Blind Connie Williams

Blind Connie Williams (born c.1915 – ) was an American blues guitarist who was a street performer beginning in the early 1930s. Williams was something of a journeyman throughout his busking career, but he lived in Philadelphia for most of his life. Much of his repertoire consisted of sanctified gospel songs and pre-war country blues standards. His parents were migrant workers. As a teenager, he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, where he developed a sophisticated understanding of harmony and proficiency as a guitarist. In 1935, Williams settled in Philadelphia. He frequently traveled to Harlem, where he performed alongside Reverend Gary Davis. Williams could play blues standards, folk songs, and some pop tunes, but he told Welding in 1961 that he preferred playing spirituals, because he enjoyed them and "the police rarely would bother him if he confined himself to this sort of material". The Piedmont blues guitarist Frank Hovington, another musician who occasionally teamed up with Williams in Philadelphia in the 1940s, recalled that Williams was "more at home" performing spirituals, as he sang in a gospel quartet at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Frederick, Maryland. For the recording sessions he agreed to participate with Welding at radio station WHYY on May 5, 1961. Welding bought him a guitar, and Williams reacquainted himself with it. The influence of Reverend Davis is evident throughout the 23 numbers recorded, but Williams had his own style, marked by bass string slapping and bottleneck techniques.