this belongs in a fucking museum. this belongs in our national archives. Big Joe is a pioneer and a legend if there ever was one. having this footage is remarkable. 9-string blues on a homemade guitar with homemade electronics and amplification.
This is footage was recorded in 1971 at the University of Washington in Seattle, the recordings were made for the Seattle Folklore Society, which produced the largest archive of original bluesmen. This was during a time that the blues revival, started by young white men looking for the artists who made race records in the 20s and 30s, re-discovered these artists and booked them on tours in colleges and music clubs across America. Black people were not interested in these concerts and considered the blues passe, so it was whites that kept the blacks mans' art alive. I drove Big Joe to this session, it was difficult for a lot of the artists to perform in a sterile setting with a bunch of blues nuts watching passively. Joe was an intense, smart, powerful person and a force of nature, he was the most active of the original bluesmen and performed consistently from the 1930s to 1980. RIP Big Joe.
I love the sound of an amped acoustic guitar, raw and distinct tone like nothing else. Lightnin Hopkins and Elmore James did it too. As great as they were, when you make your own 9 string and do it, it's a whole other level!
Classic delta blues... A true artist. Many other artists have covered his songs, but have not duplicated his passion or his unique style. LOVE IT!!! Thank you for posting & keeping the art alive... Love, Peace and Chicken Grease! -Deadfoot Dave
I used to tell him, "you're fuckin' with the rhythm Joe, and he was so sweet. He'd just look at his glass and say, baby please don't go. I poured him another.
got a real blues sampler album in the 70's. big joe was on it, as were many other greats. this is the real blues. love his style and 9 string one of a kind guitar. want to learn the blues, play your heart out every day and you'll get it in time.
Watching and listening to Big Joe after a stop in Seattle where I purchased an ex rare (perhaps one of a kind) KGN-12 from one of the top country blues artists of our time, Steve James-who insisted I listen to more Big Joe; and here I am. It don't have to look pretty (guitars) to play the blues.
When Joe was in a good session he was amazing. His buddies Tommy McLennan & Robert Petway had a similar minimal juke joint style that can really warp tour world if you have big ears. Check out Joe's early records from the 40's when he was in his prime. Stand guitar players who stick to the age old way of playing with only a pick ignore the power of holding the bass and melody going at the same time. Nothing wrong with using a capo if you move it.
Big Joe a real man that sings from real life experiences a great musician here ! Also hear his Christmas Blues song ! lots of todays music is driven by big business , cooker cutter music with mind directing thinking in it for their advantage.
That is the funkiest guitar I've ever seen! It's a wonder he can even get to the strings with all that tape, and those wires stickin' out everywhere. It just proves that all you need is strong fingers, and an indomitable will to play great music. My first guitar was a Silvertone; I bought it from Sears back when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I took it to Africa with me, but the humidity absolutely wrecked it. GREAT MUSIC!!!
Larry Berger, Just wondering which bar in Chicago? I first met Joe in The Fickle Pickle (State St. near Dearborn) in 1963. Bob Koester (Delmark Records) and Mike Bloomfield ran concert jams on Tuesday nights and featured Joe along with Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery, Sunnyland Slim, Sleepy John Estes, et al. I was there every Tuesday night sitting in the front row trying to figure out what they were doing. Wonderful memories.
Love....1#.... That note......hunting.... Jus when u the best... " Little annie may...." .. Style..robert johnson.... son house. .fred mcdowell.. Strings b talkin... John lee hooker..boogie blues.
On the first Jethro Tull album, Mick Abrahams is credited with playing the 9-string guitar , "which is a 12-string guitar with three strings missing (or something).". Perhaps it was a nod to the influence of Big Joe Williams (or something).
jeff naugle, Joe preferred guitars that had a point at the end of the headstock. He would drill a single hole through the tip of the headstock and add three tuning pegs built on a strip by pushing the center peg up through the hole and letting the other two pegs rest against the outside edge of the headstock. The tension of the strings held the peg strip in place. It always looked like there were no screws holding it but he may have drilled new screw holes in the strip to help hold it in place.
@@hacgarimman9660 Them was the name of a Northern Irish rock band formed by singer Van Morrison in 1964. They released four hit songs in the 60s ("Gloria"; "Baby Please Don't Go": "Here Comes The Night" and "Mystic Eyes"). Check them out!
I wonder how many people offered to internally route his pickup wires? If BIg Joe made that guitar you would think he would of had a drill bit to do that since he or somebody attached the additional tuning machines. Probably pulled out a knife when anybody got near his guitar.
