BLUE GOOSE RECORDS, A div. of Yellow Bee Productions, Inc. by Stephen Calt & Nick Perls All songs writen by Bill Williams are copyright by Yellow Bee Music (BMI) ® 1974 Cover Design: Bob Aulicino Notes: Stephen Calt Engineering and recording: Nick Perls SEND FOR FREE CATALOGUE All Blue Goose LP's are available by writing to Blue Goose
notes (37-pp. booklet) by Barry Lee Pearson and Jeff Place Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40198 (US 2010)
notes (40-pp. booklet) by Barry Lee Pearson and Jeff Place Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40211 (US 2014)
112-pp. booklet notes by Bill Dahl Bear Family BCD 17231 (Germany 2014)
"Record reviews"
by Rob Fleder
BILL WILLIAMS: THE KENTUCKY COLONEL
by Simon Bronner
by Rob Fleder and Stephen Calt(with thanks to Helen Scott)
Bill Williams is one of the most exciting blues "finds" in many years. His discovery came at a time when there was little hope left of finding quality musicians with a first-hand knowledge of the country blues guitar styles of the 'twenties and 'thirties. Charlie Parsons, a guitar teacher-player-enthusiast from Greenup, Kentucky sent Stefan Grossman a tape of Bill Williams, to see if Stefan, the author of three fine books on country blues guitar playing, could offer any help in getting him recorded. Stefan sent the tape to Nick Perls of Yazoo and Blue Goose Records. "Holy cow!" said Nick, "Do you hear that?" "The cat's a ringer for Blake!" Inside a week, Nick was speeding to Greenup for a recording session; the results appear on Blue Goose 2004 Bill Williams: Low and Lonesome. Stylistically, Bill is unique; he has the agility and speed of Blind Blake, and shares some of Blake's ideas, but by and large his style is completely personal and highly innovative; the early beginnings of the Merle Travis guitar style can even be heard in Bill's spectacular right hand thumb work. Bill was born in 1896 in the country outside of Richmond, Virginia. He learned to play guitar while quite young, and in his teens he started to ramble around the country. In Virginia he had begun to play for rural black dances, at parties, juke joints, etc. In the course of his wanderings it was natural that he'd run into other musicians, and he says that he met Blind Lemon Jefferson (although, oddly enough, he never heard Jefferson play in person) and white guitarist Riley Puckett (of Skillet Lickers fame). Bill fell in with Blind Blake, about six years before Blake began to record, and the two "ran together" for about six months, Bill showed the legendary guitarist the now famed (and apparently misattributed) "Georgia Bound." In 1922 Bill moved to Greenup, Kentucky where he has remained. He worked for the C&O Railroad, and is now a pensioner. He travelled to the 1971 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and his able guitar playing and remarkably powerful voice amazed and captivated the crowds. Despite Bill's constant avowal to "quit playing cause I'm too old," few men have lived for their music as much as Bill: his whole life is entertaining people who drop into his house for a chat, or audiences - anyone, anywhere who can share his joy of music. Bill complained that we wore him out with too many questions, that he was too tired to play anymore for us - but he'd be smiling all the while, and already have started playing some tune he thought we'd like to hear. In questioning Bill, we did not seek to trace his life history or the history of particular pieces too carefully: the Blue Goose album notes supply much useful information that need not be duplicated here. We were interested, rather, in the relocation of a blues singer and guitarist from Virginia to the predominantly white hillbilly area of Kentucky that is Greenup County. Did Bill play differently for white audiences? Did he stay with the blues? How much did the white rural music affect his style? Read on ...
by Paul Oliver
Bill Williams died Greenup, Kentucky, 6 October 1973.
Paul Oliver: Blues off the record - Thirty years of blues commentary.- 1984
thanks to Donald Adkins and Frits Segers for additional info / scans
Robert Pete Williams & Bill Williams at the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife in Montreal, Canada, July 1/2, 1971source: Paul Oliver: Blues Off The Record.- Tunbridge Wells (The Baton Press) 1984, unpaginated photo pp. between pp. 138 and 139; photographer: Paul Oliver
Paul Oliver: Bill Williams - An Outstanding Find is Described by Paul Oliver.- Jazz And Blues Vol. 1, # 5 (Aug/Sept 1971), pp. 10-11Bill Williams photo (cropped from): Bill Williams at Charles Parsons' studio in Greenup, KY, 1970; source: Front cover of Blue Goose LP 2004; photographer: Nick PerlsArticle reprinted as "Lazy River - Bill Williams" in Paul Oliver: Blues Off The Record.- Tunbridge Wells (The Baton Press) 1984, pp. 79-83
Paul Oliver: Too Tight: Bill Williams in Person.- Jazz & Blues Vol. 1, # 8 (December 1971), pp. 37-38photo: Bill Williams at the Festival of American Folk Life, organized by Mack McCormick in the United States pavilion at the Man and His World Exhibition in Montreal, Canada; 'Red Barn', July 4, 1971; photographer: Paul Oliver