Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials

Bio

“Lil’ Ed Williams is a slide guitarist extraordinaire…electrifying and raucous. He represents one of the few authentic links to pure Chicago blues.” –The Chicago Tribune

“Outrageous, forceful Chicago blues slide-guitar…piping hot energy…Lil’ Ed is a star of the first magnitude.” –DownBeat

“Muscular, scalding, explosive guitar…incendiary soul played with fiery intensity. This doesn’t just rock the house; it threatens to blow the whole thing down…a raw-boned tour-de-force, raucously felt and blisteringly articulated.” –Blues Revue

For nearly 40 years together, Blues Hall Of Famers Lil’ Ed Williams and The Blues Imperials—bassist (and Ed’s half brother) James “Pookie” Young, guitarist Mike Garrett and drummer Kelly Littleton—have been delivering gloriously riotous, intensely emotional, wickedly playful Chicago blues to audiences around the world. Lil’ Ed—like his musical forebearers, slide guitar masters J.B. Hutto (Ed’s uncle), Elmore James and Hound Dog Taylor—is among the giants of the genre. His celebratory slide work, deep blues string bending, fervent vocals and riveting original songs, all powered by The Blues Imperials’ rock-solid, road-tested, telepathic musicianship, are as real and hard-hitting as Chicago blues gets. According to Guitar World, “The band is a snarling boogie-blues machine.”

Now, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials return with Slideways, their 10th Alligator Records release, and perhaps the crowning achievement of their entire career. Mixing smoking slide guitar boogies and raw-boned shuffles with the deepest soul-burners and heart-wrenching slow blues, Lil’ Ed Williams and The Blues Imperials bring it all back home, playing each track with an impassioned sense of wild abandon. The Boston Globe says Lil’ Ed plays “positively scorching guitar,” and the band delivers “a classic Chicago vibe with an energy that’s timeless.”

Produced by Williams and Alligator Records founder and president Bruce Iglauer, Slideways is a dynamic, high-energy collection of 13 songs, including 12 written or co-written by Williams. With the band at the absolute height of their powers, Williams’ singing and playing is thrilling and at times hair-raising. The songs—eight featuring the deep blues keyboard playing of Ben Levin (“He’s got that old-time style,” says Williams)—are filled with simple, relatable truths. They feature colorful characters in humorous to harrowing situations, some sinning while grinning, others smiling while crying. From the high-octane opener Bad All By Myself to the feral 13th Street And Trouble to the home wrecking Flirt In The Car Wash Skirt to Lil’ Ed’s heartbreaking and soul-shattering reinvention of Homeless Blues, Slideways is a tour-de-force of old school Chicago blues performed with up-to-the-minute urgency.

Williams says the new album captures the band in all its glory, and Iglauer brought out the best in each member. “Bruce challenged us. He pulled things out of me I didn’t expect, and I’m glad he did. Pookie worked his butt off and played great. Mike always plays something cool. He lays the flavor down the way I like it. And Kelly, he’s a wildman. He makes me stomp my foot even harder than normal.”

With Slideways’ endlessly enjoyable music, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials provide an entry point for new listeners as much as a welcome home to long time “Ed Heads” all over the world. After almost four decades, the band’s authentic, unvarnished blues and their infectious energy, joyful showmanship and masterful performances have been honed to a razor’s edge. Even so, they continue to push each other to greater musical heights. “I love my guys to the point of no return,” adds Lil’ Ed. “They always surprise me.” As for the band’s durability, he says, “What I love is that we’re a family, and families stay together.”

Lil’ Ed’s Bio

Born on April 8, 1955, on Chicago’s tough West Side, Ed Williams, along with his half brother James “Pookie” Young, eagerly learned to play the blues from their legendary uncle, iconic bluesman J.B. Hutto. Hutto taught the youngsters how to feel the music and how to play from the heart. Ed was fascinated with J.B.’s slide, how it looked and the sounds it made. Ed and Pookie spent their teen years making music together, and in 1975 formed the first incarnation of The Blues Imperials. They soon played their first gig at Big Duke’s Blue Flame club on the city’s West Side, splitting the $6 take four ways. Over the next few years Ed and the band performed at every club in the neighborhood while still holding down day jobs. Ed worked ten hours a day as a buffer at the Red Carpet Car Wash. Pookie drove a school bus. Undaunted, the band played night after night, and eventually the word reached Alligator president Bruce Iglauer.

At the time, Iglauer was looking for local talent for The New Bluebloods, an anthology of some of Chicago’s younger blues musicians. The band—never having seen a recording studio before—treated the studio like a club, playing live to all the people on the other side of the control room glass. After Ed quickly recorded his two rehearsed songs, there was still plenty of studio time left, so they just kept playing. After 10 songs were recorded, Iglauer offered the band a full album contract. The end result of the session was 30 songs cut in three hours with no overdubs and only one second take. Ten of those songs became the band’s debut album, Roughhousin’, released in September 1986.

The national press reacted with amazement to the blues world’s new discovery. Feature stories ran in Spin, Musician, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune and dozens of other publications. The New York Times raved, “Raw-boned, old-fashioned Chicago blues has a new young master—Lil’ Ed Williams.”

But it wasn’t until 1987, when guitarist Mike Garrett joined the band, and a year later, when Garrett recruited his Detroit hometown friend Kelly Littleton to play drums, that things really began to take off. Garrett’s risk-taking rhythm guitar work and Littleton’s unpredictable, old-school drumming were the perfect complement to Lil’ Ed’s and Pookie’s rambunctious playing. With their 1989 album Chicken, Gravy & Biscuits, doors opened and audiences poured in. Through relentless touring, the group crystallized, becoming tighter with each performance, more adept in their abilities to read each other’s musical moves. Their spontaneous and unpredictable live show became legendary among blues fans worldwide.

With each new release, the band’s national and international stature continued to grow as their fan base continued to expand. Die-hard “Ed Head” Conan O’Brien brought the Lil’ Ed before millions of television viewers on three separate occasions. In 2025, Ed appeared on PBS Television’s Austin City Limits, bringing his natural Chicago blues to another enormous audience. The Washington Post called him, “a houserockin’ Chicago slide guitar master.”

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials have performed live all over the world, their show as visually captivating as their music is irresistible. They have played the Chicago Blues Festival multiple times, and have appeared at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Portland’s Waterfront Blues Festival, The Tampa Bay Blues Festival, The San Diego Blues Festival and dozens of other festivals around the country. Satisfying worldwide demand, they have performed in Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Japan, Australia, India, Turkey and Panama.

The group has won just about every award the blues world has to offer. They took home the Living Blues Award for Best Live Performer in 2011, 2012 and 2013. They won the prestigious Blues Music Award for Band Of The Year in both 2007 and 2009. In 2024, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials were inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame.

According to Iglauer (not just label owner and producer, but also among the band’s biggest fans), “If you want to hear—and feel—raw, rough, red hot Chicago blues, full of true emotion, you need to experience Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. With 38 years together, they deliver slide guitar-driven, hard-rocking, real deal blues like no other band on earth.”