Little Bit a Blues at Blues Alley

2013-0327 Little Bit a Blues at Blues Alley-3270168, a photo by NoVARon on Flickr.

Warner Williams is a Washington DC area blues treasure that many outside of Washington may not be aware with. Over the past couple decades he has performed with harmonica player Jay Summerour as Little Bit a Blues. Warner will not fly and accordingly does not travel that often although he has played the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and some other national blues and folk festivals.

Wednesday, March 27, Warner and Jay, with Eric Selby on drums, celebrated at the Washington DC night club Blues Alley, the release of their new CD Live at B.B. King's Bluesville with a marvelous set of acoustic blues that ranged beyond the already wide repertoire of songs on the CDs including Warner's take on such classic blues as Key To The Highway, Digging My Potatoes, I Feel So Good, Greyhound Blues and Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. Warner's fluid guitar was a delight as was his warm baritone and delighted the Blues Alley crowd.

Jay Summerour, Eleanor Ellis and Eric Selby at Blues Alley on March 27, 2013

Eleanor Ellis, one of the finest female acoustic blues women alive opened with a set that included songs from Memphis Minnie, Jim Jackson, Pink Anderson and Simmie Dooley and Little Hat Jones-Andy Boy. Eleanor was also backed by Jay and Eric for her set. Her renditions of Memphis Minnie tunes are better than most by the better known, but not more talented artists, on the recent Memphis Minnie tribute album Maria Muldaur put out recently. Elanor is that good and its time for her to do another CD.

It was an evening of superb acoustic blues. Warner and Little Bit Blues will be appearing at the Pennsylvania Blues Festival on July 28, 2013. here is a link to that festival, http://www.skibluemt.com/seasonal-activities/pa-blues-festival/.

Warner Williams Live at B.B. King's Bluesville

Guitarist Warner Williams and harmonica player Jay Summerour have been playing the Washington DC area as Little Bit A Blues for about two decades. Williams is a Piedmont blues treasure although bis guitar style and repertoire shows more than a little country influence, particularly the picking style of Merle Travis and a fairly diverse repertoire. In 2011 he was honored by the National Endowment of the Arts as a National heritage Fellow. Warner does not travel outside of DC very often he will not fly, which probably accounts for him being not familiar to many.

The cover of Little Bit a Blues’ new CD on Soul Stew records is Live at B.B. King’s Bluesville. This is the duo’s fourth album joined by Eric Selby’s deft drums and percussion. Earlier albums include two on the Patuxent label and one on Smithsonian Folkways from a variety of live performances. The cover of this CD labels it The Best of Little Bit A Blues which is odd insofar as this is not a compilation of their best recordings. Rather recorded in November 2012 at the SiriusXM studios of songs that are perhaps the core of Warner’s repertoire.

Starting with Blind Boy Fuller’s Step It Up and Go, through the closing instrumental Little Bit A Blues Theme, Warner takes us through a pretty diverse repertoire including some humorous country honky tonk, Hey Bartender, There’s a Big Bug in My Beer, a ramped up rendition of Lightnin’ Slim’s swamp blues Greyhound Blues, and fine renditions of blues standards like Key to the Highway, Going Down Slow, I Feel So Good, and Good Mornin’ Little School Girl. Despite the familiarity of the material, Warner puts his own stamp on this with his deft guitar playing that incorporates some jazz and country boogie to complement his heartfelt singing while Summerour complements him so well and Selby adds rhythmic embellishments with a light touch.

It is so nice to have the new Little Bit A Blues recording Live at B.B. King’s Bluesville, to spotlight Warner Williams distinctive blues. His repertoire goes beyond what one might on this and he is such a delight to see perform. For those in the DC area, Warner and Jay with Eric will celebrate the release of this at Blues Alley on March 27 with guest Eleanor Ellis. Warner will also be performing at this year’s Pennsylvania Blues Festival at the Blue Mountain Ski Resort in Palmerton, Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 28. 

I received my copy from the performers.

Memphis Gold's Sanctified Memphis Blues

The following review came out a couple years ago in the May 2009 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 316). My friend Chester Chandler is about to issue a new CD on Stackhouse called Pickin’ In High Cotton and since my photo is being used for the CD cover, I will not be writing a review although I do think anyone who likes Gator Gon’ Bitechu will like this. It will have a slight bit more downhome flavor. I do hope to post on this blog, the interview Joe Kessler and I did with Chester Chandler that was published after this review was published in Block, a blues publication in the Netherlands. Information on this new release is also on his website which is included amongst the links given.

As a preliminary matter, I note that I have known Chester Chandler for about 18 years, am friends with him, and was at the studio when he worked on finishing some of the tracks on Gator Gon’ Bitechu! (Stackhouse). I disclose this because of possible bias that might exist despite my efforts. While I have been seeing him play shows at small and larger bars in the Washington, DC area for a lengthy period of time, when he gave me an advance of his second CD, Prodigal Son, several years ago, I was floored at how mature his music sounded. I was not the only one. Long-time Living Blues editor, Jim O’Neal, was obviously impressed as he signed Memphis Gold to Stackhouse and re-released Prodigal Son, on the label. And others noticed as Memphis Gold was featured in cover stories in the Swedish publication, Jefferson, the world’s oldest blues magazine; the esteemed British publication, Blues & Rhythm, and most recently in Living Blues.


