Slidin’ On – Interview
by Matteo Bossi
We published an interview with Lil’ Ed Williams in issue 95 of Il Blues, that Marino Grandi and myself conducted at the Lucerne festival, and we were thrilled to reconnect with him many years later. Today, he is a 70-year-old gentleman ever faithful to his idea of blues, his historic band The Blues Imperials, and Alligator. “Slideways”, his new album, the title seems also a nod to his uncle J.B. Hutto, which Bruce Iglauer himself spoke about enthusiastically last summer, marks the 40th anniversary of his debut for the label, back in 1986.
Why did it take you so long to put out another record? The previous one came out in 2016.
Oh I don’t know why it took so long, it might have been the economy and then the pandemic…usually Bruce would come to me earlier and say “hey, let’s make a record”. But I’m hoping this is not gonna be my last one! I’m gonna try to do some early writing and doing another one in about twelve months.
Did you have a lot of songs in all these years?
Yes, I stated writing early on to have extra material, then me and Bruce Iglauer picked up the ones we thought were the best and got them on the record. My wife, Pam, she’s really getting good at it, I think she’ll be better than me at some point. I really think ladies think different and she thinks totally different than I think but she comes up with some really cool stuff. It’s fun making records with Bruce, we sit down and joke about stuff, we argue about stuff and then we get it all together…
It’s been forty since your first record came out in 1986.
Yes, I once was the youngest guy on the label and now I’m an elder! It feels good, I’ve been blessed to be able to be with Bruce all these years, we stuck with each other through everything, the pandemic…it’s a good feeling to be around somebody that long, be able to record and keep the people happy.
Back then you recorded the whole album in just one session, you still work that fast?
Well, it changed a little bit, but we still pretty much go there and cut it…we don’t have to do a lot of overdubs. When me and Bruce started to mix it we did find out there was not a lot of stuff we needed to do, a couple of leads and singing but other than that we were on top of the situation. I don’t like mess around and come back to do a track… I like to get it down firmly and see if there is any mistake, but normally it’s not a mistake but some flaws or missed notes.
Tell us more about the songs on this album, you also a very unusual cover, “Homeless Blues”, a Willie “Long Time”Smith song.
Oh you know about that! I heard that from a CD I had, that’s where I picked it up. I played it and I thought – man, how come nobody is playing this song? It hits me so hard, it’s such a great song and nobody’s done it. When I started singing it I got it pretty much right the first time on stage, people were into it, so I had to record it.
What about “The Flirt In The Car Wash Skirt”?
Pam wrote that! When I met her she was wearing a skirt that looked like a car wash shammy…so the flirt in the car wash skirt is really about her, how we met. I spoke to her and then we made a long way from that. “One Foot On The Brake One On The Gas” is another good song she wrote, about picking up girls, trying to get her to be my date and she telling me to slow down…
Lil’ Ed Williams Chicago Blues Festival 2012 photo Philippe Prétet
You’ve been with this band for many years.
Yes about, 38 years, we’re brothers, family, we’re not band members anymore.
And sometimes family stuff turns out in the songs, like on old one you wrote about something that happened to your mother-in-law, “Icicle In My Meatloaf”.
(laughs) Yes, when we sit around, we talk and sometimes somebody pulls out something that’s really really good and I say -hey I’m gonna make something out of it. Another was “Black Diamond Love” that I did for my wife. Since we’ve been together we’ve had a good time, we don’t fuss and fight and we’ve been together over twenty years now, we got that diamond type love. I consider myself blessed.
Ben Levin, a very talented young musician plays piano and organ on the album, you played on some of his records too.
Oh Ben called me to do some stuff with him in the studio, he’s a really nice guy, so humble, we hit it off really good. For Christmas we even did a show together, Ben’s my guy and he’s traditional, I like playing with him like that, it takes me in a traditional mode, it makes me go in a different direction, that’s good because I like the old stuff. I listen to a lot of them, plantation songs but with a lot of meaning to what’s happening int the world today.
And there are not that many piano players of Ben’s generation.
That is true. And that’s what me and Ben play together, that juke-joint boogie stuff…it’s really good. And he’s done a fantastic job on the new record. He knew what he wanted to do and it just came out right.
I really like the slow blues “Wayward Women”.
Pam wrote that too! I’ve told you she’s gonna beat me out at some point. We work together and she brings it to me and i finalize it or put music to it. I know what the feeling is usually. This time I laid down rhythm tracks, drum tracks and bass tracks and then I give them to the guys…but everyone of them they put on their individual sound, they don’t have to play it the way I put it down. My uncle, J.B. Hutto, he would just play by himself while he was with his guys and they would play their stuff. I know that my guys got their own ideas. I can play anything by myself, but my guys are good and I try not to force anything, I let them go with the flow.
Have you thought about including a song by your uncle as a tribute? He would have been 100 years old this year.
