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Tuesday, March 30, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Jazz great Williams
found dead on street
A legendary singer dies after disappearing from his hospital room and trying to walk the few miles home.
By Joe Schoenmann
and Michael Paskevich
Review-Journal
Legendary jazz singer Joe Williams was found dead on a Las Vegas street Monday after leaving his hospital bed and walking nearly three miles before collapsing just blocks from his home.
Longtime friend and fellow singer Buddy Greco wept at the news Monday night. He said Williams talked about seeing spirits in his Sunrise Hospital room Sunday night.
"I talked to him in the hospital last night about 9 p.m., and he was talking about spirits being all over and in the room with him," Greco said. "Oh, my God. I told him (the spirits) were there because so many people loved him.
"He sounded like he knew what was coming,"
Clark County Coroner Ron Flud confirmed the 80-year-old's death late Monday, saying that it appeared he died of natural causes.
Williams' body was found by a resident about 3 p.m. on Dawnflower Street, Flud said. This is about two miles east of Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center at Maryland Parkway and Desert Inn Road and a quarter mile northwest of his home on Knollwood Court.
William's wife, Jillean, said earlier in the day that he had been admitted to Sunrise a week ago for a respiratory ailment after becoming ill in Seattle. She added that he was dependent upon an oxygen tank, which compounded her worries when she learned he was missing.
"He didn't have any money (with him), and he's been on a great deal of medication; sometimes that can discombobulate him," she said, adding that she drove around looking for him.
"I've called everybody I knew that he might have been in touch with, called all his favorite haunts like the Celebrity Deli," she also said. "I'm frantic."
Sheriff Jerry Keller said police used a helicopter and sent a bulletin to the National Crime Information Center in its search for Williams after being informed of his disappearance from Sunrise Hospital around 10 a.m.
Ann Lynch, Sunrise Hospital spokeswoman, said Williams had not been admitted to intensive care but was in a regular patient room. She added that it was entirely possible that Williams walked out of his room and away from the hospital.
"They are adults, and they are not confined to their rooms," Lynch said.
A family friend told the Review-Journal that Williams left the hospital fully dressed in white slacks with a double-knit long-sleeved sweater, a sleeveless cardigan with small brown-and-white checks, black velvet shoes and white socks.
News of his death came as a heavy blow to fellow Las Vegas singers and longtime friends. Both Greco and singer Robert Goulet reacted with tears. The three regularly played golf and together celebrated both Thanksgiving and Williams' 80th birthday on Dec. 12.
"As a talent, he was one of the best blues singers in the world and also one of the best ballad singers," Greco said. "As a friend, he was one of my closest and we did everything together. We go back almost 50 years when he was with the Count Basie band and I was with Benny Goodman."
"There will never be anyone like him, again," Greco continued. "This is just such as shock."
Goulet expressed both anger and sadness upon hearing of Williams' death.
"I talked to him yesterday at the hospital and made him laugh and said, 'I'll see ya when you get out.' "
"This is just unbelievable," Goulet said after a lengthy pause. "At the age of 80, Joe could sing better than most people at the age of 20. He was one of the greatest jazz and blues singers of all time, and he was such a good man, too."
Goulet recalled a man of great humor and compassion who would playfully criticize Goulet's own vocalizing to tunes on the radio. "He'd say, 'sounds just like a white man.' "
At 80, Williams was still using his phenomenal talent. Band leader Jimmy Wilkins said the two were scheduled to do the annual Joe Williams Concert Music Scholarship Fundraiser on May 7 for the Community College of Southern Nevada.
Williams was "always a musician's singer" who had "great pipes and a great ear," Wilkins commented. "He could sit in with any style. Most people would rather hear him sing the blues, but he could tear a ballad apart, sing scat."
News of Williams' death "really hit me dead in the stomach," said singer Ruth Brown, a longtime friend who first met Williams when both sang with the Count Basie band. "We have really lost an icon."
Ironically, Brown spoke with Williams last week when she was hospitalized, and he called to tell her, "You get up out of there and come on home."
As a singer, Williams was unique, Brown commented.
Although many of his songs "were sung by every blues singer who thought they could sing the blues," Williams had "no replicas, no imitators," she said. "There was no doubt when you heard the voice who it was."
Review-Journal writers A.D. Hopkins and Carol Cling contributed to this report.
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