Arthur Williams
Arthur Williams
Williams is one of the few remaining 'authentic' bluesmen, with a background rich in the roots of the Delta, overlapping with his youth in Chicago. Arthur was born in Tunica, Mississippi on July 8th, 1937, on the Coke and Stone plantation, where his dad drove a tractor on the plantation. As so often was the case, lean times and the prospects up North led to a family move to Argo, Illinois in Nov. of 1939, when he was only 2 years of age, and then onto Chicago when he was 12. Arthur began playing the harmonica when he was 5 or 6
Arthur never liked the city, he loved hunting, fishing, and living in the country. He was always good at putting things together, such as machines. In school, he was very smart and had all kinds of awards and achievements in spelling, and art, and his focus in high school was commercial art. When he was 17, he seemed to lose interest in school, and decided he wanted to move back to Mississippi."
Arthur attended Dunbar High School in Chicago until his senior year when he went back to Tunica to live with his grandparents. It was there that Arthur became lifelong friends with Frank Frost, and they played around the Tunica / Clarksdale area during the 1950s.
When Arthur was 19 years old, he began working at the Palmer House in Chicago. He'd take his harp and start blowing it out in the hallway. He had all of the young people and some of the older ones dancing and listening. Most of them had stopped working to listen, and Arthur got fired for stopping the workers!
Williams was inducted into the Army and went to Fort Hood in Texas, then stationed in Michigan, where he finished his education, and became a cook. He played with B.B. King, and Muddy Waters, as well as the group that used to be Jimmy Reed's background, Eddie Taylor, Elmore James, and Willie Mabon, and went on to record numerous albums in his career.
(Arthur Williams at 8th Annual Poconos Blues Festival 1999)