[1] He was raised in Houston, Texas, and moved to Belzoni, Mississippi, to live with his uncle Anthony Williams after his mother died around 1917.
Williams's first recordings were made in 1947 with Johnny Young[5] and resulted in one of the two singles issued on the Ora-Nelle label.
[6] In December 1948 Young and Williams were joined by Snooky Pryor to record a single for the Planet label.
[3] After 1953 Williams continued to work with Hound Dog Taylor and others,[1] but he stopped playing blues in 1959 after a religious conversion and joined the Baptist church,[3] becoming a deacon in the early 1960s.
The blues musicians John Lee Hooker and Baby Boy Warren have also used the name Johnny Williams.