March 31, 1999
Joe Williams, Jazz Singer of Soulful Tone and Timing, Is Dead at 80
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By JON PARELES
oe Williams, whose urbane bass-baritone and suavely heartbroken
songs made him one of the most
important singers in jazz, died on
Monday in Las Vegas, Nev. He was
80 years old.
Williams collapsed on a city
street a few blocks from his home
after walking out of Sunrise Hospital,
where he had been admitted last
week for a respiratory ailment. The
hospital had reported him missing
several hours before his body was
found. "He's an adult and chose to
leave," Ann Lynch, vice president
for human services at the hospital,
said. "We don't confine people here.
Upon finding him missing, the facility was checked, and then the police
were notified to continue the
search."
| 
The Associated Press |
Joe Williams belts out a song March 21, 1996, in Seattle's Jazz Alley.
|
Ron Flud, the Clark County Coroner, said Williams had apparently died of natural causes.
As a blues and ballad singer,
Williams was widely admired for his
heartfelt tone and impeccable timing. "He sang real soul blues on
which his perfect enunciation of the
words gave the blues a new dimension," Duke Ellington wrote in his
autobiography, "Music Is My Mistress." "All the accents were in the
right places and on the right words."
Williams traded supple syncopations with big bands and small
groups and gave ballads a tender
authority; his voice could also reach
raw blue notes and breaking, ululating inflections that harked back to
the music's African roots. As the
singer with the Count Basie Orchestra in the 1950's, he carried the group
to its commercial peak, beginning
with what became his signature
song, Memphis Slim's "Every Day (I
Have the Blues)."
"He brought the blues from the
country to the city," the jazz singer
Cassandra Wilson said yesterday.
"His voice is rich and it's bittersweet, but it's a very composed
sound. Everything is well-formed in
his mind before he opens his mouth,
and it's flawlessly executed. He reminds me of autumn. His voice is
bronze and burnt sienna and golden,
warm and enveloping, just an incredible instrument. It's a life's work to
create that kind of a sound."
Williams reached his broadest
audience in the 1980's with occasional television appearances on "The
Cosby Show" as Grandpa Al, whose
reminiscences about Chicago were
often drawn from his own life. But
his recording career continued into
the 1990's. His album "Nothin' but
the Blues" (Delos) won him a Grammy Award in 1984 as best jazz vocalist.
He was named Joseph Goreed
when he was born to a teen-aged
mother on Dec. 12, 1918, in the small
town of Cordele, Ga. When he was 3,
his grandmother took him to Chicago, where his mother had gone to
work as a cook; he lived with his
mother and aunt, who both played
the piano. He sang in church, learned
some piano and listened to jazz and
opera on the radio, particularly to
Ethel Waters, whose precise diction
and deep emotion left a lasting impression on his style.
He started singing with a teen-aged gospel quartet, the Jubilee
Boys, when he was 14. A year later,
he was found to have tuberculosis
and had to have a lung collapsed for
treatment, but his voice was undamaged. At 16, he got his first job as a
pop singer, performing for an all-white audience in a club called Kitty
Davis's, where he cleaned latrines
and sang for tips. He dropped out of
high school to work and changed his
last name to Williams. He sang in
clubs around Chicago with bands led
by Joe Long and Erskine Tate.
In 1937, Williams joined the
band led by the clarinetist Jimmie
Noone, which was broadcast nationally on the CBS network. He toured
the Midwest with the Les Hite band
between stints with Noone, and in
1941 he joined the Coleman Hawkins
big band, which dissolved in 1942.
For steady work, Williams became the stage doorman at the Regal Theater in Chicago, where he met
the leading musicians on the jazz and
rhythm-and-blues circuit. He joined
the Lionel Hampton band during its
engagement there, working alongside Dinah Washington, and went on
to tour with the band. He sat in for six
weeks, replacing Big Joe Turner, in a
blues show with Pete Johnson and
Albert Ammons, and went on to join
Andy Kirk's big band.
