Bill Williams

#1 Bill Williams (Richmond, Virginia, 28 February 1897 - Greenup, Kentucky, 6 October 1973) was a Kentucky based songster. Throughout the Sixties, it seemed there was one 'discovery' or 'rediscovery' of a blues singer after another; a succession of methodical searches, happy accidents and dramatic events which brought not only a number of legendary figures to life, but also revealed that the wealth of talent in the black traditions had been even greater than might have been supposed.

Throughout the Sixties, it seemed there was one 'discovery' or 'rediscovery' of a blues singer after another; a succession of methodical searches, happy accidents and dramatic events which brought not only a number of legendary figures to life, but also revealed that the wealth of talent in the black traditions had been even greater than might have been supposed. Already though, the circumstances which brought about these discoveries seem to have passed and the events themselves slipped into history. Not many collectors would be sanguine enough to expect any major discoveries to occur now. And so, just to challenge any incipient pessimism, along comes Bill Williams.
Bill Williams is not just the shadow of a tradition, a lone survivor whose longevity has preserved a relatively minor talent after his greater contemporaries have passed on, as is sadly the case in New Orleans today. On the contrary, he is a find of outstanding importance who makes a few more pieces fit into the complex jig-saw puzzle of blues history, and who is, in his own right, a musician of outstanding ability. Kentucky is a State which, on the evidence of records, has contributed relatively little to the blues, though in the groups of Clifford Hayes, Earl McDonald and the anonymous Whistler there was apparently a fairly strong jug band tradition, centred perhaps, in Louisville. A solitary field trip made by Victor in June 1931 resulted in quite a few unissued titles, some recordings of a contingent from St. Louis including Roosevelt Sykes, Walter Davis, and probably Clifford Gibson and Henry Townsend, a couple of items by Kid Coley, and very little else. With not much to go on the blues enthusiast might be forgiven for assuming that 'My Old Kentucky Home' had killed off any tradition that might have been in the State.
It's inappropriate to consider Bill Williams as essentially a Kentucky musican anyway, although he has lived in that State for almost fifty years. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 28 February 1897 and lived out in the country some sixty miles from the city in his youth. His brother, James Williams, appears to have been his first inspiration. A ragtime guitarist, he was an unwilling tutor; Bill nevertheless picking up the rudiments of a ragtime technique which has remained in his music to the present day. At the age of fourteen he began a life of manual work, first as a waterboy at Wilmington, Delaware, for the railroad company, and subsequently far out west in Colorado where he worked in the mines at Lester and lived with relatives. Eventually, after a spell in Bristol, Tennessee, he dropped off a freight train at Greenup, Kentucky, and took a job with the C & 0 Railroad in Russell. Greenup, and that region has been his home stomping ground for half a century, a sector in the extreme west of the State in the loop of the Ohio River where Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia all meet. It's a region which has had quite a part to play in the story of country music in the white traditions - Merle Travis, Ike Everly - the father of the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil - and lesser known musicians came from that area. It also produced Arnold Schultz, a Negro guitarist of considerable local repute who would probably have remained unknown to us if it hadn't been for the fact that he played for country dances around Rosine, and was the first important influence on Bill Monroe. And it produced Jim Mason from Webster County, a guitarist just two years Bill Williams' junior, though it's doubtful if we would have known about him if it didn't just happen that he was the man who shaped the guitar styles of both Merle Travis and Ike Everly in Muhlenberg County and neighbouring parts. Bill Williams didn't have the luck to be an influence on a famous white country or hillbilly guitarist, at least by name. He was one of the several black guitarists and fiddle players who played their boxes in the region where, across the river from Greenup, Kentucky, the towns of Coal Grove, Ironton, Franklin Furnace and Scioto Furnace betray their mining, industrial character.
It's coal mining country right through that region, at the knuckle of a great finger of bituminous coalfield which stretches from western Pennsylvania through the intersecting corners of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, down through Tennessee to probe the northern part of Alabama. Maybe the pay wasn't high but there was work in the coal mines and Bill Williams went after it. Shift work too, which meant that, as in the lumber industry of the piney woods further south and west, there was always a shift looking for recreation: to a musician, a naturally attractive situation where he could earn a little money on the side from his fellow workers, or if he was exceptionally good, so inclined or handicapped, could make a living from his music. As a fit man in his mid-twenties - he's still vigorous and looking ten years younger than he is - Bill worked in the mines of Pike County. But after the day's work he'd sit and jam on the porch of his house with one of the guitar-pickers who came into the region, attracted by the opportunities for entertaining, a smiling oval-faced man who wore a suit with broad revers but whose extensive travelling was hinted at by the high, lacedboots he wore. He was sightless and one of the best guitar-pickers to hit that area, or indeed any other. They called him Blind Blake
