With Big Joe Williams

REAL blues ... He took the pain in his soul and the dirt on his hands and made songs out of them ... Robert Pete Williams ... the most avant-garde blues performer ever recorded. No punk rock band has ever matched the jagged, acerbic fury of the riffs Williams played 35 years ago. No rapper has approached his ability to evoke the torment of life in prison or bend language to cast an eerie spell over a chance encounter with a seductive woman. His blues was extremely original, sometimes even hard to understand. No other performer has captured the emotional effect of a desperate situation like he did. He had never been recorded when he was discovered in Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana, convicted of murder. Robert Pete probably has the most unique blues style of all bluesmen. Neither his guitar work nor his singing can be categorized into any established regional style such as "East Coast", "Mississippi Delta" or "Texas Blues". His music and lyrics are spontaneous and original. No major influence of other bluesmen can be found in his idiosyncratic, intensely personal performances. Blues scholar Pete Welding described his music as »tough, mean, and, above all, impassioned like the man himself«.

Echter Blues ... Er nahm den Schmerz in seiner Seele und den Dreck an seinen Händen und machte daraus Songs ... Robert Pete Williams ... der wohl avangardistischste Blueskünstler, der je aufgenommen wurde. Keine Punkband traf je die abgehackte, bittere Wut in den Riffs, die Williams vor 35 Jahren spielte. Kein Rapper kam an seine Fähigkeit heran, die Qualen eines Lebens im Gefängnis zu beschwören oder die Sprache zu verbiegen, um die schaurige Faszination einer zufälligen Begegnung mit einer verführerischen Frau zu beschreiben. Sein Blues war extrem persönlich, manchmal schwer zu verstehen. Und kein anderer Künstler konnte die emotionalen Effekte einer verzweifelten Situation besser einfangen als er. Robert Pete Wil