Lightnin Hopkins, No one would have made that offer. The pickup Joe used was a DeArmond Guitar Mike [sic] known colloquially as the “monkey on a stick.” He used it on every guitar I saw him play. It was designed to be placed on any guitar without altering the guitar. imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/924/b7Gwuy.jpg
@@iicjguitar0416 He was very friendly but gruff and intense, he was still living the bluesmans' life, he was rough and wanted a piss jar for his room. We took him for a haircut, he was looking for romance. He was powerful and the drive in his music shows that.
I saw him live two times in Hamburg/Germany in the early 1970ies. The first concert, in Malersaal, had to stopped by the police, as he and the audience were not willing to come to an end … The second, a few month later at the Logo club, he was singing (at the age of 73) the song “Good morning little school girl” with the line “Tell your mama and your pa, I’m a little schoolboy, too” … at his age? I stated laughing. He stopped, looked at me (sitting at a table right in front the stage), saw me smiling, started smiling too, stopped the song and played a different one. Great moments I will never forget. And I still like his singing and very special guitar sound. I also own a copy of Mike Bloomfield’s great booklet about Big Joe - a true eye opener about real Blues live beyond romantics.
So glad I found this "folkseattle" channel. Their videos are priceless. I mean Id rather it be named "FolkMemphis", "FolkBirmingham", "FolkClarksdale something southern you know.
I was a concert promoter for the Seattle Folklore Society and drove Big Joe to the studio where this was recorded. This was a group filled with killer musicians and we learned from the greats. We were so blessed to be around so many great artists and fascinating people.
it shows one of the roots of where rock came from. The sound is appealing, but doesnt change much from song to song. He cannot play in other keys without retuning. He only has a few moves that he reuses all the time. Just like alot of pop music today. I like it but could not listen to only that.
@@lastknowngood0 the out of afrikaans hypothesis has since been disproved. In fact new archaeological evidence show white Europeans as early as 12,000 years ago, returned to Africa as cro magnum was just leaving. Whites predate black Africans by 6 thousand years.
White people saved the blues from extinction and I am proud to say I was one of them, it is a national scandal that black kids don't know the great southern bluesmen.
he sure can make that guitar talk real nice you'd think he'd have got a regular 12 string and then convert it to a nine he must have made some big money along the way to maybe get afford a nice Guild or Martin. or was he living from gig to gig i don't know his history is he just another blues dude that got turned over by his agent big time. or did he just look the part and put on an act and an image a nasty boozy blues brother persona.
@@davisworth5114 Dai were you coming from you need to leave the booze alone because your sure talking out your fat arse. and as for immature take a good long look in the mirror if you want to see childish immature, as that would be the very first place to look, in your case. as for guitar styles their on going, as one generation pilfers from the technique acquired by the previous generation. And so on and on into the future. there is no patent pending on any one style but the very best can breath life and feeling into a tune and put into the mind (of the listener) those far off places, that they might never see or those adult situations of men and women you'd never want to see happen to yourself or of yours. maybe if you get off your very high horse and read what i didn't say but was nevertheless implied which was left for your own inner thinking to figure. it.... might have flown over your small minded head.... But as you said i'm immature and you, you wise and wizened sage that you are know so much more than this poor lonely stranger here. maybe if i'd put a lot more punctuation you might have seen where i was coming from. I am not an American by the way but where i live we have our own ancient and rustic melody's and tunes of equal hardships. suffered by the regular ordinary folk of yesteryear and remembered and passed down in songs, to us folk here today. there was slavery here for a very very long period. a thousands or more years it was here in these isles before the romans conquered our tribes. And when they fucked off back to Rome it was still here. So lot of these old tunes are of equal worth if not better than some of the old blues. for me i think it's got something to do with he (Joe) being human and a real poet at heart as i imagine him to be So I do wonder if mr Williams was a family man. just a thought. (I have met musicians who thought they where famous, they were to their fans) but not to me. their just people with the strangest of job's and what you see on the stage is not who they really are. you have to take the mask off once in a blued moon aye? defrock them and see past the fetish of the image. it's not something i'd wish to be myself i am so very lucky. I have no musical talent. but if, i sometime in the future decide to pick up some rocks and bang them together, i'll put up a video so as you can see my merry jamboree and you can say how very immature it was of me. (I'm getting board with this rant) so feel free to comment on immature v ignorance as i'm sure you are very well versed in both oh self appointed Guru in your bed room ashram hermitage image of a bald fat white guy. as for me my foot is red and swollen with the gout and writing this crap has helped somewhat took my mind off the excruciating pain and fever, think I'll try and get some rest it's going to be a trial... hate gout hate it just as your getting settled you need to use the bog it just isn't fare.. any oh Dai keep your foot out your mouth there's a good lad
Number one, any guitar that has a buzzing string will set a drone and add to the texture, you don't need a spendy guitar to play blues, just one that is playable and sounds good, money doesn't give you a good guitar. I have a couple dozen sweet electrics but the best is a Peavey Predator I got for 80 bucks. Number two, if you play slide guitar, never change the strings, number three you are totally disrespectful, Big Joe didn't take lessons, HE INVENTED THIS STYLE OF PLAYING.
