Biography

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Big Joe Williams & J.D. Short
Stavin’ Chain Blues
Delmark 609

…Joe dug into a patched and scuffed cardboard guitar case, rummaged through a spare shirt and old recording contracts and came out with a handbill with his photo on it to prove that he was “the” Joe Williams of Columbia Records fame. Once Joe sat down and played his **** instrument the proprietor knew he was listening to the raw country blues of one of his favorite singers. Joe insisted on a formal audition at his cousin’s home on Cole Street the following Sunday afternoon… By the light of a bare 40-watt bulb, Koester heard for the first time the magnificent combination of two guitars and blues harmonica without surface noise. The other guitar was played by Joe’s cousin J.D. Short.

"A CD reissue of 1958 recordings, it includes four previously unreleased tracks. This is raw but beautiful country-blues, featuring the otherworldly sound of Big Joe's nine-string guitar." - ALL MUSIC review

1 Stavin' Chain Blues 4:04
2 Roll & Tumble 2:51
3 Mean Stepfather 3:22
4 You Got To Help Me Some 3:22
5 You're Gonna Need King Jesus 3:23
6 Jumpin' In The Moonlight 3:40
7 Rocks & Gravel 3:54
8 Sweet Old Kokomo 2:48
9 Nobody Knows Chicago 2:49
10 Gonna Check Up On My Baby 4:08
11 You're Gonna Need King Jesus 3:37
12 Rambled And Wandered 3:23
13 Going Back To Crawford, Miss. 3:17
14 Stavin' Chain Blues 4:12
15 J.D. Talks 1:50

Vocals – J.D. Short (tracks: 1, 4, 14)
Guitar, Harmonica – J.D. Short
Vocals, Guitar [9-string] – Big Joe Williams

Original Recording Date: February 8, 1958
Tracks 2, 5, 7, 14 previously unissued

BIG JOE WILLIAMS Biography
by Barry Lee Pearson
Big Joe Williams may have been the most cantankerous human being who ever walked the earth with guitar in hand. At the same time, he was an incredible blues musician: a gifted songwriter, a powerhouse vocalist, and an exceptionally idiosyncratic guitarist. Despite his deserved reputation as a fighter (documented in Michael Bloomfield's bizarre booklet Me and Big Joe), artists who knew him well treated him as a respected elder statesman. Even so, they may not have chosen to play with him, because -- as with other older Delta artists -- if you played with him you played by his rules.

As protégé David "Honeyboy" Edwards described him, Williams in his early Delta days was a walking musician who played work camps, jukes, store porches, streets, and alleys from New Orleans to Chicago. He recorded through five decades for Vocalion, OKeh, Paramount, Bluebird, Prestige, Delmark, and many others. According to Charlie Musselwhite, he and Big Joe kicked off the blues revival in Chicago in the '60s.

When appearing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at The Fickle Pickle, Williams played an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzzing, sizzling, African-sounding music one would likely ever hear.

Anyone who wants to learn Delta blues must one day come to grips with the idea that the guitar is a drum as well as a melody-producing instrument. A continuous, African-derived musical tradition emphasizing percussive techniques on stringed instruments from the banjo to the guitar can be heard in the music of Delta stalwarts Charley Patton, Fred McDowell, and Bukka White. Each employed decidedly percussive techniques, beating on his box, knocking on the neck, snapping the strings, or adding buzzing or sizzling effects to augment the instrument's percussive potential. However, Big Joe Williams, more than any other major recording artist, embodied the concept of guitar-as-drum, bashing out an incredible series of riffs on his G-tuned nine-string for over 60 years.

J.D. Short Biography

J.D. Short (December 26, 1902 – October 21, 1962) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist and harmonicist with a distinctive vibrato-laden singing voice. Early in his career, he recorded under a number of pseudonyms, including Jelly Jaw Short. His noteworthy works include "Lonesome Swamp Rattlesnake" and "You're Tempting Me".

Short was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi. He was a cousin of Big Joe Williams and David "Honeyboy" Edwards.[3] He learned to play the piano and the guitar at an early age. He later mastered the harmonica, saxophone, clarinet and drums. He performed locally in the Mississippi Delta at house parties. In 1923 he relocated to St. Louis, Missouri.

Short went on to play with the Neckbones, Henry Spaulding, Honeyboy Edwards, Douglas Williams, and Big Joe Williams.[7] In the 1930s, he recorded for Vocalion Records.[1] The musician Henry Townsend, in his autobiography, A Blues Life, told of an incident in St. Louis in which, seemingly out of jealousy of Townsend's musical standing, Short attacked and stabbed him twice. Later, by way of revenge, Townsend shot Short in the genitals, destroying Short's testicles.The account was also mentioned in Townsend's obituary in The Guardian.Short continued performing in St. Louis after World War II, often as a one-man band and sometimes with his cousin Big Joe Williams.

Short disappeared from the music industry for over two decades before re-emerging during the blues revival of the 1960s. He achieved national recognition and went on to record for Delmark Records and Folkways Records. Some of his recordings were later released by Sonet Records.

Short appeared in the 1963 documentary film The Blues, singing "Slidin' Delta".

He died of a heart attack in October 1962, at the age of 59, in St. Louis.