LDS 040: Robert Pete Williams Old Main Theater, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, 1970-04-20
Robert Pete Williams
Louisiana born and raised blues man Robert Pete Williams has spread influence wide and far and you ask the common fan of music these days who Robert Pete Williams, and it’s a blank stare or jumbled calculation of what they have yet to really dive into. From Captain Beefheart to the Black Keys, the influence of Robert Pete Williams unorthodox tunings and raw, ethereal reflection of rural life, prison time, women and the rest has driven a section of American culture that will never die regardless of how many people know about it. When it comes to rare recordings, Robert Pete Williams is on the top of the list of sought out recordings. In the current archives as it stands, only two recordings exists for this blues master, the second of which comes 4 years after the one featured today in our Love Devotion Surrender series. Sourced in 1970 in Portland, Oregon, this FM sourced recording is superbly documented in the highest detail, with the stomps of his foot to keep the beat coming through so clear you almost feel the small rumble of the stage under this mans feet. The blues music is cultural significant to a period along with the timeless aura that permeates in all blues music. If you have never ventured beyond a formal blues recording, the spirit, liveliness and energy in this 1970 recording is something you have to experience.
-Erik Otis
Robert Pete Williams
Old Main Theater, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, 1970-04-20
- Intro + I Got The Blues So Bad
- Don’t Let Me Tip Up On You Woman
- Instrumental Blues With Kazoo
- You’re My All Day Steady and My Midnight Dream
- Cigarette Break
- Late In The Evening, Sun Going Down” + Matchbox Blues
- Boogie Chillen + Come Here, Sit Down On My Knee
- Woman, Why You Treat Me So Mean
- You Don’t Have To Go
- Take Your Time, Love Me Right”
- Tuning Up
- Louise
- Things That I Used To Do
Source: Radio
Lineage: KBOO-FM 90.7 radio broadcast; Reel-Master > CD-R > EAC wave > Trader’s Little Helper {FLAC} > SoMud Torrent > Dime
Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=60LPKN92
Torrent: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=389191
From AllMusic:
by Cub Koda
Discovered in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Robert Pete Williams became one of the great blues discoveries during the folk boom of the early ’60s. His disregard for conventional patterns, tunings, and structures kept him from a wider audience, but his music remains one of the great, intense treats of the blues.
Williams was born in Zachary, Louisiana, the son of sharecropping parents. As a child, he worked the fields with his family and never attended school. Williams didn’t begin playing blues until his late teens, when he made himself a guitar out of a cigar box. Playing his homemade guitar, Williams began performing at local parties, dances, and fish fries at night while he worked during the day. Even though he was constantly working, he never made quite enough money to support his family, which caused considerable tension between him and his wife; according to legend, she burned his guitar one night in a fit of anger.
Robert Pete Williams
Despite all of the domestic tension, Williams continued to play throughout the Baton Rouge area, performing at dances and juke joints. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed he acted in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola, where he served two years before being discovered by ethnomusicologists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen. The pair recorded Williams performing several of his own songs, which were all about life in prison. Impressed with the guitarist’s talents, Oster and Allen pleaded for a pardon for Williams. The pardon was granted in 1959, after he had served a total of three and a half years. For the first five years after he left prison, Williams could only perform in Louisiana, but his recordings — which appeared on Folk-Lyric, Arhoolie, and Prestige, among other labels — were popular and he received positive word of mouth reviews.
In 1964, Williams played his first concert outside of Louisiana, at the legendary Newport Folk Festival. Williams‘ performance was enthusiastically received and he began touring the United States, often playing shows with Mississippi Fred McDowell. For the remainder of the ’60s and most of the ’70s, Robert Pete Williams constantly played concerts and festivals across America, as well a handful of dates in Europe. Along the way, he recorded for a handful of small independent labels, including Fontana and Storyville. Williams slowed down his work schedule in the late ’70s, largely due to declining health. The guitarist died on December 31, 1980, at the age of 66.
