jody williams
The term “legend” is bandied about generously these days. It seems like the mere act of living to a ripe old age is enough to earn this handle all by itself.
In the case of blues guitarist Jody Williams, however, the “legendary” mantle is entirely and gloriously justified. As the first great string bender on the Chicago blues scene, he provided the stylistic bridge between B.B. King and T-Bone Walker (two of his principle influences) and young firebrands Otis Rush and Buddy Guy, both of whom wholeheartedly absorbed his innovations and licks as they modernized the idiom.
As a key Chicago session-guitarist during the 50’s whose singular tone, imaginative chord changes, and boundless creativity set him well apart from his peers, Jody added the essential guitar fire to some of the era’s greatest blues recordings: Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love, Howlin’ Wolf’s Forty Four, Billy Boy Arnold’s I Wish You Would, and his own shimmering minor key instrumental Lucky Lou. You can hear echoes of Jody in Carlos Santana and Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, and his impact extends to a legion of contemporary bluesmen on the scene.
Joseph Leon Williams was born in Mobile, Alabama on February 3, 1935, and his family moved to Chicago’s South Side when he was five. His musical odyssey commenced on harmonica rather than guitar. “The Harmonicats were my idols then,” Williams recalls. “One of their hits I remember that I used to play was Peg O’ My Heart. I never played any blues.”
“I didn’t know anything about any guitar,” he continues. “I was doing talent and amateur shows and stuff like that around town, and also on the radio. That’s how I met Bo Diddley. We met when I was doing one of those shows. I liked the sound of his guitar and that washtub, which was made to sound like a bass. When we met backstage I asked him if I got a guitar, would he teach me how to play? He agreed and the next week I saw a guitar in a pawnshop down on 47th Street for $32.50, which I bought with the help of my mother. Bo showed me how to tune it and how to run a bass line behind him while he was singing. Next thing you know there were three of us, out on the corner! Two guitars and a washtub.”
That was 1951. The trio was augmented by harpist Billy Boy Arnold the next year. “We made enough money out there on the corners to buy an amplifier. We put out a hat and the money came rollin’ in. Billy, he couldn’t outplay the amplifier. So what he did, he got one of them mason fruit jars and started blowin’ through that, getting’ a bigger sound.”
Jody got his first real bandstand experience with pianist Henry Gray and guitarist Morris Pejoe. He gigged behind Memphis Minnie and Elmore James, shared a flat with Otis Spann and harpist Henry “Pot” Strong, and soon hit the road with West Coast piano great Charles Brown and guitarist Johnny Moore. “I had this little Gibson amplifier with a 12-inch speaker in it. Back in those days, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and all these guys, they had these amps. And you talk about distortion! That’s the way it was. We were playing in these great big dance halls, Charles Brown and Johnny Moore and me.”
While still in his teens and wielding a Kay guitar, Jody joined forces with the newly arrived Howlin’ Wolf and played on Wolf’s seminal Evil (Is Goin’ On) and Who Will Be Next. “I’d been playin’ with Chess. I met Wolf when he first got to Chicago. It was 1954,” he explains. “I happened to go down there one day and there he was. I remember he had this long, dark brown DeSoto limousine. Wolf needed some musicians, and I wasn’t playing with anybody regular at the time. So I was the first one in the band.”
Jody unexpectedly encountered one of his main influences while backing Wolf for Chess in October of 1954. “B.B. King was one of my idols. Him and T-Bone Walker,” recounts Williams. “We were at the recording studio working with Otis Spann. And you know, back then I was one of the few guys around Chicago that could play that B.B. King stuff. So we were sitting in there in the recording studio and I’m off in the B.B. King style. So this guy, in between songs, comes in the studio. And he sits down. I didn’t know who he was. But I happened to look over there and notice, he’s watching me. Watching my hands, watching my fingers. I’m saying to myself, ‘This dude’s trying to steal some of my stuff.’ So I turned away so he couldn’t watch my fingers.” After that take, Wolf called me. He said, ‘Jody, come over here.’ I want you meet a friend of mine - B.B. King! Oh man I felt so small. I’m sittin’ there, playin’ his stuff and hiding my hands, and I’m rippin’ him off. But that same day we recorded It Must Have Been The Devil and Five Spot.” Five Spot, Otis Spann’s lone Checker single paired Jody and B.B. King for the first and only time on record.
