"Somebody's After My Freak"
Lee "Shot" Williams
Composed by Raymond Moore and John Ward
November 29, 2011:
Obituary: Lee "Shot" Williams.
Soul Blues Report, a Southern Soul music newsletter headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, first ran a banner headline over Thanksgiving weekend which looked like an obituary notice: LEE SHOT WILLIAMS 1938-2011. No other details were provided.
The media link (the website is a referral service) was to a Soul Express interview with Lee "Shot" Williams in 1997 by Heikki Suosalo, a longtime Southern Soul writer from Europe.
Today, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, there are still no details forthcoming on time, date or cause of death. However, The Boogie Report--a Southern Soul newsletter of long standing--has posted the following funeral information:
Services for Lee Shot Williams Will Be Held: Monday December 5 th At The: Mw St Johns Grand Lodge 7443 S Ingleside Ave Chicago, Illinois 60619 (773) 874-4778
Wake and Family Hour 10 to 11 am Services 11 am
A fund raiser to help defray funeral and burial expenses is scheduled for Thursday Night Nov.1st In Memphis.
For more information contact :
Larry Chambers
901-320-9235
Tributes and Donations are Requeted to be sent to:
Clifford Streeter
2101 So. Michigan Ave
Apt.506
Chicago, Illinois 60616
phone 773-392-5858
All Flowers Should Be Delivered To The Mw St Johns Grand Lodge
7443 S Ingleside Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60619
(773) 874-4778
On The Day Of The Services
The Boogie Report
Lee "Shot" Williams' death marks the passing of another giant of Southern Soul. He held a lofty position (#13) on Daddy B. Nice's Top 100 Southern Soul Artists, which covered the twenty years from 1990-2010.
--Daddy B. Nice
************
Update: March 6, 2011: NEW ALBUM ALERT
Bargain-Priced The First Rule Of Cheating CD
Recommended Single: "Sleeping In The Wrong Bed"
Buy "Sleeping In The Wrong Bed" MP3
**************************
See "Tidbits" below for the latest updates on Lee "Shot" Williams. To automatically link to Lee "Shot's" charted radio singles, awards, CD's and other references throughout the website, go to "Williams, Lee 'Shot'" in Daddy B. Nice's Comprehensive Index.
***********************
Daddy B. Nice's Original Critique:
Some people will tell you a "freak" is someone from a carnival, some think it applies to superstar athletes, but for fans of R&B it means a gal (or guy, as the case may be) who'll do things your regular woman won't. In fact, "le freak" (ala Chic) boasts a long and proud tradition in urban R&B. Adina Howard's proclamation in the high-spirited 90's funk anthem "Freak Like Me" says it better than Daddy B. Nice ever could.
"Let me lay it on the line.
I got a little freakiness inside.
I need a roughneck n----r
That can satisfy me."
But Lee "Shot" Williams owns the Southern Soul franchise for "freak." At least, he has ever since the release of his "freak" trilogy--"She Made A Freak Out Of Me," "Somebody's After My Freak," and "Somebody Blew The Whistle On Me"-- all written by the hard-working, under-appreciated songwriting/producing duo of John Ward and Raymond Moore.
"I should have never told it all, y'all,
About all those kinky things.
I know a lot of my friends got jealous,
With the way she made a freak out of me.
I should have never bragged about it,
Or the way she turned me out.
Now some of my backstabbing friends,
They sure trying to ease me out."
These songs--essentially the same tune with small variations--were sensations when they came out in 2000 and 2001. They put laughter in deejays' patter. They spawned a cottage industry of musical responses from Bobby Jonz's "Lee Shot Stole My Freak" to Rick Lawson's "Lee Shot, Come And Get Your Freak."
You could hear "Leeee-shad" everywhere in the Deep South, and the reason Daddy B. Nice spells it that way is because a non-Southerner, seeing the words "Lee 'Shot'," wants to put the accent on the second word and pronounce the hard 't'. However, the way it's pronounced in the South is with the accent on the first syllable and a soft-as-butter 'd' to end the second. Leeee-shad. Come and get your freak. (With both syllables drawn out to a length into which most Northerners could squeeze a small conversation.)
The best of the trilogy may be "Somebody Blew The Whistle On Me"--
"I've been cheatin' on my woman, y'all,
At least two or three times a week."
--which (besides having arguably the deepest groove) attaches a trailer of hail-fellow-blues-artists references complete with the songs those artists recorded that "blew the whistle" on poor Leee-shad. It's a fascinating list, a "who's who" of Southern Soul, reeled off with a wit and aplomb that will tickle fans of Southern Soul.
