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Ideally, you'll want to be on time to Brackins Blues Bar in downtown Maryville on Sunday evening.

That way, you can witness first-hand the storm that is "Lil'" Ed Williams before he gets going full-force.

It's a lot like watching a thunderstorm develop -- the clouds build on the horizon, looming ever closer ... the wind picks up and the air becomes charged with energy ... and then the bottom falls out, and the streets turn into a raging torrent of water and thunder. Substitute the blues for the rain and noise, and you get the idea of just how explosive "Lil'" Ed and The Blues Imperials are in a live setting.

"The music gets me excited, you know? When I'm playing, its just a burst of fire inside of me that wants to give everything I've got," Williams told The Daily Times this week. "That's just what I do. I try to come out just as hard as when I was getting warmed up. I learned that by playing festivals at 9 o'clock in the morning -- people are sitting down and still sleeping, and I come out like a wild man and wake everybody up.

"That's when I started playing like that -- when I had to wake people up in the morning!"

He laughs, a hearty sound that echoes the rich baritone singing voice that booms out over his smoking guitar licks and the driving rhythm of his backing band.

Born in the Windy City in 1955, Williams grew up surrounded by the blues, and by the time he was 12, he was already playing guitar, drums and bass. Along with his half-brother, "Pookie" Young, they formed the first incarnation of the Blues Imperials when Williams was 20, playing at various Chicago blues dives and juke joints by night while Williams waxed cars for a living by day. (They took the band's name, he aid, from an old television commercial for Imperial Margarine.) With his uncle, the late blues great J.B. Hutto, as his mentor, Williams learned how to own the stage as a showman as much as a musician.

Eventually, Williams' and Young's fiery brand of the blues caught the attention of Alligator Records President Bruce Iglauer. Looking for bands to add to a compilation album about the new kings of the Chicago blues scene, Iglauer invited the Imperials to cut a track for the record. Williams saw his opportunity and seized it. During the recording session, the band -- which had never been in a recording studio anyway -- treated it like a club performance. They played live to Iglauer, the engineer and everyone in the booth, and after just two songs, the Alligator staff members were on their feet, begging for more. Iglauer offered the band a full contract on the spot, and 12 songs from the initial 30 recorded during that session -- with no overdubs and no second takes -- became "Roughhousin,'" the 1986 debut album by Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials.

It took the music world by storm - music critics writing for Spin, The New York Times and The Washington Post crowed about it, and Williams became an instant celebrity on the blues circuit. After two more albums, however, he took time off the road to get his personal life together. In 1998, he got the band back together and recorded a string of records that culminated in last year's "Full Tilt," a rollicking, brazen affair that bristles with attitude and energy. A cover of "First I Look at the Purse," made famous by The Contours, is included on the record; it explodes with all of the flash and bang of a grenade.

"The thing about it is I didn't know anything about that song, pretty much," Williams said. "I listened to a version from one of the other groups that's done it over the years, and I just went from there. It sounded kind of wacky at first -- I was like, 'You really want me to do this?' -- but then I learned the lyrics and just played it."

There's that laugh again. Williams almost makes it sound easy, but repeated listenings to his body of work reveal a man who paid attention to the wisdom imparted by his uncle and combined it with God-given talent by the truckload.

"I still listen to a lot of J.B.'s records, and I still like to do a lot of his stuff," Williams said. "What I like to do is make it even better than what he did and keep the action going on it. I am 'Lil'' Ed, and I have my own thing. I've got my own certain style and certain feelings and ways of living and loving and learning about life.

"J.B., he's in me, but what come out is me, myself. I always sing about my life and my surroundings, and I think he's very proud of me now. I think he's even more proud of me taking his stuff and making it even better, you know? It's just the music, man. I love it. It's my life, and I love sharing my life with people."