Driving in his Chrysler New Yorker towards St. Louis with the Shawnee National Forest beside him, musician Randall “Big Daddy” Webster, heard music in the hills. He recalls shanties dotting those hills overlooking where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers converged, and he pulled over to investigate the source of the sound. As he reached the crest, he saw a group of dockworkers jamming and playing the blues, and from then on he was enamored with the form.
Formerly of the Mighty Big Blues Band and Lazuli, Webster is the singer, songwriter, lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist behind Big Daddy & Red Hot Java. The eight-piece band based in Tallahassee has toured nationally and internationally, bringing their “caffeine-infused” blues with them. Webster started out as a blues soloist, however, and will play Word of South as a two-piece with the band’s lead guitarist, trumpeter, and vocalist, Adesh Balrag, in collaboration with author Brad Watson.
“My goal is really to reinforce what Brad is bringing to the table,” says Webster of their upcoming performance. “The overall theme is from one of his books called ‘Are You Mr. Lonely,’ which is full of vignettes about guy and girl stuff. I’m in the process of narrowing down which songs I’m going to do, but he’ll read while I do acoustic music underneath it, then I’ll do a song that relates and weaves it all together.”
Though Webster has written for movie and television productions, this will be his first time collaborating in this particular live environment. While earning his degree in broadcasting and television and radio communications at Southern Illinois University, Webster was one of the school’s radio DJs and played paid gigs as part of a cover band in the dormitories’ cafeterias.
He grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, alongside notables like John Belushi and Bob Woodward. At age 10, he and his best friend would hop on a train to the city and watch the bluesmen out on the streets. He got his own start in music fairly late and was delayed by a classical guitar teacher who would rap his knuckles with a ruler . As a high school sound technician, he was overheard singing by a band that gave him a microphone so that his harmonies could be heard from the sound booth. “In high school, I was into electronics and helped a friend’s band build a huge PA system,” recalls Webster. “I ended up being their sound guy in the warehouse where they’d rehearse. In the middle of a song one day they stopped playing and heard me singing harmonies with them from the sound microphone up there, and that was the beginning of it.”
Influenced by greats like Muddy Waters at the heart of Chicago blues, Webster was especially impacted by Willie Dixon, house bass player and songwriter for Chess Records, and his tune “It Don’t Make Sense (You Can’t Make Peace).” The blues’ history of being socially active music inspires Webster in his own writing, with songs covering everything from gun control to corporate greed. In collaboration with another blues artist, he created “In the Name of the Surge,” which has lyrics addressing the physical and mental wounds of soldiers after returning home from the Middle East.
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