Thursday, February 18, 2016

Blues at Home Musician Elmore "Elmo" Williams passes at 83


Blues at Home Musician

Elmore "Elmo" Williams
passes at 83

February 6, 1933 - February 16, 2016
 

Elmore Williams, Jr., was born in Natchez in 1933. His
father was a blues guitarist who worked as a cement
finisher, and was killed while traveling to work in
Biloxi. Elmore was 10.
Elmore first began performing at local gatherings as
a teenager. He was drafted into the Army and
returned to Natchez after being discharged. He
started singing in a band led by John Fitzgerald and
featuring guitarist James Woods and drummer
Hezekiah Early. The trio often performed at Haney’s
Big House in Ferriday, Louisiana, the biggest club in
the region. In the mid-1950s, Williams formed his own
band, which played at Natchez area venues. In the
1970s and 1980s, Elmore performed mostly at
weddings and informal get-togethers. In 1984, he
performed at the World’s Fair in New Orleans and
traveled to the Netherlands. Elmore worked in
sawmills, a bakery and a dairy when not performing.
He returned to music full-time when the owners of
Oxford’s Fat Possum Records tracked him down and
recorded him with former bandmate Hezekiah Early.
In 1998, Fat Possum recorded
Takes One To Know One,
featuring the Natchez duo. Following its release,
Elmore and Hezekiah toured across the U.S., traveled
to Japan and made multiple visits to Europe.
“I ain't never thought about nothing else to do. I made more playing music than I was working them old jobs. My mama was working and making $9 a week. I was making $11. We pooled that money up there to come on up with my siblings, and it was rough. I didn't get a chance to finish school...I did get a ninth grade education. And I had to go to regular work and I said well, I ain't going
back. I just went on in life with that.”

-- Elmo Williams
 
We have lost Elmo Williams.  In 2011 my team and I drove to Natchez, Mississippi from my hometown of Vicksburg, about a 75 minute drive.  We were meeting Mississippi born living blues legend, Elmore "Elmo" Williams Jr., to include him in the Blues @ Home project. We followed him through his warm paneled kitchen to a comfortable den, we set up, and he slowly shared his layered life in the blues.  Elmo's wife had passed a year earlier, and he was carrying deep pain... it settled on every word. Even as he shared his raucous blues history, he spoke of his wife and family until it brought tears to all of us.  I chose to paint his image with his family portrait and the last supper present in the background...a seemingly opposite surrounding for a blues legend!  He was personally tortured by his church's stance on the blues, but he found grace in both and held to each for dear life!  Elmo, your talents will be so missed, thank you for leaving us your music and your story!  Blessings to your family and friends in their loss.   
 
- H. C. Porter 


 
H.C. Porter Gallery, 1216 Washington St. Vicksburg, MS 39183

601 - 661 - 9444 . hcporter@hcporter.com . www.hcporter.com

 

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