Arkansas, Michigan, and the Blues Chaps
Emery Williams Jr. was born in Haynes, Arkansas, on October 26, 1931. His family moved during his childhood, with southern Illinois and Michigan becoming part of his early life. In Flint he learned on his grandmother’s keyboard instrument, an organa that combined features of a parlor organ and piano. Music became a practical occupation early: by nineteen he was leading a band called the Blues Chaps.
The group worked in Pontiac and Flint before becoming the house band at Detroit’s Circle Club. Backing visiting performers gave Williams experience with different singers and kinds of material. Those guests included Rosco Gordon, Eddie Boyd, John Lee Hooker, and Amos Milburn. Milburn’s mixture of piano-driven rhythm and blues and humor had a particular influence. Williams would later bring a similarly conversational approach to songs about work, money, drinking, and the awkward consequences of everyday decisions.
A new name on a Chicago record
Eddie Boyd brought Williams to Chicago in 1956, hoping to help arrange a Chess recording contract. That plan did not immediately produce a release, but Chicago offered steady musical contacts. Williams worked with saxophonist J.T. Brown at Club 99 and the Squeeze Club, then formed a lasting association with harmonica player Little Mack Simmons. Their engagements included the house-band job at Cadillac Baby’s club on the South Side.
Cadillac Baby, whose Bea & Baby label recorded musicians from the club, issued “Money Tree” backed with “So Unhappy” in 1960. The label used the name Detroit Junior, replacing the earlier Little Junior Williams billing. The new name stayed with him. The record also introduced a songwriter who could make a financial worry into an entertaining blues without removing the worry from it.
More singles followed for Chess and smaller Chicago companies. “Call My Job,” issued by U.S.A. in 1965, became one of his best-known songs. Its premise turns the conflict between employment and pleasure into a miniature character sketch. The reverse side, “The Way I Feel,” offered a different aspect of the pianist through an expressive instrumental performance. The pairing made clear that his strengths included both comic storytelling and deeper piano blues.
Howlin’ Wolf, Eddie Shaw, and a songwriter’s reach
During the 1960s Detroit Junior worked with musicians including Simmons, Eddie Taylor, Sam Lay, and Johnny Twist. By the end of the decade he had joined Howlin’ Wolf’s band, beginning a major period of touring and recording. The assignment placed his piano within a group centered on one of the most distinctive singers in blues. It demanded rhythmic firmness and a willingness to support a performance whose direction came from the singer.
After Wolf died in 1976, Junior continued with the musicians who became Eddie Shaw’s Wolf Gang. The band carried its shared working history into a new phase under Shaw’s leadership. Junior also maintained his own songs and identity. His musical personality did not disappear when he took an accompanying role; it developed beside the music he played for other leaders.
His compositions reached listeners through other singers. Albert King recorded “Call My Job,” and Koko Taylor recorded several of his songs. These performances provided a route into his work for people who might never have seen his name on a club sign. The songs were strong enough to leave their original singer and remain recognizable, a different kind of influence from a pianist’s instrumental technique.
Living Chicago Blues and the North Side clubs
Alligator included four Detroit Junior performances in its Living Chicago Blues series in 1980. “If I Hadn’t Been High” made his comic songwriting particularly clear. The humor was grounded in a character and a situation, with the singer delivering a story that an audience could follow as readily as a spoken anecdote. His rough vocal sound and emphatic piano gave the material a shape beyond its punch line.
As the city’s blues audience expanded into North Side rooms, Junior became a familiar performer at Kingston Mines and B.L.U.E.S. He was an animated entertainer, sometimes playing from unusual positions around the piano, but the keyboard work carried the show. His performances combined boogie movement, percussive chords, and the half-spoken phrasing of a singer who wanted each turn in a story to register.
Health problems eventually limited his mobility, including the loss of a leg to diabetes. He nevertheless continued playing and writing. The continuity of club work kept his repertoire in circulation while records were relatively infrequent. For many listeners, a regular Chicago engagement offered a fuller introduction to him than a scattered sequence of singles or compilation appearances.
A late run of albums
Blue Suit released Turn Up the Heat in 1995 and Take Out the Time in 1997. The latter reunited Junior with Maurice John Vaughn’s band and included a guest appearance by Eddie Burns. These records placed his singing and writing before an audience that had previously needed to find him in Chicago or discover older releases. Live at the Toledo Museum of Art captured a June 2001 performance during the museum’s centennial celebrations.
Blues on the Internet followed on Delmark in 2004. The recording brought together Junior, Bob Stroger, Kenny Smith, and a wider cast including Lurrie Bell, Jimmy Dawkins, Maurice John Vaughn, Sonny Cohn, and Eric Schneider. “Call My Job” returned alongside originals such as “Money Crazy,” “Less Violence, More Love,” and “Somebody Better Do Something.” Lowell Fulson’s “Rockin’ After Midnight” was among the outside material. The sessions took place in August 2004, with the finished album released that November.
The program showed a songwriter still addressing relationships, money, and public concerns in language suited to performance. It also included interview and video material, offering listeners a view of the personality behind the songs. Detroit Junior died at his Chicago home on August 9, 2005. His later recordings preserved the sound of a working pianist and singer, while the continued performance of his compositions gave his career a life beyond his own bandstand.
Junior’s influence on younger pianists took a particularly personal form in Barrelhouse Chuck’s recordings. The Sirens included both men, along with Erwin Helfer and Pinetop Perkins, on 8 Hands on 88 Keys. On Got My Eyes on You, Chuck later revisited “Call My Job,” with Junior’s companion Ella Evans providing a spoken introduction. The choice preserved the comedy and conversational setting of the original song while acknowledging its author. It also showed how Junior’s repertoire could become part of another pianist’s account of the musicians who had taught him.