JOHNNY "TWIST " WILLIAMS

Gracias a BLUES ES COSA DE NEGROS., descubrimos a este personaje ,John Lee Williams., conocido por diferentes apodos entre ellos el de JOHNNY " TWIST " WILLIAMS., nos llama poderosamente la atención su foto , su guitarra y su maleta ! , es por ello que decididos a conocer más de él nos dedicamos a buscar información que nos acerque a su figura, no es que exista demasiada, pero bien esto es lo que hemos encontrado , creemos que puede ser suficiente para hacernos una idea de quien fué este bluesman de estilo, diríamos  difícil de calificar y que llegó a tocar con algunos de los grandes , como podéis ver mas abajo. 

                                                         
                                

Chicago bluesman Johnny Twist performing at his record store on the south side of Chicago c. early 1980s.

J. 'Twist' Williams

Real Name:

Johnny Antoine

Profile:

Born: May 15, 1906, Alexandria, Louisiana, USA 

Died: March 6, 2006, Chicago, Illinois, USA 

Johnny Williams was a Chicago-based blues guitar player and singer, who was one of the first of the new generation of electric blues players to record after World War II. 

In 1944 he lost the end of a finger in a meat grinder and gave up playing the guitar for a year, until he saw Blind Arvella Gray, who was missing two fingers from his left hand, playing on Maxwell Street, and learned to play the guitar without the missing finger. In the late 1940s Williams was once more playing on Maxwell Street and in clubs, often working with his cousin the mandolin player Johnny Young or with harmonica player Snooky Pryor, guitarists Floyd Jones and Moody Jones, and with Little Walter. Around this time, he acquired the nickname "Uncle Johnny", by which he was known among his blues associates for the rest of his life. 

After 1953 Williams continued to work with Hound Dog Taylor and others, but stopped playing blues in 1959 after a religious conversion, and joined the Baptist church, becoming an ordained minister in the early 1960s.

                            
             

JOHNNIE LEE WILLIAMS aka JOHNNIE TWIST 45 rpm LOUIS 6801
Nona Baby / Teach Me How recorded in Belleville, Ill. USA in 1962