Ed Williams Isn’t Singing Car Wash Blues Anymore

The improbable story of Lil’ Ed Williams’ discovery could have been stolen from a screenplay on the early days of the record business.

Williams, the guitarist/singer who plays his first local dates this week, spent a decade playing in Chicago blues bars without making much money or career headway.

The late bluesman J. B. Hutto--Williams’ uncle, mentor and chief inspiration--had warned him that blues was a tough field to break into. In 1985, Williams was faced with choosing between music and his day job at a Chicago car wash.

Williams, 33, recalled that crossroads recently during a phone interview from San Francisco.

“I was (thinking), ‘Well, this is not going to work. I’m getting paid $25 a night, staying up all night and then I have to go to work the next morning.’ It was a lot of hard work and it was getting the best of me. Something was about to give.”

Cut to a Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials gig at the Blue Chicago bar. Enter Bruce Iglauer, president of Alligator Records, with an offer to include the group on the label’s “The New Bluebloods” anthology album.

Cut to a Chicago studio one night in late January, 1986, as Iglauer and most of the Alligator staff watch the Blues Imperials, who had never seen the inside of a recording studio, nervously prepare to play.

Cut to the second song as Williams breaks some of the tension with a mid-song duck walk to cheers, whistles and calls for a beer run from the control room. Cut to mid-session, as Iglauer wraps up a hurried meeting in the control room, pops his head into the studio and offers the Blues Imperials an album deal on the spot. Cut to the end of the session, as the band marches out the door after recording 30 songs in three hours.

The rough ‘n’ tumble flavor of the music on the resulting “Roughhousin”’ album recalls the no-frills sound of Chicago bluesmen like Hound Dog Taylor and Hutto.

Williams--whose Southland swing includes spots with Roy Buchanan at the Roxy tonight and the Coach House on Thursday, then headlining shows Friday at Bogart’s, Saturday at the Music Machine and Sunday at the Belly Up in Solana Beach--has no intention of deviating from that shoot-from-the-hip recording philosophy when he records his next album.

“I like to kick off what I’m going to do and be done with it,” he declared. “If you do it the first time, you’ve got all the energy and all your feelings locked up in it. If you keep coming back to do overdubs, (the performance) seems to lose a power you had when you first started.”

While his repertoire mixes his original songs with outside material, Williams made no bones about his desire to keep the music of J. B. Hutto alive. Williams’ father occasionally backed Hutto on stage and Hutto often played at family gatherings when Ed was growing up in Chicago.

“When J. B. Hutto played slide, you could feel it all through your body,” Williams remembered. “That really got next to me because when you hear some music you can (physically) feel, you’ll play it all the time. I feel it even more when I’m playing it than when I’m listening to it.”

Williams began learning slide guitar from Hutto when he was 15 and formed his first band in 1975 with his half-brother, bassist James (Pookie) Young. The group took its name from an Imperial margarine television commercial.

Williams never wavered from his desire to play blues even though most of his high school friends were listening to disco in the ‘70s. But he’s noticed a change in their attitude recently.

“The guys I knew at school have got their own houses or apartments and they’re realizing (about) life,” he said. “Now, they begin to know what the blues is because it’s only talking about the way you live and how you live your life. The blues tells the truth.

“You don’t have to be sad to listen to the blues. Sometimes I play some slow songs that get me into a mood where I feel some things that overload my lifeline, but most of the time I’m having a great time playing the blues.”

That enthusiasm apparently comes through in the band’s live performances. Williams has gained a reputation as an exuberant, unabashed showman who does back bends, walks through the audience on his knees while playing guitar and occasionally sports a homemade fez--another Hutto trademark.

The growing demand for the band on the national and international blues circuit has enabled Williams to quit his job at the car wash. But he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning there occasionally--as a customer.

“Maybe if I get this blue Lincoln I want one day, I’ll drive up in there and have ‘em wash it up right quick,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s my main goal--a blue Lincoln and a home and I’ll be satisfied with life.”