Williams gives "props" to Johnnie Taylor's "Good Love," Latimore's "Let's Straighten It Out," J. Blackfoot's "Just One Lifetime," Artie 'Blues Boy' White's "Leaning Tree," Ronnie Lovejoy's "Sho' Wasn't Me," and Bobby Rush's "Sue," in addition to Tyrone Davis, Cicero Blake and Syl Johnson. The song is a veritable primer on Southern Soul classics.
These acknowledgements to fellow artists are a peculiarity of Southern Soul and one of its greatest pleasures. You can take them as guideposts to the genre from the perspective of the actual contenders. And you can take them as definitive proof that a strong Southern Soul community exists.
"Somebody's After My Freak" is the song that started it all, however. Easy-going but--well--"freaky," it exploded on the Southern Soul scene. The atmosphere conjured by Lee Shot's band before he even begins singing is deep into the night in a smoky, sweaty, crowded club where everyone is as high as a kite.
Ironically, the fans' fascination with his "freak" songs has overshadowed some of his best work on other material, particularly "(Can You) Get Away" and "Do What You Do," songs that illustrate William's penchant for melodic songs and original arrangements.
Williams was one of those grizzled old R&B veterans, long out of the music business, who came around relatively late to the fact that the Southern Soul scene was really happening. His chops were obvious. He really picked up steam on the Memphis-based Ecko Records label at the dawn of the century. Once he did, he immediately filled up a niche as a "senior player." For today's chitlin' circuit audience his very name brings with it a whiff of raffish charm.
--Daddy B. Nice
About Lee "Shot" Williams
Lee Williams was dubbed "Shot" by his mother for his habit of wearing suits and dressing up as a "big shot." Born in 1938 in Lexington, Mississippi, he moved to Detroit in the fifties and then on to Chicago, where he eventually hooked up with fellow Mississippian Little Smokey Smothers. He interned with Chicago-based Magic Sam, then toured with Earl Hooker and Bobby "Blue" Bland.
His first album under his own name, Country Disco, was released in 1977. In the eighties, without commercial prospects, Williams moved back to Memphis, where he might very well have lived out the remainder of his life in obscurity but for small-label Black Magic's interest in giving him an opportunity. The result, Cold Shot, was voted the best blues album of 1995 by "Living Blues" magazine.
In 1996 Lee "Shot" Williams moved to Ecko Records, where he recorded Hot Shot, distinguished by creditable, straightforward blues numbers such as "Make Me Holler" and "I'll Take The Risk."
By 2000, however, Williams had honed a much more focused musical persona, evident in his smash chitlin' circuit hit, "She Made A Freak Out Of Me." The following year, he recorded his signature hit, "Somebody's After My Freak" (from the Somebody's After My Freak CD). Since then, Williams has continued to put out a steady stream of top-notch Southern Soul discs annually.
The Lee "Shot" Williams Discography:
1995 Cold Shot (Black Magic)
1996 Hot Shot (Ecko)
2000 She Made A Freak Out Of Me (Ecko)
2001 Somebody's After My Freak (Ecko)
2002 Let the Good Times Roll (Wilson)
2003 Get Down Tonight (Ecko)
2005 Nibble Man (Ecko)
2006 Starts with a P. (Ecko)
2006 Meat Man (Ecko)
2008 Shot from the Soul (CDS)
2010 I'm the Man For the Job (CDS)
Song's Transcendent Moment
"When I told them
All the good, good things,
They all got jealous inside.
And now they're trying to break me down,
By telling my woman their lies.
Somebody's after my freak,
They blew the whistle on me.
Somebody's after my freak.
They blew the whistle on me."
Tidbits
1. Your Daddy B. Nice became enamored with a song called "Southern Girl" by an unknown artist in 2002, hearing it a half-dozen times on chitlin' circuit radio but never quite catching the name of the artist. The song was notable for its country-western flavor and its unique, choppy rhythm. Best of all, both the lead and back-up vocals were "perfectly loose"--they sounded real and un-studio-like.
It turns out this catchy piece of Americana was recorded by Lee "Shot" Williams on the Let The Good Times Roll CD on small-label Wilson Records in 2002. But that doesn't mean the larger Southern Soul labels aren't letting Lee "Shot" push the envelope.
2. August 10, 2005. "Ease On Down In The Bed" from 2005's Nibble Man from Southern Soul label Ecko is yet another song that's as valuable for the musical directions it suggests as it is for Shot's patented up tempo magic. A percolating, organ-enhanced rhythm section strikes out into virgin territory, rhythmically speaking, while Lee "Shot" patters on in a seductive voice about bedroom geography. It's short on melody, but high on originality, groove and atmosphere.