Blind Blake came from Georgia. According to his friend Blind Willie McTell he was named Arthur Phelps, but it seems his name was Arthur Blake. He travelled a lot - to Jacksonville, Florida, where he had a home and may have died, and as far west as Dallas, Texas. He was well-known in Chicago where, fortunately, he was extensively recorded for Paramount in the later Twenties. Five years before his first session in September 1926, he was in Kentucky and he proved to be the strongest influence on Bill Williams. He had met him earlier in Bristol and had worked with him there as his regular second, accompanying him and learning from him. Listening to Bill today he seems at times to be Blind Blake reincarnate; he has the same ease and facility, the same dexterous thumb-roll, the same rapid picking. But he's not a carbon copy of Blind Blake, though he readily admits that the famous guitarist was, and still remains, his favourite musician. At times Bill Williams recalls Mance Lipscomb - whom he may never have heard, even today - and at other times he reveals hints of Big Bill or Mississippi John Hurt, both guitarists whom he admires and whose early records could conceivably have had some influence on his style. Like many of the 'eastern' guitarists (to the blues enthusiasts all musicians from east of Mississippi tend to be called 'East Coast'), he clearly admires technical skill and places more importance on a sweetflowing instrumental line than on any deep emotional involvement in the words of his songs and blues.
Back in 1921, when he was playing with Blake, Bill Williams would have earned the name of a 'songster'. It has been suggested by Eddie Lambert in an article a while ago in this magazine's predecessor that the songsters did not precede the blues singers, but that recording has tended to give an undue importance to blues. There is a lot of truth in this, I think, but nevertheless blues singers tend to talk of their guitar-playing fathers as old-time songsters, and not as blues singers, suggesting that the songsters of the past fifty years have been the tall end of a much older tradition. Generally I think it is still fair to assume that the songsters preceded, as well as overlapped, with the blues singers. They have been poorly documented and the chances of doing so adequately get less and less virtually with every passing month. One clear characteristic is that they had a very wide range of repertoire with dance tunes, instrumental rags, minstrel and medicine songs, all included in a spectrum of song and music which took in the blues as that music began to appear.
Bill Williams, then, is a songster rather than blues singer and his music contains examples of all the types mentioned above. Recently he was recorded by Nicholas Perls, the proprietor of the important reissue label Yazoo, for his subsidiary Blue Goose. A collection has now been released on Blue Goose 2004 which gives a remarkable indication of this hitherto 'unknown' talent. Included are three ragtime pieces called simply 'Banjo Rag', 'Bill's Rag' and 'Total Rag'. Guitar rags have been recorded by the eastern songsters to a far greater extent than by Mississippi and Texas men, although the latter were geographically as near to Missouri. His rags may refer back to his brother's repertoire. Nevertheless, Williams has long been a Kentucky man and the two States meet at Cairo and share a short stretch on the Mississippi River. Perhaps this is a misleading trail to follow, but the relationship of piano rags to guitar rags has been so little explored that the point might be worth making. The first two of Williams' rags have stop-time elements which relate them to country dances of this title in which the action is momentarily suspended or the foot is slid to its partner as an unexpected pause in a faster movement. 'Bill's Rag' is a buck and wing dance quite close to Mance Lipscomb's 'Buck Dance' and appears to be of the kind that might well have been performed on the Ohio waterfront in his younger days.
Typical of the songster is his version of a minstrel song which he calls 'The Chicken'. It is the same song as that recorded by the Negro Frank Stokes and the white Clayton McMichen under the title of 'Chicken, You can Roost Behind the Moon'. This fact serves to emphasize the manner in which these early songs crossed the colour line. It makes an excellent vehicle for Williams's scintillating technique. He slightly rushes the playing and fractionally slows up to sing, not as did Little Hat Jones as a stylistic characteristic, but presumably because the concentration required slightly inhibits singing. I find it instructive because it is quite obviously the speed at which he must have played it in his younger days, and doubtless sung it too, and one can imagine the startling effect of this tremendous finger-work when he was a young man.
