Big Joe Williams

Joseph Lee Williams, known as Big Joe Williams, was one of the most fiercely independent and itinerant blues musicians in history, a rambling man who traveled and performed from the 1920s through the 1970s with his homemade nine-string guitar: a standard six-string modified with three additional strings for extra resonance. Born in Crawford, Mississippi, he recorded prolifically for Bluebird in the late 1930s and 1940s, producing the hit 'Baby Please Don't Go' in 1935, which has been covered hundreds of times. His rough, intense Delta style never softened or modernized, and he remained a powerful live performer throughout the folk revival era, recording for Delmark, Folkways, and other labels. Bob Dylan, who met Williams in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, described him as one of the most significant blues singers he had ever heard.