Lester Williams born 24 June 1920

Lester B. Williams (June 24, 1920 – November 13, 1990 was an American Texas blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his song "Winter Time Blues" and "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use". His main influence was T-Bone Walker. Williams released several singles in the 1950s. His recording career lasted from 1949 to 1956, but he remained a stalwart of the Houston blues circuit for decades.

Williams was born in Groveton, Texas. When he was a young boy he sang in church choirs. His family relocated to Houston where he became familiar with the recordings of Blind lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. After serving in World War II, Williams sang with Ike Smalley’s band at Houston's Eldorado Ballroom, but quit and enrolled at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, to study piano and voice. He did not graduate, and he returned to Houston, where he taught himself to play the guitar and started to write songs. It was in Houston that he heard T-Bone Walker.

Walker's influence inspired Williams, who said to himself, "I could learn to play guitar and pull in some of that money that T-Bone made". Having formed his own group he began performing at Don Robey’s Bronze Peacock Club. In 1949, he wrote "Winter Time Blues", which came from his own experience when his wife and daughter traveled to Los Angeles for the summer, leaving him to contemplate the winter alone. He signed a recording contract with Macy's Recordings, and Steve Poncio produced "Winter Time Blues" which was a regional hit. His next few releases did not fare well commercially and, by 1951, Williams had moved to Specialty Records. His first disc for them was his biggest success, "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use" (1952).

                             

Possessing a flexible voice with good tone and buttressed by horns as well as his own guitar, Williams’s material cut across genres. At the same time he was cutting pure blues songs he was also delving into rock ‘n’ roll from the start with the flip side of his debut record and some of his most well remembered records to come were firmly in the rock field.

His notability rose to the extent that he appeared in February 1953 at Carnegie Hall, in New York, on a bill that included Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole. The song "I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use" was covered a decade later by B.B. King.

His success was short-lived, as subsequent releases did not sell well. By 1954, Williams was performing regularly on the Houston radio station KLVL, and he began a constant touring regime across the South. Additional singles were released by Duke and by Imperial, the latter in 1956. but not having achieved any chart success with his singles he was resigned to being a local act across the south primarily concentrating on the blues.

Williams remained a fixture in blues circles for years, touring Europe in the 1980’s and singing until his death in November 1990, in Houston at the age of seventy.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Handbook of  Texas Music)