Also known as Big Bad Bobby Williams, Williams was a drummer and a regular at the Upstage Club, where he basically served as house drummer. Another member of Springsteen’s Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom band, Williams also played with Southside Johnny Lyon, Little Steven Van Zandt and Garry Tallent� in the short-lived Funky Dusty and the Soul Broom Band, before forming his own band, The Big Bad Bobby Williams Band in late 1970.

He was immortalized in Bruce Springsteen’s liner notes for the first Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes album, “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” as “the heaviest drummer of them all, in terms of both poundage and sheer sonic impact, Biiiiig Baaaaad Bobby Williams, badass king of hearts so tough he’d go to the limit for you every time,� all night.”

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“It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a Moose to cry” - Bobby Williams, 1970

ROBERT A. WILLIAMS aka BIG BOBBY aka MOOSE BORN Nov. 7, 1947 DIED Jan. 26, 2000 Bobby Williams was a scary looking drummer at first impression. When he played the drums, he pounded everything he could out of them. It’s a wonder the Upstage drum set didn’t disintegrate under all of that pounding. He stood about 6 feet tall and weighed around 275 lbs. He grew up around rough characters and loved to ride motorcycles, so he had that tough guy demeanor. When you got to know him, he was a sensitive caring guy who would “give you the shirt off his back” as the old saying goes. He was the kind of guy that Tom Potter surrounded himself with in order to maintain control over a very unstable social gathering. Bobby worked harder than anyone between playing the drums and helping the security crew as a back-up. He suffered from depression and got relief from playing the drums in all night jam sessions. He taped drumsticks to his hands so that he wouldn’t lose them during a 30 minute long song. One of the funnier things he did was to convince me to let him sing “A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash. Except that he wanted to change it to “A Boy Named Moose” He was a big fan of Cash and loved that song. It had been a hit the year before in 1969, so it was still pretty fresh and I thought it would be fun to have Bobby take a shot at it. He had already memorized the lyrics and re-wrote one part to suit him personally. In the part of the song where the boy named Sue finds his father in a saloon, he hollers out “My NAME IS SUE, HOW DO YOU DO? ” Bobby changed that part to, “MY NAME IS MOOSE ! HOW’S BY YOUSE ?”. Steve almost fell off the stage laughing one night when we did it like that. Bobby eventually got into the auto body repair business and did well with it. He even came out of “retirement” to reunite with Margaret Potter and played at the opening party for the Asbury Park Rock & Roll Museum in 1986. That resulted in his involvement in a recording with Margaret Potter called “Goin’ to Asbury Park” in 1987. That record didn’t re-ignite any career plans and Bobby stayed with the rustproofing job. He passed away in the year 2000. He was only 53 years old.

posted by ALBEE TELLONE 2014 on June 11, 2014