Blind Connie Williams - Philadelphia Street Singer (Testament 1974; 1995)

By request.

In addition to the rediscoveries of the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s, there were also several notable discoveries - that is, African-American musicians who had not made any recordings in the 1920s and 1930s but whose playing styles and repertories had been developed during the prewar years. Some, such as Mance Lipscomb and Robert Pete Williams, achieved a degree of celebrity among the folk festival crowd, while others remained obscure to all but the most erudite of the blues intelligentsia. Blind Connie Williams is one such forgotten figure.

According to Pete Welding's booklet notes, Williams was born blind in southern Florida circa 1915 to parents who were migrant farm workers. During his youth, he attended the St. Petersburg School for the Blind (also Ray Charles' alma mater) and became sufficiently proficient on guitar to begin a career as a street musician in the 1930s. He eventually settled in Philadelphia in 1935 and often traveled to New York City, where he plied his trade in Harlem during his visits. It was there that he met Rev. Gary Davis, whose influence can be heard in Williams' guitar and singing style. His repertory was an extremely eclectic one. As a street musician, he primarily performed sacred material, although he knew a number of proto-blues folk songs and topical material from the 1930s and 1940s as well. He was also familiar with a few blues compositions, but as the booklet notes point out, he preferred "8- or 16-bar blues to the more widespread 12-bar form." Welding discovered Williams performing sanctified numbers to accordion accompaniment in a historically black neighborhood of Philadelphia sometime in 1961. After striking up a friendship, Williams revealed to the music writer that he had originally been a guitarist but used an accordion because it could be more easily heard and required less physical effort to play, both being important characteristics for an aging street musician's instrument to have. Not long afterward, Welding purchased a guitar for him. After reacquainting himself with the instrument, Williams was ready to record the material that appears here. Although the blind street musician may have been one of the first artists that Welding recorded, the results of this session were not released on his Testament label until 1974. The CD version includes seven bonus tracks that were not featured on the original album.

Despite the familiarity of many of the songs featured on this album, Williams displays the characteristics of any good folk musician by interpreting them on his own terms. Throughout the proceedings, he displays a deft touch on his National Steel Guitar, and his accordion playing isn't bad, either. Although the aforementioned influence of Rev. Gary Davis is apparent on many of the performances, his one-time associate was very much his own man in terms of material and guitar techniques like bass-string snapping and utilization of a slider. The first third of the album primarily consists of folk material - such as excellent renditions of "Careless Love," "See See Rider," and "John Henry" - as well as songs associated with early blues singers - for example, "St. Louis Blues" (Bessie Smith) and "One Thin Dime" (which Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded as "One Dime Blues"). "Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt" is a World War II-era piece commemorating the death of FDR that was originally done by gospel singer Otis Jackson, while "Stop by the Woodside" was apparently composed by an old friend from Williams' youth. With the exception of the Pearl Harbor reminiscence "Oh What a Time," the remaining tracks are old vintage sanctified songs including the outstanding "Crossed the Separated Line," "I Can See Everybody's Mother, Can't See Mine," "Through the Years I Keep on Toiling," "I Shall Not Be Moved," and "I'm Gonna Talk for My Savior." "Take Your Burden to the Lord," "Motherless Children," "He Watches Over Me," "I'll Fly Away," and "He's the Lily of the Valley" are especially interesting for featuring Williams on accordion as you're not likely not to have previously heard any of these titles performed on this particular instrument.

1. St. Louis Blues
2. Careless Love
3. Trouble in Mind
4. Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt
5. See See Rider
6. One Thin Dime
7. Stop by the Woodside
8. John Henry
9. Crossed the Separated Line
10. I Can See Everybody's Mother, Can't See Mine
11. Will the Circle Be Unbroken*
12. Take Your Burden to the Lord
13. Oh, What a Time
14. Mother Left Me Standing on the Highway
15. Through the Years I Keep Toiling
16. Motherless Children
17. I Shall Not Be Moved
18. Milky White Way*
19. Gonna Talk for My Savior*
20. When the Saints Go Marching In*
21. He Watches Down Over Me*
22. I'll Fly Away*
23. He's the Lily of the Valley*

*previously unreleased