497 fans
Robert Pete Williams (March 14 1914 – December 31 1980) was a Louisiana blues guitarist born in Zachary, Louisiana, who grew up in sharecropping and lumberyards. He built a cigar‑box guitar at age twenty and later studied with Frank Metty and Robert Metty. While serving a life sentence for a 1956 nightclub shooting, he was discovered by folklorists Dr. Harry Oster and Richard Allen; they recorded his prison‑themed songs and helped secure a pardon that cut his sentence to twelve years. After release he played at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, toured the United States and Europe in the mid‑1960s, and issued albums such as Free Again and Poor Bob’s Blues. His work appeared in films like Roots of American Music (1971) and he was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2014.
