Robert Pete Williams – Poor Bob’s Blues / Arhhoolie CD-511

Description

CD 511

Robert Pete Williams worked from the field holler tradition with free-form lyrics that were usually unrhymed making him the most idiosyncratic and West African-sounding of the country blues players if not the most emotionally personal. Poor Bob’s Blues collects recordings Williams did for Harry Oster’s Folk-Lyric label between 1959 (when Oster “discovered” him at Angola Prison in Louisiana) and Williams’ death in 1980 and it forms a wonderful introduction to this unique bluesman. The opening track on disc one a slow unaccompanied moan called “My Mind Wandering Around” sets the tone here as Williams’ improvised lyrics and spoken explanatory asides build into a remarkably personal meditation that is really unlike anything else in country blues. Even when Williams borrows from the kit bag of floating blues clichés he couples them with his own improvised perspective recycling them in the truest sense as he does here with the ancient “Poor Boy Long Way from Home” which emerges as a personal statement rather than a tired recasting of one of the most versioned songs in the blues canon. Other highlights include the powerful “Cane Cut Man” “Things All Wrong With Me” which features some nice jackknife slide and “What a Shape I’m In.” With excellent liner notes and track-by-track annotation Poor Bob’s Blues makes a perfect introduction to this truly one-of-a-kind bluesman. (Steve Leggett Allmusic.com)
1. My Mind Wandering Around
1. Things All Wrong With Me
2. Cane Cut Man
2. Matchbox Blues
3. My Daddy Was A Hoodoo Man
3. Sad News From Korea
4. No More Sweet Potatoes
4. What A Shape I’m In
5. Poor Bob’s Blues
5. Poor Boy Long Way From Home
6. Cows Love Music
6. Out All Night Long
7. Can’t Yo-Yo No More
7. Crying Won’t Make Me Stay
8. Shake Shake Baby
8. All Out And Down
9. Lord I Done You Wrong
9. Tom And Old Master (Story)
10. Been Mistreated So Long

REVIEW

“…the most avant-garde blues performer ever recorded. No punk rock band has ever matched the jagged acerbic fury of the riffs Williams played 35 years ago. No rapper has approached his ability to evoke the torment of life in prison or bend language to cast an eerie spell over a chance encounter with a seductive woman…. He had never been recorded when he was discovered in Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana convicted of murder. ”

(Milo Miles New York Times) (NOTE: this review refers to Arhoolie CD 395)