Warner Williams

Singer and guitarist Warner Williams was surrounded by music as a child. Born in 1930 in Takoma Park, MD, Williams was playing guitar by the age of six, while his mother played the accordion, his father played guitar, piano, and fiddle, and his seven brothers and three sisters all played stringed instruments and sang, performing in the area as the Williams Family. Williams began playing for house parties, fish fries, and church functions, and in time became a fixture on the Washington, D.C., blues scene. He began playing with blues harpist Jay Summerour in the early '90s, and the duo specialized in the Piedmont blues tradition of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, billing themselves on the folk and blues circuit as Little Bit of Blues. Williams and Summerour have released two albums together, Little Bit a Blues on Patuxent Records and Blues Highway on Smithsonian Folkways.