Re: A QUERY

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

>   what is the most interesting thing you've done?  curiosity
> killed...
>                                                         --jerusha
>
> For the purposes of this List, musically-speaking --

I lived with Delta Bluesman Big Joe Williams ("Baby, Please Don't Go")
in Montreal for ten glorious days when I was eighteen years old.  (This
period is immortalized by Williams in "Montreal Blues" on the Arhoolie
record, "Thinking About The Things They Did To Me").

He had a week-long engagement at the Blue Lantern Coffee House, on the
heels of a CBC TV Special.  I would carry his guitar (a Silvertone he had
owned since the 'Twenties and to which he had affixed 3 extra strings)
read restaurant menus to him (he was illiterate) and helped him send money
orders home to Chicago.  We jammed and hung out together, often all night,
visiting Rockhead's Paradise and The Black Bottom, where we heard
legendary Montreal guitarist Nelson Symonds.

Big Joe would share his 'mickey' with me and once, to my amazement,
improvised a verse about our 'adventures' on stage.

After one all-nighter,  I crashed  early one morning.
Rising around noon, I went to check on Big Joe.
He told me to go away.  Seems he had gone back out on
the street and  found himself a woman...
Talk about stamina.

He was born 1890-something and told me of visiting the Auction Block in
St. Louis from which his parents had been sold as slaves.  He spoke of
singing in Southern turpentine camps and living in hobo jungles, where he
tied his guitar to his leg while he slept...

Big Joe travelled with his own cast-iron skillet (packed in a small
suitcase along with some clothes) and made us some very tasty chicken
dinners.

Music writer Sam Charters once erroneously wrote that Big Joe was dead,
when he was still very much alive.  When they ran into one another in a
Greenwich Village coffee house, Big Joe pulled a knife on him.  (Reports
of one's death could seriously diminish future job offers.)

(Lesson to writers: check your facts.)

Big Joe passed away 1983.
He made a LOT of recordings, some under the name of King Solomon Hill.

It was a blessing to have known him.

=git shabes=

Wolf Krakowski


www.kamea.com



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