Catholicity of taste is common among songsters. It's the quality they admire and one which separates them from blues singers. Bluesmen have a dislike of published standards; try for instance, to count the number of versions of 'St Louis Blues' recorded by bluesmen, compared with those recorded, endlessly, by jazz groups. Can you count Bessie Smith's as a blues? Well, yes of course, but not one from the folk tradition. Or Jim Jackson's? For Jim Jackson was himself a songster. You'd be hard pressed to think of others. Bill Williams plays it in a straight version which he appears to have learned at an early age. Unashamedly he settles for 'Up a Lazy River', as engagingly as Big Bill Broonzy playing and singing 'Shanty in Old Shanty Town' (and annoying the purists in so doing). I was slightly surprised to hear Bill Williams singing 'Frankie and Johnny' by this name and with the verses he chose, for to most songsters this semi-pop song is known by its earlier ballad title of 'Frankie and Albert'. It suggests that he may have learned it rather later in his career than some of his songs.
'Frankie' is played with a confidence and freshness which makes the over-familiar song very acceptable. Williams' dazzling playing makes every track of great interest and is specially evident on 'I Know What it Means to be Lonesome', a theme which has the descending phrases and structure that relate it to 'Ella Speed' as played by Lipscomb, and to a certain extent to other favourites like 'Salty Dog'. Several of Williams' tunes are original re- workings of some older blues melodies. His 'Lucky Blues' is on an eight-bar framework which is closely related to the 'Trouble in Mind' 'Key to the Highway' complex. Apparently he learned this in Virginia which suggests, in view of the popularity of the theme with eastern musicians, a local traditional 'tune family'. Such tune families ask for more thorough examination than they have so far received. After writing the chapter on 'The Forty-Fours' in Screening the Blues, I received many letters pointing out that I had missed this or that recording of the theme. But instead of labouring this it would have been valuable if other writers pursued other complexes in greater detail. One of them must surely be the 'Highway'-'Trouble in Mind' family and someone interviewing Bill Williams might ascertain whether his 'Lucky Blues' is, in his view, a separate song or one derived from the others mentioned. Similar thoughts come to mind in listening to his recording of 'Pocohantas', which is reminiscent of a very fast, virtuoso guitar performance of 'St. James Infirmary Blues'. Perhaps specialists in New Orleans jazz might comment on whether this is the same theme as the tune of 'Pocohantas' which was, I believe, a fairly popular parade and Mardi Gras tune. According to Stephen Calt, Williams learned it from an Italian railroad man.
It is clear that if Bill Williams was influenced by Blind Blake he was certainly not dependent on him. One is impressed by his individuality, though of course, it is not the kind of single-mindedness that encourages a blues singer to compose his own blues. On present evidence Williams is not an innovator of blues as such, which presumably Blind Blake was. Bill's voice is quite different from Blake's. Where Blake could be smooth and wistful he is inclined to rasp; where Blake sang from the front of the mouth, Williams sings from the back of the throat in a somewhat constricted manner which links him aurally with that Virginia songster thirty years his junior, John Jackson. But there are echoes of Blake's musicianship in a number of items, the instumental rags recalling 'Blind Arthur's Breakdown', and being by no means eclipsed by that classic. More evidently influenced by Blake is 'Too Tight' which was twice recorded by the blind singer himself and which also had a rough-and-ready treatment from Peg Leg Howell and His Gang. And there are the blues items, with 'My Girlfriend Left Me' being very obviously based on Blind Blake's 'Georgia Bound'.
Apart from a demo tape made by a local guitar teacher, Charlie Parsons, these are the first recordings that Bill Williams has ever made, but hopefully, they won't be the last. In the summer of 1970 he played at the Mountain Heritage Festival at the County Fairgrounds in his home town of Greenup and received a standing ovation from the crowd. True songster, he played the National Anthem in response. Soon after, he performed at the Community College in Ashland some fifteen miles up river, appeared on John Skagg's Coffee House show on WIRO and even on the Kentucky Educational TV network. All pretty local, but he had his biggest adventure when, in the winter of 1970, he played at the University of Chicago Folklore Society Festival. There'll be many demands for Bill Williams in the future, and one of them will be this summer when he plays at the Festival of American Folklife which Mack McCormick is directing in the Buckminster Fuller Dome on St. Helen Island, Montreal, Quebec. It will be Bill Williams' first international performance. Wherever he goes, he'll doubtless be following the pattern established by his fellow West Kentuckians, Jim Mason and Arnold Schultz - showing the young white guitar-pickers how to tease the frets.
Bill Williams died Greenup, Kentucky, 6 October 1973.

