Freedom Creek - Willie King

Freedom Creek Festival 2008 (slideshow)

Willie King's Biography

Rest in Peace - 1943 - 2009

Willie was born in Prairie Point, MS, in 1943. After his father left, Willie and his siblings was raised by his grandparents, local sharecroppers. Music was important to the King family - Willie’s grandfather was a gospel singer, and his absent father was an amateur blues musician. Young Willie made a diddley bo by nailing a baling wire to a tree in the yard. By age 9 he had a one-string guitar that he could bring indoors to play at night.

After his father left, Willie and his siblings was raised by his grandparents, local sharecroppers. Music was important to the King family - Willie’s grandfather was a gospel singer, and his absent father was an amateur blues musician. Young Willie made a diddley bo by nailing a baling wire to a tree in the yard. By age 9 he had a one-string guitar that he could bring indoors to play at night.

In 1967, Willie King moved to Chicago in an attempt to make more money than he could down South. Ag moved to Chicago in an attempt to make more money than he could down South. After a year spent on the West and South Side, he returned to Old Memphis, Alabama, just across the border from the Mississippi Prairie. A salesman - of shoes, cologne, and other frivolities - Willie traveled the rural roads hawking goods and talking politics. Choosing not to work under the "old system" of unequal treatment, King joined the civil rights movement near the end of the decade, eventually associating with the left-wing Highlander Center.

By the late 1970s, King was writing what he calls "struggling songs" - political blues tunes. As King explains "through the music I could reach more people, get ’em to listen." Yet as his rollicking blues style attests, King still knows how to have a good time. He played the juke circuit and bootlegged whiskey on the side, resorting to popular blues covers when the "struggling songs" upset a close-minded audience.

King work a lot in his own community, forging relationships with local youth through a blues education program and through his organization The Rural Members Association. The Rural Members Association has sponsored classes in music, woodworking, food preservation, and other African-American traditions, and has provided transportation, legal assistance, and other services for the needy over the past two decades. In recent years he’s been sponsoring a festival on the creek, which is as The Freedom Creek Festival. Willie explains, "We was targetin’ at tryin’ to get all walks of life, different people to come down and kinda be with us in reality down there, you know. Let’s get back to reality, in the woods . . . mix and mingle . . . get to know each other. Get up to have a workin’ relationship, try to bring peace . . .







Listen to Willie King MP3's


Interview With Willie King



Freedom Creek 2008 on YouTube





Willie King strumming guitar in his back yard






Clip from movie "Down in the Woods"