On Sunday, March 8, 2009 the outstanding Alabama blues musician Willie King passed away near his home in Old Memphis, Alabama, following a massive heart attack. His career started on a plantation with a one-string, homemade diddly-bo. Six recordings and a DVD later, along with numerous national and international festival performances, Willie King has gained a substantial national and international reputation.
Ever since he first heard a blues musician play at this grandmother’s juke joint over sixty years ago, Willie King has been consumedby the blues. His life story is about great music but equally it is about care, interest and concern for the community he grew up in - King's own definition of the "blues life."
The
loss of this great blues man is still deeply felt by fans and musicians all over the world who have been touched by his unique juke joint blues and uplifting message of peace, love and social justice.
The funeral took place on Sunday, March 15th at 2pm at the City Hall in Aliceville, Alabama. A wake was held the day before on Saturday, March 14, from 1 - 3 pm at Lavender's Funeral Home.
Willie King is buried at the Spring Hill Baptist Church, just the Mississip side of the state line, on Prarie Point Road. If you drive through Aliceville, you will pass his home in the community of Old Memphis, a turning called Wille King Drive, off Alabama Route 32.
Willie King inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame
Willie King was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame on March 16th, 2012, in Livingston, AL, along with George Wishington Carver and other Black Belt luminaries. Willie touched the lives of so many with his amazing, spirit, music and message and it is so important and wonderful that his legacy continues to be recognized.
WILLIE KING DVD NOMINATED FOR
BLUES AWARD!!!!!
Dutch
film-makers Saskia Rietmeijer and Bart Drolenga of Visible
World Films came to America with the intention of producing a documentary
about African American arts and culture in the deep South. When they
met Willie King, they decided instead to devote their efforts to creating
a DVD about Willie's life and times.
Over
a period of several months, the couple recorded Willie King as he worked
with his community in Pickens County and performed at festivals, juke
joints and parties.
The DVD
is a fascinating collage of Willie King's life and many activites, illuminated
by searing live performances and interviews with his family and friends.
It enables the viewer to experience what it is like to be a modern bluesman
living in the Alabama Black Belt, "down in the woods."
King played at the second Morris Dees Award ceremony held in New York city on 15 November
2006 nominations for "Traditional Album of the Year " and
"Traditonal Blues Male Artist of the Year" in the Blues
Foundation's prestigious Blues
Music Awards
Willie King selected as one the House
of Blues Artists to Watch
Willie King inducted into the Howlin'
Wolf Hall of Fame. Special thanks to the Howlin'
Wolf Blues Society.
Willie King wins the 2004 Living
Blues Magazine award for "Blues
Artist of the Year" and is nominated for "Best Live Performer"
Willie King nominated for W.
C. Handy award as "Traditional Male Artist"
of the year
Freedom Creek, Willie King's debut album on Rooster Blues Records, was
King's powerful introduction into the wider music and blues world. Not only
was the album acclaimed by critics worldwide, it also received awards from Living
Blues Magazine for Best Male Blues Artist (2001), Best Blues Album (2000)
and Best Contemporary Blues Album (2000).
Willie King was born in Prairie Point, MS, in 1943. After his father left the
home, Willie and his siblings were raised by his grandparents, who were local
sharecroppers. Music was important to the King family - Willie's grandfather
was a gospel singer, and his absent father was an amateur blues musician. Young
Willie made a diddley bo by nailing a baling wire to a tree in the yard. By
age 9, he had a one-string guitar that he could bring indoors to play at night.
In 1967, Willie King moved to Chicago in an attempt to make more money than
he could down South. After a year spent on the West and South Sides, he returned
to Old Memphis, Alabama, just across the border from the Mississippi Prairie.
A salesman - of shoes, cologne, and other frivolities - Willie traveled the
rural roads hawking goods and talking politics. Choosing not to work under the
"old system" of unequal treatment, King joined the civil rights movement
near the end of the decade.
In 1987, a chance meeting at a festival in Eutaw, Alabama, blew Rooster Blues
founder Jim O'Neal away: According to O'Neal, King's "juke-joint musical
style and political lyrics knocked me down." The two kept in touch for
the next 13 years, during which O'Neal relocated his label, and King concentrated
on his own community, forging relationships with local youth through a blues
education program, through his organization The Rural Members Association.
The Rural Members Association has sponsored classes in music, woodworking, food
preservation, and other African-American traditions, and has provided transportation,
legal assistance, and other services for the needy over the past two decades.
In recent years he's been sponsoring a festival on the creek, which is known
as The
Freedom Creek Festival. Willie explains, "We was targetin' at tryin'
to get all walks of life, different people to come down and kinda be with us
in reality down there, you know. Let's get back to reality, in the woods . .
. mix and mingle . . . get to know each other. Get up to have a workin' relationship,
try to bring peace . . ."
King's follow up, Living
In a New World, is nothing short of spectacular. Produced by
Jim O'Neal and recorded at Easley Studio in Memphis, the album reminds the listener
of Curtis Mayfield while allowing RL Burnside fans to rejoice as well.
In addition to the two CD's on the Rooster Blues label, Willie has also four
independently recorded CDs - Walkin'
the Walk, Talkin' the Talk which was recorded
with local Alabama bluesman "Birmingham" George Conner, and the widely
acclaimed I
Am The Blues. Jukin'
At Bettie's was recorded live at Bettie's
Place, a deep South rural juke joint. His last recording was One Love. Most of these CDs can be downloaded from iTunes, Amazon and other digital distributors.