#2 Bill Williams
Bill Williams has faithfully served the needs of Washington, DC-metro roots-rock aficionados for nearly two decades with his versatile instrumental work and lock-tight vocal harmonies in several Wammie-winning (Washington Area Music Association), bar-packing ensembles. "Handful" is Bill's first solo effort, showcasing not only his considerable talents, but those of his longtime co-conspirators from Last Train Home, Kevin Johnson and the Linemen, and The Grandsons.

?Handful? covers Bill's diverse range as a songwriter, instrumentalist and singer, blending rock, power pop, country and bluegrass. DC-area veterans Scott McKnight, Tony Flagg (bass) and Steve Woerhle (drums), provide the bulk of the musical support to this recording. Also featured are the stellar sounds of The Grandsons' Chris Watling (saxophone, accordion) Last Train Home's Dave Van Allen (pedal steel) and DC-area songstress Shannon Brown (harmony vocals).

Bill was a charter member of Kevin Johnson and the Linemen in the early-90's. His guitar work, harmonies and songwriting were featured prominently on Johnson's "Memphis for Breakfast," "Rest of Your Life," "Purple Album," and "Parole Music" releases; "Rest of Your Life" scored a 1995 Best Recording Wammie. During his tenure with the Linemen, Bill worked closely with Eric Brace as he developed and refined an assembly of tunes and talents that ultimately became Last Train Home. Bill's decade-long association with LTH inspired some of his finest noises. His talents are on display throughout LTH releases "Last Train Home," "True North," "Holiday Limited," "Travelogue," "Tributaries," "Time and Water," and "Bound Away."

Bill's recorded work has also included cameo appearances with The Grandsons on "Party with the Rich," and with other top performers on "Americana Motel" a collection of top DC Americana artists, doing new versions of each other's songs. His melancholy rendition of Neil Young's ?Flying on the Ground is Wrong? is featured on Not Lame Records' "Five Way Street: A Tribute to Buffalo Springfield," a must-hear for devoted Springfield buffs.

In recent years, Bill has been spotted lending an occasional guitar-slinging hand to One Horse Town. Bill is currently a lead guitarist and backing vocalist in the stable of Little Pink, fronted by the extraordinarily talented singer-songwriter Mary Battiata.