this belongs in a fucking museum. this belongs in our national archives. Big Joe is a pioneer and a legend if there ever was one. having this footage is remarkable. 9-string blues on a homemade guitar with homemade electronics and amplification.
I was trying to figure it out!
This is footage was recorded in 1971 at the University of Washington in Seattle, the recordings were made for the Seattle Folklore Society, which produced the largest archive of original bluesmen. This was during a time that the blues revival, started by young white men looking for the artists who made race records in the 20s and 30s, re-discovered these artists and booked them on tours in colleges and music clubs across America. Black people were not interested in these concerts and considered the blues passe, so it was whites that kept the blacks mans' art alive. I drove Big Joe to this session, it was difficult for a lot of the artists to perform in a sterile setting with a bunch of blues nuts watching passively. Joe was an intense, smart, powerful person and a force of nature, he was the most active of the original bluesmen and performed consistently from the 1930s to 1980. RIP Big Joe.
I love the sound of an amped acoustic guitar, raw and distinct tone like nothing else. Lightnin Hopkins and Elmore James did it too. As great as they were, when you make your own 9 string and do it, it's a whole other level!
This guy is a machine, made his own 9 string. Look at the tuners on the top of headstock. Ok, Big Joe, I see how you do it. Amplified it too.
Classic delta blues... A true artist. Many other artists have covered his songs, but have not duplicated his passion or his unique style. LOVE IT!!! Thank you for posting & keeping the art alive...
Love, Peace and Chicken Grease!
-Deadfoot Dave
Yeah, boy howdy!
I used to tell him, "you're fuckin' with the rhythm Joe, and he was so sweet. He'd just look at his glass and say, baby please don't go. I poured him another.
Said the Dave and Phil Alvin.
+Jawknee Rustle
^Omit the.^
I could listen to this all day
My very first live blues experience back in '68 was this man - awesome (Chicago Blues in the Concert Hall, Gothenburg)
One of the fathers of modern music.
Great Bluesman right here ,how the hell did any one person give Thumbs down is beyond me..
got a real blues sampler album in the 70's. big joe was on it, as were many other greats. this is the real blues. love his style and 9 string one of a kind guitar. want to learn the blues, play your heart out every day and you'll get it in time.
Just listen to the right guys like Big Joe, Skip James, Son House, Lightnin' Hopkins etc.
Watching and listening to Big Joe after a stop in Seattle where I purchased an ex rare (perhaps one of a kind) KGN-12 from one of the top country blues artists of our time, Steve James-who insisted I listen to more Big Joe; and here I am. It don't have to look pretty (guitars) to play the blues.
When Joe was in a good session he was amazing. His buddies Tommy McLennan & Robert Petway had a similar minimal juke joint style that can really warp tour world if you have big ears. Check out Joe's early records from the 40's when he was in his prime. Stand guitar players who stick to the age old way of playing with only a pick ignore the power of holding the bass and melody going at the same time. Nothing wrong with using a capo if you move it.
Big Joe is an awesome Blues Boss!
Big Joe a real man that sings from real life experiences a great musician here ! Also hear his Christmas Blues song ! lots of todays music is driven by big business , cooker cutter music with mind directing thinking in it for their advantage.
That is the funkiest guitar I've ever seen! It's a wonder he can even get to the strings with all that tape, and those wires stickin' out everywhere. It just proves that all you need is strong fingers, and an indomitable will to play great music. My first guitar was a Silvertone; I bought it from Sears back when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I took it to Africa with me, but the humidity absolutely wrecked it.
GREAT MUSIC!!!
It was. I'm sure he put it together in some southern motel somewhere. Knobs everywhere. I enjoyed Joe in my bar in Chicago back in the sixties.
Larry Berger, Just wondering which bar in Chicago? I first met Joe in The Fickle Pickle (State St. near Dearborn) in 1963. Bob Koester (Delmark Records) and Mike Bloomfield ran concert jams on Tuesday nights and featured Joe along with Yank Rachell, Little Brother Montgomery, Sunnyland Slim, Sleepy John Estes, et al. I was there every Tuesday night sitting in the front row trying to figure out what they were doing. Wonderful memories.
