JODY WILLIAMS,
1935-2018

Jody Williams, the celebrated blues guitarist whose work could be heard on Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Don’t Start Me Talking,” died Saturday in Munster, Ind. He was 83.

One of the last musicians from the golden era of Chicago blues, Williams was known for incorporating West Coast jazz, rockabilly and vibrato into the popular tough and biting guitar style of the 1950s. Besides working the city’s clubs on his own in the early 1950s, he was also the house guitarist at Chess Records, backing the likes of Jimmy Witherspoon, Floyd Dixon and Bobby Charles.

From the mid-‘50s to 1958 when he went into the Army, he recorded for several labels under various pseudonyms, chief among them Little Papa Joe’s “Looking for My Baby” for Blue Lake and “Lucky Lou” for Argo as Little Joe Lee. He retired from music after getting out of the Army in 1960.

Williams returned to public performance in 2000, releasing two albums from for Evidence, 2002’s Return of a Legend and 2004's You Left Me in the Dark. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis in 2013 and into the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame in 2015.