Andre Williams can remember it as if it happened only yesterday.

It was a drive from the Motor City to a gig in Memphis in 1956. Six hundred or so miles of two-lane highway that provided him with the images for the song that brings him—more than half a century later—to Ann Arbor on Friday.

“I was traveling with a group I had just put together—a group of young fellas,” Williams recalled during a phone conversation from his home in Chicago a few days ago. “One of them had an auntie in Memphis who knew a club boss and so we drove down there to do a show—and I’ll never forget it was in a brown Plymouth station wagon and it was a very, very scenic drive.

“I could look out the window and see people picking cotton and doing other down-home kinds of stuff, and I just started putting them all together into a song. It’s all about that trip.”

As soon as Williams and his band, The Don Juans, returned to Detroit, they holed up at the Linwood Avenue studio of their label, Fortune Records, to lay down the track that would become “Bacon Fat.” The record became a local hit thanks to airplay by WJLB-AM’s Ernie Durham and was eventually leased to Epic Records, where it sold a million copies in 1957 and rose to No. 9 on the R&B charts.

On Friday, for the second straight year, Williams will bring “Bacon Fat,” as well as a glorious catalog of sweet and savory (and typically salacious) songs like“Please Pass the Biscuits, Please,” “Rib Tips,” and “Greasy Chicken” to The Ark to kick off Zingermans’ Camp Bacon festivities. Mekons frontman Jon Langford opens the show.

“I didn’t know if it would be a hit or not, but I knew it had to be, because I didn’t know anything else to do,” Williams said.

In fact, although “Bacon Fat remains (probably unfairly) his biggest hit, it set the template for Williams’ almost proto-rap vocal style, in which he narrates a story over a greasy R&B track.

“When I got to Detroit after I got kicked out of the Navy for being too young, there was nothing I knew how to do,” Williams said. “I knew I had to come up with a trade, something that would feed me, so I figured I’d be a singer. But then I realized I couldn’t really sing, so I came up with this style and I guess I just stuck with it.

“So that’s my niche—telling stories to rhythm.”

Williams had a string of regional hits on Fortune, the legendary independent label that also was home to Nolan Strong and the Diablos and Nathaniel Mayer. Eventually, he left Fortune for the nascent Motown label, working with a young harmonica whiz named Stevland Judkins, whom he renamed Stevie Wonder and helped launch to stardom.

From there, he went to work as a songwriter, producer and song plugger with Ike Turner, where he wrote the stone R&B classic, “Shake a Tail Feather,” which is probably (and probably also unfairly) best known as the song Ray Charles performs in the “Blues Brothers” film. He also fell into a decades-long spiral of alcoholism and narcotics dependency that eventually led one of the undisputed heroes of Detroit soul and R&B to a life of panhandling on the streets of Chicago.

Slowly but surely, however, Williams cleaned up his act and got back to work. And he hasn’t slowed down since.

Last year, with the help of Miriam Linna at the garage-friendly label, Norton Records, Williams published “Sweets,” a book of thinly disguised short stories culled from his own life. As we spoke this week, he said he was looking over final drafts of stories for a second collection.

He also has three records awaiting release, including one he recorded with Canadian pop gods, The Sadies, and another for the venerable Bloodshot label that he made right here in Ann Arbor, and which includes contributions from the legendary Motown guitarist Dennis Coffey.

But first, it’s back to Ann Arbor for Friday’s Camp Bacon gig. And if the pairing of the street-smart hustler and the somewhat utopian purveyors of high-end foods sounds a little odd, Williams says it shouldn’t.

“Ann Arbor is practically walking distance from where my home base was in Detroit for all those years,” he said. “My records never sold real well to R&B people—it was always to the white college kids and to the pop market.

“So I’m no stranger to having success in places like Ann Arbor.”

Zingermans co-founder Ari Weinzweig, who makes frequent mentions of Williams and his signature song in his book, “Zingermans Guide to Better Bacon,” agrees.

“I have a high respect for musicians, artists and really anyone who's done things their own way, who stuck to the way that was true to them even though they caught a lot of flak from the mainstream of the market for doing it,” he said. “I also have a high affinity for musicians who I think were making great music but really never quite got their due over the years.

“I think Andre would fill that bill on all counts.”

It’s been a long way back from the bottom. But healthy and sober and sharp as a tack at 74, Williams said he’s thankful for another chance to restore not only his career, but also his reputation.

“Trust me, if I thought I had another choice in life, I don’t think it would have been this that I decided to do,” he said. “Because this here is one long, hard row to hoe for a whole lifetime.”