Bill Williams - Railroad Bill

From The Late Bill Williams: Blues, Rags And Ballads (1974)...Blue Goose BG 2013

http://www.wirz.de/music/willfrm.htm

Bill Williams was a 73-year old bluesman from Greenup, Kentucky, when he made his debut for Blue Goose in the early 1970's. Stephen Calt wrote that "The previously unrecorded Williams ranks among the most polished and proficient living traditional bluesmen, and has a large repertoire embracing ragtime, hillbilly, and even pop material. He is also the only known living associate of Blind Blake, his own favorite guitarist. While living in Bristol, Tennessee in the early 1920's Bill met the peerless Blind Blake who was then living with an elderly woman (perhaps a relative) in a desolate nearby country area. For four months Bill worked as Blake's regular second guitarist." Williams cut just two LP's, both for Blue Goose: Low And Lonesome and The Late Bill Williams: Blues, Rags And Ballads plus had one song on the anthology These Blues Is Meant To Be Barrelhoused. From the notes to The Late Bill Williams: Blues, Rags and Ballads, Stephen Calt wrote: "For a guitarist of such uncommon ability Bill Williams enjoyed an all-too brief period of public recognition. Within fifteen minutes of the time he first picked up an instrument in 1908 he was accomplished enough to play a song, but he was still completely unknown beyond his home town of Greenup, Kentucky before Blue Goose recorded him in the fall of 1970 and issued an album (Low and Lonesome) that brought him unqualified acclaim as a 73-year old folk find. A brief series of concert engagements (notably at the Smithsonian Institution and the Mariposa Folk Festival) followed, along with an extended recording session in New York, before a heart ailment brought about his musical retirement. In October of 1973, nearly three years to the day of his recording debut, he was fatally stricken in his sleep." ~ source: Big Road Blues

Photo: Constable J. L. McGowan standing, rifle in hand, over the corpse of "Railroad Bill" strapped to a wooden plank, sold for 50 cents in the days following the notorious outlaw's death in March 1896, source: Encyclopedia of Alabama