Big Joe Williams was no stranger to plugging in when he cut this live date at Rockford College in 1965. His ouevre had been divisible between acoustic and amplified blues for decades, with the druthers for either hinging mainly on his own whims rather than those of his audience. A self-taught luthier, he routinely salvaged guitars from the trash to assemble his own Frankenstein creations. The six-string he uses here has an additional three strings soldered to its neck, but more notable is his decision to jack a tremolo attachment up to the level of near distortion. The resulting waves of shimmering twang give his craggy picked lines abundant presence and smoothly oscillating texture. It’s a contrastive combination with his bullfrog croak of a voice and colloquial delivery and therefore unique in his canon. And that’s saying something considering Williams played and recorded constantly, traveling from place to place and completely ignoring copyright and contract considerations on many of his stops. The 17-song set list encompasses a few covers like John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun” and Sonny Boy Williams’ “Good Morning Little School Girl”, but Williams primarily dips from his own bag of snuff with “Mellow Peaches” and “Vitamin A Blues” being standouts. He never concerned himself much with playing things “right” and there are plenty of switchbacks and “mistakes” in his homespun fretwork, but again, that thick glaze of tremolo has the weird effect of polishing off the points and cracks. Normally, that would seem a negative, but in actual practice it makes for a fascinating coupling of urbane and back porch moods.
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