Absolute genius
Thurston Moore would love the shit out of this guitar! What a performance and what a completely unique sound. Unearthly!
no wonder I always wondered why his guitar sounded kinda funky
gffff looks kinda funky too lol
I love these blues so much as i do my woman. Expect I don't listen to my woman!
@@detroitfunk313
You up shut fuck
It’s a blues joke folks.
@@theripper3294 let that man be, for us all my friend.the sense I don't Is point of my spoken word
Comment is priceless
Awesome
how the hell did you guys get all this footage..wow
Love....1#.... That note......hunting.... Jus when u the best... " Little annie may...."
.. Style..robert johnson.... son house. .fred mcdowell.. Strings b talkin... John lee hooker..boogie blues.
He's my favorite
Thanks for sharing!!!!!!!!!!!!
came here for djent not disappointed
Blues is way heavier than metal if you're on the right drugs :D
@SrGreeneyed - it is from the DVD "Fred McDowell & Big Joe Williams - Masters of the Country Blues" from a GREAT series of DVDs on Yazoo/Shanachie.
TONE.
"Yes" okay!
PAZ AMOR E GALO . Bit Joe e muito bom escutar o som desse Cara .
He took a three on a side plate of tuning machines and added them to the top of the headstock.
When and where was this great video made❤?😊
Seattle 1971 by Seattle Folklore Society.
No one played a 9-string quite like Big Joe.
Well, when you're really the ONLY one doing it how can you not stand out as the example?
Haha.
On the first Jethro Tull album, Mick Abrahams is credited with playing the 9-string guitar , "which is a 12-string guitar with three strings missing (or something).". Perhaps it was a nod to the influence of Big Joe Williams (or something).
he has extra tuning pegs
extra strings too
jeff naugle hence the nickname “King of the Nine-String Guitar”
jeff naugle, Joe preferred guitars that had a point at the end of the headstock. He would drill a single hole through the tip of the headstock and add three tuning pegs built on a strip by pushing the center peg up through the hole and letting the other two pegs rest against the outside edge of the headstock. The tension of the strings held the peg strip in place. It always looked like there were no screws holding it but he may have drilled new screw holes in the strip to help hold it in place.
Man his amplified 9 string beats mine!
100 years........Baby Please Don't Go
This is how a guitar should played.... Hu?
Great stuff! For sure John lee Hooker, Them, Dylan were influenced by Joe!
Who is them?
@@hacgarimman9660 Them was the name of a Northern Irish rock band formed by singer Van Morrison in 1964. They released four hit songs in the 60s ("Gloria"; "Baby Please Don't Go": "Here Comes The Night" and "Mystic Eyes"). Check them out!
I wonder how many people offered to internally route his pickup wires? If BIg Joe made that guitar you would think he would of had a drill bit to do that since he or somebody attached the additional tuning machines. Probably pulled out a knife when anybody got near his guitar.
Lightnin Hopkins, No one would have made that offer. The pickup Joe used was a DeArmond Guitar Mike [sic] known colloquially as the “monkey on a stick.” He used it on every guitar I saw him play. It was designed to be placed on any guitar without altering the guitar. imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/924/b7Gwuy.jpg
@Gerrymusicteacher I checked out your channel. Good job! Keep at it and don't ever give up!
raridade
When and where was this?😊
Somzera
Basic information to add to the video description above: in which city/country/year this film was made.
Seattle 1971 I drove Joe to the studio on UW campus Joe never stopped being a bluesman.
@@davisworth5114 how was Joe in person? From what i read on Michael Bloomfield’s book about him, he was a colorful character.
@@iicjguitar0416 He was very friendly but gruff and intense, he was still living the bluesmans' life, he was rough and wanted a piss jar for his room. We took him for a haircut, he was looking for romance. He was powerful and the drive in his music shows that.
I saw him live two times in Hamburg/Germany in the early 1970ies. The first concert, in Malersaal, had to stopped by the police, as he and the audience were not willing to come to an end … The second, a few month later at the Logo club, he was singing (at the age of 73) the song “Good morning little school girl” with the line “Tell your mama and your pa, I’m a little schoolboy, too” … at his age? I stated laughing. He stopped, looked at me (sitting at a table right in front the stage), saw me smiling, started smiling too, stopped the song and played a different one.
Great moments I will never forget.
And I still like his singing and very special guitar sound. I also own a copy of Mike Bloomfield’s great booklet about Big Joe - a true eye opener about real Blues live beyond romantics.
