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Detroit Jr.
Emery
Williams Jr. is a living link to the great Chicago blues piano players
of the 1940s and 1950s. Born on October 26, 1931, in Haynes, AR,
Williams was given the name Detroit Junior when be began recording on
his own in the 1960s. As a child, Williams was moved around quite a
bit, as his family relocated from Arkansas to Memphis, then to
Pularski, IL, and finally to Flint, MI, where Williams lived with his
grandmother. It was there that he began playing keyboards, learning on
his grandmother's organa (a parlor instrument that was part organ, part
piano). Soon he was playing piano in the tough clubs and juke joints
around Flint, eventually relocating to Chicago in the early '50s, where
he began playing with the likes of Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Reed, and Eddie
Taylor.
He recorded his first 45 (and earned the name Detroit Junior), "Money
Tree" b/w "So Unhappy," in 1960, and also cut a single ("Too Poor" b/w
"You Mean Everything to Me") for Chess Records. An album, Chicago Urban
Blues, came out on the Blues on Blues label in the early '70s. In 1969
Williams began a long stint as Howlin' Wolf's piano player, a spot he
held until Wolf's death in 1976. Alligator Records included a few of
Williams' tracks on a Living Chicago Blues compilation in the early
'80s. Turn Up the Heat appeared in 1995 on Blue Suit Records, followed
by two more albums for the label, Take Out the Time (1997) and Live at
the Toledo Museum of Art (2004). Another Detroit Junior album was also
released in 2004, Blues on the Internet on Delmark Records.
-Written
by Steve Leggett
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