Big Joe Williams (c. 1903-1982) lived the life of a rambunctious, roving bluesman, traveling from coast to coast and around the world playing rugged, rhythmic blues on his nine-string guitar at juke joints, house parties, and concerts. Born near Crawford, where he also spent his final years, he came from a family of blues performers that included his grandfather Bert Logan and uncles Bert and Russ Logan. He crafted his first instrument, a one-string guitar, later became known for a nine-string guitar he created by adding three strings to a standard guitar, and left home in his teens to play for workers at railway, turpentine, levee, and logging camps while also traveling with minstrel troupes and medicine shows. Influenced by Charley Patton in the Mississippi Delta, he sometimes took young bluesmen Honeyboy Edwards and Muddy Waters on the road with him and later became a staple of the blues scene in St. Louis in the 1930s before relocating to Chicago, though he never stopped traveling. In 1935 he recorded his signature song “Baby Please Don’t Go,” later covered by dozens of artists, and many of his recordings in the 1930s and 1940s for the Bluebird and Columbia labels featured harmonica player John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. As African American music shifted after World War II toward electric blues and rhythm and blues, Williams continued recording for labels such as Trumpet, Bullet, and Vee-Jay, then in the late 1950s began a new career as a folk blues artist, performing widely and recording many albums for labels marketed to white collectors and enthusiasts in America and Europe. Particularly popular in Chicago, he also took pride in helping locate and record other artists in Mississippi, St. Louis, and Chicago, including J. D. Short and John Wesley “Mr. Shortstuff” Macon. Williams died in Macon on December 17, 1982, was buried west of Crawford in Oktibbeha County, and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1992.