Jody Williams, master of electric blues guitar, dies
Disillusioned musician made a successful comeback after 2000
Guitarist Jody Williams helped modernize the sound of Chicago blues in the 1950s while accompanying such headliners as Bo Diddley and Howlin’ Wolf. His musical signature , a bright, stinging instrumental style, appeared on treasured blues recordings of the era, including Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” Billy Boy Arnold’s “I Wish You Would,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Don’t Start Me Talking.”
Fellow guitarist Otis Rush acknowledged Williams’ 1955 work “Lucky Lou” as an inspiration for his oft-covered song “All Your Love (I Miss Loving).”
Among Chicago musicians, Williams’ electric guitar mastery was so renowned that big-bandleader and trombonist Buddy Morrow used him on sessions when an authentic rock-and-roll guitar style was needed.
After losing a lawsuit in 1961 stemming from the distinctive guitar hook of Mickey Baker and Sylvia Vanderpool’s pop hit “Love Is Strange” — Williams had claimed the lick was copied and stolen from him — he gradually became disillusioned with music and vanished from records and clubs.
A few years into retirement, Williams was persuaded to step into a nightclub for the first time in nearly three decades to hear an old friend, bluesman Robert Lockwood Jr. It inspired him to start listening afresh to tapes he had made long ago, and it stirred thoughts of lost time.
Re-emerging on the blues scene, he found himself embraced as an eminence and mobbed by a new generation of fans. A record company official approached him in 2000 about entering the studio once again and he agreed, in part, he told an interviewer with the Australian Broadcasting Co., to “eat a little higher on the hog and bestow some of the luxuries of life on my family.”
The Blues Foundation awarded his album “Return of a Legend” (2002) its comeback blues album award in 2003. Ten years later, the same organization inducted him into its Blues Hall of Fame.