3. December 8, 2006. Lee "Shot" Williams' has been busy, releasing not one but two Ecko-chaperoned CD's in 2006. Both Starts With A P (April) and Meat Man (October) testify to Lee "Shot"'s continuing oral fixation and fascination with food as a metaphor.
"Everything I Like To Eat Starts With A 'P'" from the former disc milks this obsession for all it's worth, yet after all the teasing, the five-letter word the listener expects never arises, although every other possible permutation of "p" as applied to "food" does. Musically, the song works well.
However, with the exception of an idiosyncratic version of "I Never Loved A Woman The Way I Love You," the balance of the material from the two records doesn't generate a lot of enthusiasm. Inexplicably, Williams chose to reprise the middlin' "Meat Man" from the Starts With A P CD and build an entirely new album around it, Meat Man. The CD's live version of "Ease On Down In The Bed," which illustrates how Lee "Shot" has honed his crowd-pleasing, sexual-innuendo schtick over the years, will bring a smile to his fans' faces. But assuming Lee "Shot" has a lot of bills to pay, one stills wonders if even his most ardent fans will continue to pony up for CD's this thin and repetitive in such rapid succession. DBN.
4. May 27, 2008
The reappearance of Lee "Shot" Williams on Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 Southern Soul Singles for April 2008 is good news. Williams strikes "perfect pitch"--culturally and comedically speaking--in two new singles from his new CDS effort, Shot From The Soul: "Country Woman" and "It's Friday (Time To Get Paid)."
Lee "Shot" followed his peak years--the era of his "Freak" songs ("Somebody's After My Freak," Somebody Blew The Whistle On Me," "She Made A Freak Out Of Me") with what might be called his "food" phase of the last few years: "Meat Man," "(Everything I Like To Eat) Starts With A P" and the like.
"Starts With A P" was probably the best Lee "Shot" song of that phase, with its recitatation of all the food stuffs that begin with a "P"--among them pot roast, pork chops, peanuts, pasta, peaches, pigs' feet, pineapple, potato pie--that Lee "Shot" loved to eat, without actually naming the sexual female zone in the vernacular that threatens to slip out of (but never quite crosses) Lee "Shot's" hungry lips.
"I don't mind a little snack in the bedroom," Lee "Shot" confides to his girlfriend Patricia near the end of the song, "As long as it starts with a P."
And yet in hindsight Lee "Shot" Williams' food phase seems at best an artistic step sideways in terms of his career since the peak conquered with his "freak" songs of the early 00's. But on this new album, Lee "Shot" strikes "perfect pitch" in a number of ways.
"I've been working all week long,
Working like a knee-grew slave."
Two things to like in the new "Shot" single, "It's Friday (Time To Get Paid)" are the humor and the bucking-the-political-correctness-crowd courage displayed in the use of the phrase "working like a Negro (pronounced knee-grew) slave." The mispronunciation makes it even funnier, and encapsulates the pure charm of Mississippi-steeped Southern Soul.
Lee "Shot's "Country Girl" is an even more impressive presentation of finely-tuned, down-home R&B. When Williams sings about putting "the rest of his money in his shoe" so he doesn't "get robbed," you really believe it.
And when "Shot" is talking about loving his "baby" ("Fannie Mae Brown"--the perfect name, by the way), he's so overcome with appreciation for her qualities that he pauses, as a man would do in conversation with a close friend, and lets out a little, knowing laugh that is alone worth the price of the CD.
DBN
******************
5. March 1, 2010: NEW ALBUM ALERT
2009 witnessed yet another soulful Southern Soul hit from the under-rated and under-appreciated Lee "Shot" Williams. The song, "Wrong Bed" from the SHOT FROM THE SOUL CD, one of CDS Records' finest Southern Soul albums to date, joined "Country Woman" and "It's Friday (Time To Get Paid)" as bona fide fan favorites.
Now Lee "Shot" has a new offering:
Bargain-Priced I'm The Man For The Job CD
****************
6.
July 17, 2010:
If You Liked. . . You'll Love
If you can imagine Sam Cooke's "Having A Party" updated and electrified for the 21st century, you're pretty close to Lee "Shot" Williams' "Somebody's After My Freak."
Honorary "B" Side
"Somebody Blew The Whistle On Me"
©2005-2024 SouthernSoulRnB.com
All material--written or visual--on this website is copyrighted and the exclusive property of SouthernSoulRnB.com, LLC. Any use or reproduction of the material outside the website is strictly forbidden, unless expressly authorized by SouthernSoulRnB.com. (Material up to 300 words may be quoted without permission if "Daddy B. Nice's Southern Soul RnB.com" is listed as the source and a link to http://www.southernsoulrnb.com/ is provided.)