Things That I Used To Do - Lefty Dizz

Queen Sylvia Embry bass, Ralph Lapetina piano, others are Ed Madden trumpet, Woody Williams drums. at the Checkerboard.
Born Walter Williams in Arkansas in on April 29,1937, Dizz (the nickname was bestowed on him by Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers, appropriating it from drummer Ted Harvey, who used the name when he was “playing jazz in the alley”) started playing guitar at age 19 after a four-year hitch in the Air Force. Entirely self-taught, he played a standard right-handed model flipped upside down, without reversing the strings. His sound was raw and distorted and his style owed more to the older bluesmen than to the hipper West Side players like Otis Rush and Buddy Guy working in the B.B. King mode. By the time he came to Chicago, he had honed his craft well enough to become a member of Junior Wells’s band in 1964, recording and touring Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia with him until the late ’60s. At various times during the ’60s and early ’70s, he’d also moonlight as a guitarist with Chicago stalwarts J.B. Lenoir and Hound Dog Taylor, while sitting in everywhere and playing with seemingly everyone. While being well known around town as a “head cutter,” Lefty Dizz was always welcome on anyone’s bandstand. His personality, while seemingly carefree and humorous, masked a deep, highly intelligent individual who had also earned a degree in economics from Southern Illinois University.