Big Joe Williams: The Roving King of the Nine-String Guitar (The Roots of the Blues)
Language: English
Published by Simon Godfrey, 2026
- Softcover
- New
Seller: California Books, Miami, FL, U.S.A.California Books
AbeBooks seller since October 27, 2023
Condition: New
£ 19.82
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Add to basketSeller Inventory # I-9798231769339
- Title
- Big Joe Williams: The Roving King of the Nine-String Guitar (The Roots of the Blues)
- Author
- Godfrey, Simon
- Publisher
- Simon Godfrey
- Publication year
- 2026
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 13
- 9798231769339
He built his first guitar with one string and whatever the swamp offered. He never really stopped.
Born in 1903 on the edge of Mississippi's Noxubee Swamp, Joseph Lee Williams left home as a teenager and spent the next six decades proving that a blues musician's real instrument was motion itself - riding rails, working levee camps, touring with travelling minstrel shows, and turning up wherever a crowd needed convincing. Along the way he modified an ordinary guitar into something no one else played: a battered, buzzing nine-string monster that became as much his signature as his voice.
He wrote "Baby, Please Don't Go" in 1935 and then watched it travel without him - through Muddy Waters' Chicago, into the British Invasion, and on to generations of musicians who never knew where it came from. He outlasted the era that made him, re-emerged as an elder statesman of the folk-blues revival, and kept roaming almost to the day he died in 1982.
This is the story of a musician who never let an instrument, a genre, or a settled life tell him what it was for - and who turned that restlessness into some of the most durable music the blues ever produced.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Simon Godfrey is a lifelong blues enthusiast and avid listener whose deep, self-taught knowledge of the genre comes from decades spent following the music wherever it led - from the original recordings to the artists, places, and influences behind them. He now writes to put that knowledge into stories, researching each subject in depth so the history behind the music gets the same care as the music itself.
His work is written for blues fans, musicians, and curious newcomers alike, with one aim: to help readers discover and understand the music through deeply researched, engaging stories that connect the artists, songs, recordings, places, and influences that shaped the blues - so they can uncover forgotten treasures, understand why the music matters, and hear the blues in a whole new way.
Know the story. Hear the blues differently.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
California Books
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AbeBooks seller since October 27, 2023
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