Robert Pete Williams
worked from the field holler tradition, with free-form lyrics that were usually unrhymed, making him the most idiosyncratic and West African-sounding of the
country blues
players, if not the most emotionally personal.
Poor Bob's Blues
collects recordings
Williams
did for
Harry Oster
's
Folk-Lyric
label between 1959 (when
Oster
discovered him at Angola Prison in Louisiana) and
' death in 1980, and it forms a wonderful introduction to this unique bluesman. The opening track on disc one, a slow, unaccompanied moan called
"My Mind Wandering Around,"
sets the tone here, as
' improvised lyrics and spoken explanatory asides build into a remarkably personal meditation that is really unlike anything else in
. Even when
borrows from the kit bag of floating
blues
cliches, he couples them with his own improvised perspective, recycling them in the truest sense, as he does here with the ancient
"Poor Boy, Long Way from Home,"
which emerges as a personal statement rather than a tired recasting of one of the most versioned songs in the
canon. Other highlights include the powerful
"Cane Cut Man,"
"Things All Wrong With Me,"
which features some nice jackknife slide, and
"What a Shape I'm In."
With excellent liner notes and track-by-track annotation,
makes a perfect introduction to this truly one-of-a-kind bluesman. ~ Steve Leggett