Folkmemphis
Oh Yes Digging them strings already YesYesYes👋👋👋👋✌💙
So glad I found this "folkseattle" channel. Their videos are priceless. I mean Id rather it be named "FolkMemphis", "FolkBirmingham", "FolkClarksdale something southern you know.
I was a concert promoter for the Seattle Folklore Society and drove Big Joe to the studio where this was recorded. This was a group filled with killer musicians and we learned from the greats. We were so blessed to be around so many great artists and fascinating people.
@@davisworth5114 thanks for the reply. Not stupid, just stating my opinion as I see it
it shows one of the roots of where rock came from. The sound is appealing, but doesnt change much from song to song. He cannot play in other keys without retuning. He only has a few moves that he reuses all the time. Just like alot of pop music today. I like it but could not listen to only that.
Each song was completely different. Autism is a spectrum.
♪♪♪♪♥▼♥♪♪♪♪
Can someone tell me the history behind this series of videos.
From the vaults of The Seattle folklore Society.
04:35
big koe
1o string
dominic flats 9
lotta white people here in 2014?
yes, we are and we whites are ok to like things in abundance, sir
It is written that we all walked out of Africa Sir. ;-))
@@lastknowngood0 the out of afrikaans hypothesis has since been disproved.
In fact new archaeological evidence show white Europeans as early as 12,000 years ago, returned to Africa as cro magnum was just leaving.
Whites predate black Africans by 6 thousand years.
White people saved the blues from extinction and I am proud to say I was one of them, it is a national scandal that black kids don't know the great southern bluesmen.
he sure can make that guitar talk real nice
you'd think he'd have got a regular 12 string and then convert it to a nine
he must have made some big money along the way
to maybe get afford a nice Guild or Martin.
or was he living from gig to gig
i don't know his history is he just another blues dude
that got turned over by his agent big time.
or did he just look the part and put on an act and an image
a nasty boozy blues brother persona.
@@davisworth5114
Dai were you coming from you need to leave the booze alone because your sure talking out your fat arse.
and as for immature take a good long look in the mirror if you want to see childish
immature, as that would be the very first place to look, in your case.
as for guitar styles their on going, as one generation pilfers from the technique acquired by the previous generation.
And so on and on into the future.
there is no patent pending on any one style
but the very best can breath life and feeling
into a tune and put into the mind (of the listener) those far off places,
that they might never see or those adult situations of men and women you'd never want to see happen to yourself or of yours.
maybe if you get off your very high horse
and read what i didn't say but was nevertheless implied
which was left for your own inner thinking
to figure. it.... might have flown over your small minded head....
But as you said i'm immature and you, you wise and wizened sage that you are
know so much more
than this poor lonely stranger here.
maybe if i'd put a lot more punctuation
you might have seen where i was coming from.
I am not an American by the way but where i live we have our own ancient and rustic melody's and tunes of equal hardships.
suffered by the regular ordinary folk of yesteryear and remembered and passed down in songs, to us folk here today.
there was slavery here for a very very long
period. a thousands or more years
it was here in these isles before the romans
conquered our tribes. And when they fucked off back to Rome it was still here.
So lot of these old tunes are of equal worth
if not better than some of the old blues.
for me i think it's got something to do with he (Joe) being human and a real poet at heart as i imagine him to be
So I do wonder if mr Williams was a family man. just a thought.
(I have met musicians who thought they where famous, they were to their fans)
but not to me.
their just people with the strangest of job's
and what you see on the stage is not
who they really are.
you have to take the mask off once in a blued moon aye? defrock them
and see past the fetish of the image.
it's not something i'd wish to be myself
i am so very lucky. I have no musical talent.
but if, i sometime in the future decide
to pick up some rocks and bang them together, i'll put up a video so as you can
see my merry jamboree and you can say how very immature it was of me.
(I'm getting board with this rant)
so feel free to comment on immature
v ignorance as i'm sure you are very well versed in both oh self appointed Guru in your bed room ashram hermitage
image of a bald fat white guy.
as for me
my foot is red and swollen with the gout
and writing this crap has helped somewhat
took my mind off the excruciating pain
and fever, think I'll try and get some rest
it's going to be a trial... hate gout hate it
just as your getting settled you need to use the bog it just isn't fare..
any oh Dai keep your foot out your mouth
there's a good lad
Number one, any guitar that has a buzzing string will set a drone and add to the texture, you don't need a spendy guitar to play blues, just one that is playable and sounds good, money doesn't give you a good guitar. I have a couple dozen sweet electrics but the best is a Peavey Predator I got for 80 bucks. Number two, if you play slide guitar, never change the strings, number three you are totally disrespectful, Big Joe didn't take lessons, HE INVENTED THIS STYLE OF PLAYING.