Blues guitarist Willie King was born in rural Noxubee County, Mississippi.

He has lived just across the state line in equally rural Pickens County, Alabama for most of his life, except for a brief stay in Chicago in the 1960s. Both counties are among the poorest in their respective states. From that environment, King and his band, the Liberators, has produced what might be one of the best blues CDs of 2000 in Freedom Creek (Rooster Blues).

Recorded live at Bettie’s Place, a juke joint located in nearby Prairie Point, Mississippi, it captures the blues at its rawest. Owing something musically to the steady, rhythmic style of Burnside and Kimbrough (but with more adventurous guitar work), lyrically, King brings a little something extra to the table.

In the excellent liner notes by Rooster Blues Records founder Jim O’Neal, King reveals what was given to him as the hidden code of the blues, which was actually a hidden form of protest. He says that although the old blues players talked about women in their songs, they were actually talking about “the boss man” and how he treated them. According to King, “…back then you couldn’t come out and say, ‘Well, my boss man treated me mean,’…’Cause somebody’d a’ been hung or dead or killed quick back then, around here. I know that for a fact.”

Armed with that knowledge, King began writing what he called “struggling blues,” and this CD is comprised of several of these tracks, though O’Neal reports in the liner notes that enough material was recording during this session for another CD of less political music (“sweet” blues, as King calls it). Let’s hope that Rooster Blues doesn’t sit on it too long.

Listening to this CD will show you that King is a powerful composer and performer, and his songs bring to mind something of a reggae influence with their incessant rhythms and protest-oriented lyrics. King is the type of artist who doesn’t care if he’s popular or not, as long as his message is being heard.

Although he borrows from several different blues styles (“Uncle Tom” uses the melody of “Pretty Girls Everywhere,” “Pickens County Payback” borrows from James Brown, “Twenty Long Years” from Eddie Boyd), King manages to maintain his originality. This is due to his songwriting and his band, whose ragged but right approach represents the blues in its most down-home phase. The most distinctive approach is the use of a second vocalist (Willie Lee Halbert), who echoes King’s lyrics and sometimes interjects his own. Due to the response and enthusiasm of their audience, it’s obvious that, despite the political tone of the lyrics, the band knows how to make the audience move. Any fan of the blues should have this CD in their collection.