Actually I took a groove from one of his songs…let me see…Oh no it didn’t make the album! But I want to do a J.B. Hutto tribute and just play all of his stuff. I think that would be really cool. He still got a lot of fans out there. People still come to me telling me I sound like him and I tell them he’s my uncle.
You told us years ago that you would like to make an acoustic record.
Oh, yes and I got the material to do an acoustic album but I the I’ve started making this new record and I let bygones be…but I’ll do it before I leave this world hopefully. And I’m gonna write me a gospel song so I can sing it at the end of all my shows. I started out singing gospel in church and there is one song I remember singing then, “I Wanna Be Ready When Jesus Comes”, so maybe I’m gonna put it in my repertoire.
You have not done that many sessions with other artists but you played on a couple of Magic Slim records.
Oh Slim, he was my guy! We played together even in Lincoln, Nebraska, that’s where he lived. He had me doing a few things on his records and I was like –Ok, let’s do it! -I miss him, and I miss Koko, Johnny Copeland, James Cotton, Lonnie Brooks…all those cats, they were part of me coming up, I learn from them. Me and Lonnie had such a good time together, we talk, tell all kind of lies, we had fun…Ronnie was young, him and his brothers were there with their dad but they had a lot of respect for us. When I first got with Alligator they all took me under their wing and they showed me love, they welcomed me withing the blues world and they gave me inspiration. Watching uncle J.B. really stuck with me because he would up with great lyrics and nobody knew what he was going to sing. This is what I want, I thought. I do that right today, the cool thing is about singing the song, enjoying it and giving this love to the fans. It makes me feel good when people come and say it was a great show and they liked the music.
Lil Ed Williams Lucerne 2015 ph. Philippe Prétet
It’s probably different nowadays for the new generation of musicians.
A lot of youngsters that are learning music are doing it through the internet…here’s something that really impressed me. I was shopping at a Drift Store and there was a little Japanese girl sitting at the piano. And she started playing all this Mozart music and she was twelve years old. I ask here mama how did she learn that? And she said she got it off the internet. That was so amazing. My point is the younger generation is gonna change the music a little bit, because they didn’t live the scene as we did, it’s totally different now. I see it with my grand-kids, they’re so smart. Probably they’re gonna be smarter than us. Even though some musicians I hear I think…well that’s confusing, you can’t take rap music and put it into blues. When you start taking the blues with rap than it’s something else. I was there when blues was like on top of the line…everybody was buying records. Today it’s not like that. It’s like when the truckers used a lot the CB radio, nobody could figure out what they were talking about, it was a language, it lasted for a while then it went out.
You are on the box set celebrating Antone’s Fifty Anniversary last year.
Yes, for some reason they’ve always loved me over there. I played there way back, I remember sitting in the backroom with Hubert Sumlin, drinking booze and having a good time. I was a part of the celebration, I did three or four shows with Lurrie Bell, Big Bill Morganfield…Lurrie is my guy too, I used to play with him in Chicago at Rosa’s every Wednesday. He’s not around that much anymore, I kinda miss him. We were both inducted in the Blues Hall Of Fame two years ago…I felt good about it, it made me feel like I paid my dues. And I got the chance to talk to all the musicians who were there. It’s good to see your buddies, we work the road so much that we don’t see each other so often. When we do it’s a lot of good memories. I had my ups and downs, you learn that life can change in a flick…you never know. There were some rough parts in my life I was blessed I’ve come out of it. And for my band members and Bruce Iglauer to stick behind me it’s a wonderful feeling. A lot of uncle J.B.’s band members left him when he got sick…everybody was trying to be the boss back then. That’s a lesson I learn from him, to be nice to my band members, they’re gonna help me make my living. It meant a lot. There’s a lot of musicians my age still looking for musicians. You can’t run a band being crazy, you have to acknowledge the others and live your life with them, they have ups and downs too.
The same goes for Bruce Iglauer, I think.
Oh, Bruce I call him my long lost dad, because my dad left me when I was six years old, he said he would come to visit me on the weekends but I never did see him no more. Bruce coached me in the music business, I was just doing what I saw uncle JB do, but I learned a lot from Bruce, we hit if off so well from the beginning. He called me about this record and he said – Ed, this record is really great I had no idea it was gonna be this good-And I said- oh, really? But the more I listen to it the more I like it. I actually did things that I don’t normally do, Bruce wanted me to play these single notes with my slide, that was something I didn’t do much, I would do the JB slide thing…So I started messing around with singles notes and I could hear Elmore James, John Little john…it really impressed me- wow I can do this.
Any plan to come back to Europe?
Not a this moment, you know I’m a terrible flyer. And now that I’m older it huts me more. It’s real hard on my body, the last time I was scared all the time during the flight, once I got there I was alright… I’ve been overseas numerous times, enought that people do know me over there. I can’t say I will never come over again, they might talk me into it…but it’s really hard.
Lil Ed Williams Chicago Blues Festival Ph. GIanfranco Skala
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