Jody was a prolific studio musician during the mid-to-late 1950’s. He invigorated Bo Diddley’s voodoo-laced 1956 Checker smash Who Do You Love with a barrage of scalding fretwork. Williams’ slashing axe graced sessions with Jimmy Rogers (One Kiss), Floyd Dixon (Alarm Clock Blues), Jimmy Witherspoon (Ain’t Nobody’s Business), Otis Rush (Groaning The Blues), and Billy Boy Arnold (I Ain’t Got You).
Williams’ studio debut as a leader came at the end of 1955 with two authoritative upbeatvocals, Lookin’ For My Baby and Easy Lovin’ for Chicago deejay Al Benson’s Blue Lake logo with Willie Dixon slapping the bass. At the top of 1957, Williams cut his two-sided classic Lucky Lou b/w You May for Chess’ Argo label. Lucky Lou’s startling melody line was the inspiration for the blazing intro to Otis Rush’s classic All Your Love (I Miss Loving), cut the following year for Cobra Records.
Williams extensively toured the country with Bo Diddley during rock and roll’s initial mid-50’s rise. “I remember we had two tours like that, about 65 one nighters. Different city every night over two months. Bill Haley & the Comets and Roy Hamilton were leading the show. There was Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers and Clyde McPhatter. The Platters were there, the Five Keys and LaVern Baker. I also played behind Big Joe Turner.”
During one of these tours, Jody and Bo had worked up a new song Love Is Strange based on a song of Williams’, the Latin-tempoed instrumental Billy’s Blues. The hit duoMickey and Sylvia, who were also on the tour fell in love with the song and unbeknownst to Jody, recorded it for release. Mickey and Sylvia’s adaptation of Love is Strange hit the charts in December of 1956 and remained there for 15 weeks including two weeks at number #1. Unfortunately Williams never received proper credit or compensation for his vital contribution.
After a tour of duty overseas in the army, Jody began recording for the Chicago Indie label Nike Records in 1962. His delicious minor-key instrumental Moanin’ For Molasses and the tough instrumental Hideout were highlights of that time period. Jody kept busy during the early 1960’s but by the late 60’s he was tired of getting short changed on recognition and financial rewards, and he had a family to support. He stopped playing the guitar, stopped going to clubs, and stopped listening to music. In a strange twist of irony, Williams the guitarist that everyone copied, took a job as an engineer for the Xerox Corporation.
Occasionally fans wondered what happened to him, and reports drifted back that he was not interested. But friends chipped away at the rock of his disaffection. He gradually realized how much people still cared. He finally began to reconsider in the spring of 2000 after being talked into attending a show by one of his early mentors, guitarist Robert Jr. Lockwood. Williams explains, “People had been asking me to play for years, and I would just tell them no, change the subject. Then I went to see Robert Junior Lockwood, because we go all the way back. His agent started talking to me about playing again, then my wife. ‘I had a tape from when we were playing in a club in 1964. One Saturday when the wife and kids were out, I decided to listen to it. I was laying on the floor in my den and the tears started to stream down my face at the thought of never being able to play like that again. I got on the phone and called the agent. I just wanted to find out if I could run with the big dogs again. I can’t grow old real quiet. I’ve decided that I’m going to make a lot of noise in my old age.”
It didn’t take long for Williams to regain his chops, even after thirty-plus years. He eventually started gigging around Chicago, he played a few festivals in Europe and soon he was back with a vengeance. Producer and long time Williams friend, Dick Shurman (Albert Collins, Johnny Winter) lined up a recording session for Jody, enlisting several of Jody’s young disciples, Sean Costello, Rusty Zinn and Tinsley Ellis. The ending result Return of A Legend became the vehicle to re-launch his career. Legend received a 2003 WC Handy Award for Comeback Album of the Year, and Williams was heralded by Living Blues readers and critics as “Outstanding Guitarist” for that year.
Then in 2004, came his recording “You Left Me In The Dark”. “You Left Me In the Dark” contains ten brand new Jody Williams compositions as well as guest cameos from blues greats Robert Jr. Lockwood and Lonnie Brooks. Williams once again teamed up with producer Dick Shurman to record material that continues to show his strength as a songwriter and a master of the Chicago Blues guitar style.
Website: http://www.jwblues.com
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