It was 1965 or thereabouts and my date and I were at a club in Greenwich
Village in New York listening to music. The room was enormous, crowded,
smoky and loud. The tables were miniscule with barely room for drinks and
no room to stretch out our legs under them. Featured were two folk rock
bands, flaunting their wares with mega-amplification. They were young,
attractive, fashionably hip and very loud.
Sandwiched in between the two sets, perhaps as an afterthought, was
the bluesman Big Joe Williams (not to be confused with the jazz and rhythm
and blues singer Joe Williams who sang with Count Basie). He looked terrible.
He had a big bulbous aneuristic protrusion bulging out of his forehead.
He was equipped with a beat up old acoustic guitar which I think had nine
strings and sundry homemade attachments and a wire hanger contraption around
his neck fashioned to hold a kazoo while keeping his hands free to play
the guitar. Needless to say, he was a big letdown after the folk rockers.
My date and I exchanged pained looks in empathy for what was being done
this Delta blues man who was ruefully out of place. After three or four
songs the unseen announcer came on the p. a. system and said, "Lets have
a big hand for Big Joe Williams, ladies and gentlemen; thank you Big Joe".
But Big Joe wasn't finished. He hadn't given up on the audience and
he ignored the announcer. He continued his set and after each song the
announcer came over the p. a. and tried to politely but firmly get Big
Joe off the stage. Big Joe was having none of it and he continued his set
with his nine-string acoustic and his kazoo.
Long about the sixth or seventh song he got into his groove and started
to wail with raggedy slide guitar riffs, powerful voice, as well as intense
percussion on the guitar and its various accoutrements. By the end of the
set he had that audience of jaded '60's rockers on their feet cheering
and applauding vociferously. Our initial pity for him was replaced by wondrous
respect. He knew he had it in him to move that audience and he knew that
thousands of watts and hundreds of decibels do not change one iota the
basic power of a song.
Big Joe Williams died on December 17th, 1982. He was inducted into the
W. C. Handy Blues Hall of Fame on October 4th, 1992. His accomplishments
as a singer, song writer and musician are considerable, but to me he will
always be the man who won over an unlikely apathetic audience of rockers
with uncompromising Delta blues.
Marc Miller is a New York born folk-blues and ragtime-blues
singer and guitarist who now lives on Kibbutz Afiq in the
Golan Heights, overlooking the Sea of Gallilee.
