Some artists share the exhilaration/burden of, later in life, having fallen into unlikely consequences that would make them distinguished. The music of Robert Pete Williams does more beyond submitting a confessional, ripe with personal and fictional stories. His music, like the work of writer Ambrose Bierce, is a life-breathing, transcendental product of experience. Both perfected the effects of satire and escape in their work and often suggested the supernatural both indirectly and directly.
In his later years, for the sake of nostalgia, Bierce had revisited many of the cities he felt responsible for his livelihood. He was outspoken and gleeful in letters that chronicled his travels. The last letter to reach home was written from a small town in Mexico. He was never to be heard from again. And so Ambrose Bierce met an obscure fate that would not only strengthen his readership, but one that would be responsible for an immortality perceived by history.
As Bierce’s stature inconclusively owes to circumstance, Robert Pete Williams met a temporary fate brought on by violence and implied jealousy. Forced to defend himself in a scuffle at a bar, the bluesman shot a man to his death in 1955. A life term in Angola prison followed. Where Bierce owes his life’s work to the flip of a coin—he tossed a gold piece to decide between journalism and advancement in the Confederate Army—Williams owes his life to his livelihood. Music archivists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen paid him a visit in prison, having heard that a local blues legend was serving a life term for murder. Records were cut, the vocals of which delineated the stories leading up to and including the singer’s tenure in prison. A relationship flourished, and soon an appeal was underway to strike Williams’ erroneous fate. Williams was subsequently given a full pardon in 1959, three and a half wasted years behind him.
Like the ringing in your ears, every now and then we uneasily detect the relocation of a soul. It can be felt it in such brief, brilliant sketches as "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and “Farm Blues.” We hear it in our heads as existence wraps itself around the simulation inherent in art. At such times we helplessly, willingly release ourselves of the metaphysics of imagery and become one with the artist.
Very interesting parallels/contrasts made between the lives of Williams and Bierce. Whereas Bierce's path was guided by choice/whim, Williams really didn't have that luxury. His prison experiences profoundly impacted both his psyche and his music. Even after the pardon brought about by the circulation of Oster's recordings and the ensuing (if fleeting) notoriety, his financial situation was one akin to indentured servitude as a farm laborer. Performances at Newport and on the Blues Revival circuit did little to change this and he died essentially destitute.
For me, he is a bluesman apart. Everything from his idiosyncratic fret style to his often free-associative approach to lyrics paints a picture starkly different from his peers. One of the most unique improvisors in the idiom, on par with Bukka White and Skip James, he's also one who reaches for and firmly grasps at the kind of sadness Brian touched on in an earlier thread. There's a quiet and mournful desperation in so many of his songs, but it's tempered with an underlying resignation to go on living just the same. "Pardon Denied Again" and "I Had Trouble" from his Arhoolie body of work, touch on the tenebrous themes of being fearfully adrift and alone, both spiritually and interpersonally. But even when Williams sings "sometimes I feel like committing suicide" on "Prisoner's Talking Blues," there's something something about the cathartic releases that suggest he's not finished fighting against the fates.
Posted by: Blind Lincoln Log at April 7, 2003 7:17 AMI completely agree with all of that. Something about this music in particular that gives it a supernatural, mythological quality. Robert Pete is the current tragic hero.
Posted by: al at April 10, 2003 6:34 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................