Born in Chicago in 1936, Andre Williams spent much of his youth in rural Alabama, and after serving a hitch in the military he ended up in Detroit, where after winning a talent show he was offered on contract with a local record label, Fortune Records. Williams' first single, 1956's "Bacon Fat", was a lascivious dance number that became a top-ten R&B hit, but while he cut a number of equally wild follow-up tunes, none of them enjoyed the same success. However, Williams stayed in the music business, working as a songwriter (he wrote the R&B classic "Shake A Tail Feather") and producer (his clients included Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, Bobby Blue Bland and the Contours) when he wasn't cutting his own material. Working with
Ike Turner in the Seventies proved to be Williams's downfall -- through Turner he developed an addiction to cocaine, and in the Eighties he was a homeless crackhead for several years. In the Nineties, Williams cleaned up and made a comeback, recording a series of wild, raunchy albums with a variety of punk and indie rock musicians backing him up (including members of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Dirtbombs and the Demolition Doll Rods). However, while Williams had a new and loyal following, money and sobriety were still problems for him, and when filmmakers Eric Matthies and Trisha Todd decided to make a documentary about him, they ended up recording one of the most tumultuous periods of his life. In Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year With Andre Williams, the seventy-year-old musician makes new albums and tours the United States and Europe, but is also evicted from his apartment for non-payment of rent, falls back into drug use, suffers several health scares and ends up in the hospital with a serious case of pneumonia that leads him to the brink of death. Agile, Mobile, Hostile received its world premiere at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide