ELMO WILLIAMS & HEZEKIAH EARLY

Raw and rocking Natchez Mississippi blues circa ’97 in the classic Fat Possum mold (“Insane Instrumental” and so forth). Drummer Hezekiah Early is best known as the leader of the great Hezekiah and the Houserockers and his swinging, fife-and-drum influenced style on cuts like “Mother’s Dead” is a great foil for Elmo Williams’ wild, distorted electric guitar riffs. They can also lay down a steady groove when the song calls for it. Hard to figure out why this didn’t get as big as other Fat Possum acts of that period, but this July they’ll be playing their first gigs since quite a while back, in Minnesota of all places, so maybe there’s hope yet. I’ll get sound clips up here one of these days, but in the meantime, you can hear samples at http://www.myspace.com/elmowilliamshezekiahearly