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Elmo Williams

Takes One To Know One

Elmo Williams was born February 6, 1933, and thanks to a talented and jealous father, Elmo had the best of both worlds for a budding guitarist. Elmo's ear for music came from his father's side. Everybody on that side of the family could do a little something; and, his father, a skilled guitarist with a strong voice, was no exception. An ear for music -- and nothing more -- was all Elmo was getting from his father, who made this painfully clear fifty years ago when Elmo asked for a guitar lesson. "Son," he said. "When I was your age I begged everybody who could play to show me some guitar. Nobody would. Why should I teach you? Ha, I didn't think you had a reason." Elmo didn't get the lesson he wanted; but he didn't walk away empty-handed either. He'd been exposed -- to an eclipse of the family. This experience gave him the "know-how""he'd need one day as a father. There wasn't a guitar in Adams County -- homemade or store bought, it didn't matter -- that Elmo didn't at least try to borrow. He fretted the neck just like he'd seen his father do. He figured out some basic chords, and invented two new ones before realizing he needed to go back to the beginning and learn to tune. After a stint in the Army, Elmo returned to Natchez and married. He worked in a bakery, worked on a road crew, drove a truck, and somehow wound up in a sawmill. The situation was simple: if Elmo wasn't playing guitar, it was all clock punching and didn't matter which one. Just because the week was shot by the demands of a wife and babies didn't mean Elmo had to waste his weekend working around the house and in the yard. Hell no. From Friday night to Sunday morning Elmo was across the river at Haney's Big House in Ferriday, Louisiana, then and now the deformed, small, poor, and rural sister city of Natchez. At his regular gig at Haney's, Elmo saw major acts and was offered to join by some. He declined all offers -- he had a family to support and only 22 years left to prepare for the Fat Possum project. Fifteen years ago, Elmore Jr., his son, asked senior to show him how to play guitar. Elmo explained the situation to him. "Son," he said. "I was about your age when I asked my father to teach me to play guitar. Do you have any idea what he told me?" (quoted from fatpossum.com)

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