Chester Chandler grew up in Memphis where he attended the same sanctified church as Robert Wilkins, the one-time blues guitarist and vocalist of the twenties, who stopped playing secular music. Later he started playing blues in Memphis with such legendary combos as The Fieldstones while also serving his country. Around 1991, he relocated to the Washington DC area where he first was known as K.D. King and later after meeting Barbara, who would become his wife, adopted the name Memphis Gold, while honing his music. Many may be aware in early 2008 he suffered severe injuries falling out of a tree (his day job was in the tree-cleaning business) and he has been making great strides since then.


On his new album, there are a variety of DC area musicians backing him, the best known being guitarist Robert Lighthouse who adds slide to several tracks and drummer Pete Ragusa of the Nighthawks. The recording spans a couple years, and while the accident slowed up its production, but it is finally is here. The disc opens with a sample of a symphony orchestra before some slide is played against a North Mississippi groove as he sings I Shoulda Known, a lament about a woman who bled him dried. It’s followed up by Catfish Creeper, with dual slide guitars (I assume Lighthouse and Memphis) with a Dust My Groove, as he shouts about laying on the river bottom like a log and if one wants to get their hooks in him they better lay the right bait on with Jay Summerour adding a nice harmonica break.


Set to the groove of Woke Up This Morning, Do You Still Want Me, has a nice lyric as he asks his woman whether she wants him after breaking his heart and using him. The title track, inspired by a Washington DC blues programmer, has an infectious funky groove as he sings about watch out cause that gator gonna bite you, with some brassy horns added here and there is a nice guitar break on this. I assume Warren Witherspoon, drummer with the disco-funk band, Heatwave, is on this track. My 2 Kcandys, is a jaunty shuffle that is a shout out to a Candy and a Kandy, while Can’t Get Enough, uses the melody of B.B. King’s rendition of The Thrill Is Gone, as Memphis sings about can’t get getting enough of his woman using him hoping that one day she’ll finally see his love.

The mood shifts on a lovely blues ballad about falling in and out of love How I Got Over, and then the groove picks up on the quasi-biographical shuffle I Was Born in Memphis, where he sings being born in 1955 and his folks still burned wood and coal just to stay alive, went to church house staying them some time, and always ended up on Monday morning finding his brother’s wine. Squeaky Wheel, features a nice Jay Summerour harp solo. Lil Lucy, opens with a dreamy backing as Memphis recalls a beautiful lady that used to pass his house everyday and then the band shifts gear it picks up the groove with a funky groove and a funky bass riff as he recalls his boyish fantasy as he asks “Lucy, why do you tread on me.” It ends a very successful follow-up to Prodigal Son.

His strengths are his sanctified-rooted singing, his solid, rhythmically charged guitar playing and the good-time feeling he invests his performances. This should be available from better retailers along with cdbaby.com. Memphis Gold’s website is http://www.memphisgoldblues.com.


I received my review copy from Memphis Gold. Here is the cover of the upcoming album.

Baytop & Franklin's Duo Blues

My years with Rick Franklin go back to when we both were on the Board of Directors of the DC Blues Society in the late eighties and also I enjoyed when he performed with Neil Harpe and sometimes Rick Usilton, or by himself. I remember a Black History Program at Northern Virginia Community College where he shared the stage with Archie Edwards & John Jackson. Mike Baytop, head of the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation, and him have a new recording Searching For Frank, on Patuxent out of Rockville MD. The Frank on this CD is Frank Stokes and imagine an entire acoustic blues CD reviving tunes that deserved to be revived, not simply over familiar mediocre Robert Johnson covers. I have not heard the disc but they performed all the songs from it at a CD party at Paxtuxent's studios today and it was delightful to hear the two guitarists evoking the marvelous sound of Stokes who certainly should be something most of you should be familiar with. Not that was all there was. Baytop played mandolin on a nice Stop and Listen Blues, while harp and bones for other tracks, and on an encore of Jambalaya, Eleanor Ellis joined in on washboard. It was a wonderful evening and if the CD is half as good as the party I will be in for a treat.

While there I discovered Paxtuxent has two new CDs as well. Eleanor Ellis' Comin' a Time (again with no Robert Johnson covers, but plenty of Memphis Minnie and John Estes and others). Eleanor is as good as any acoustic blues woman out there and would be better known if she wasn't such an angel. She has recorded with the late Flora Molton and toured with her and Archie Edwards, putting their interests before her own. She produced the wonder movie Blues HouseParty which recently was issued on DVD. She was also one of the founders of the DC Blues Society and the Archie Edwards Foundation. I have been waiting for years for her to finally have an entire album by herself.

Finally there is a new Warner Williams and Jay Summerour disc, Down'N'Dirty by a most wonderful singer-guitarist, perhaps the word songster best describes Warner. Another DC treasure, but one who will not fly. Anyway, the website is www.pxrec.com and I would eventually expect to see some of this on cdbaby.com