He was married twice in the
1940's: to Wilma Cole from 1943 to
1946 and to Ann Kirksey from 1946 to
1950. Williams suffered a nervous breakdown in 1947, and spent a
year in a state hospital. He then sold
Fuller Cosmetics door to door before
returning to performing. He worked
around Chicago, building a strong
local reputation at the Club DeLisa,
and sang with George Shearing's
quintet. He married Lemma Reid in
1951, but that marriage foundered
after the birth of their daughter,
JoAnn, in 1953; after years of separation, they were divorced in 1964.
Williams sat in regularly with
a septet led by Count Basie when it
came to Chicago in 1950. Four years
later, Basie had put together a new
big band, and after it came through
Chicago, Basie invited Williams
to join. He became a member of the
band on Christmas Day in 1954. "He
told me he couldn't pay me what I
was worth," Williams said in an
interview with The New Yorker, "but
as things got better for him they
would get better for me."
Things got better quickly. Williams chose not to sing material associated with the Basie band's former vocalist, Jimmy Rushing, and
introduced his own blues repertory.
He had been singing "Every Day (I
Have the Blues)" in his club dates,
bringing sets to a peak with its
mournful incantations. He had recorded it in 1951, backed by a Chicago band, and it became a local hit.
In 1955, he recorded a new version,
arranged by Ernie Wilkins, that became the Count Basie Orchestra's
first major hit in 15 years; it appeared on the album, "Count Basie
Swings, Joe Williams Sings"
(Verve).
He made his first network
television appearance on CBS's "Music 55." With the Basie band, he
toured the United States and Europe,
sometimes singing alongside Sarah
Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald; he also
made albums on his own.
In 1957, the Basie band became the
first black performers to appear at
the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. There, Williams met an
Englishwoman, Jillean Hughes-D'Aeth, whom he went on to marry in
1965.
His vocal style was changing.
When he began singing, he often performed without amplification, belting above the band. But during his
years with the Basie band, he listened to tape recordings of his nightly performances, and he honed his
style, paring away nonessentials, improving his intonation and adding
new subtleties. His role with the Basie band was as a blues singer, but he
was increasingly drawn to ballads.
By 1960, Williams was losing
interest in the routine of the Basie
band. Basie agreed to let him go and
offered strategic career advice. After playing a final engagement with
the Count Basie Band in January
1961, Williams embraced Basie
on the stage at the Apollo Theater in
Harlem -- they had never even shaken hands before -- and started his
solo career.
Williams formed a small
group featuring the trumpeter Harry
(Sweets) Edison, who had been a
Basie band member. While many
jazz musicians struggled in the
1960's as rock took over popular music, Williams worked steadily.
He appeared frequently on television
shows, notably the "Tonight" show
with Johnny Carson. He settled in
Las Vegas with his wife, though he
was on the road about 40 weeks a
year, usually working with small
groups. Through the years, his accompanists included the pianists Junior Mance, Ellis Larkins and Norman Simmons. Williams also
worked during the 1960's with the
Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band.
In the 1970's, he collaborated with
the saxophonist Julian (Cannonball)
Adderley on the album "Joe Williams Live" and he sang the role of
John Henry in "Big Man," Mr. Adderley's "folk musical." He reunited
with the Count Basie Orchestra in
1974 for a Newport Jazz Festival
concert in New York City that drew
rave reviews and appeared frequently with the group until Basie's death
in 1984. In 1978 and 1979, Williams and the trumpeter Clark Terry
toured Africa, sponsored by the United States State Department.
During the 1980's, Williams
toured with Mr. Edison and other
Basie alumni, as well as with his own
trio. His star was placed next to
Basie's on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame in 1983, and in 1984, he sang
Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" to
a hushed crowd at Basie's funeral. In
1989, he had his own tribute concert
as part of the JVC Jazz Festival,
backed by Frank Foster conducting
the Count Basie Orchestra.
In 1992,
"Every Day (I Have the Blues)" was
added to the Grammy Awards Hall
of Fame for recordings.
Williams recorded in the
1980's for Verve and in the 1990's for
Telarc Records; his last album, a set
of spirituals called "Feel the Spirit"
(Telarc), was released in 1995. More
recently, he recorded duets with a
young singer, Nicole Yarling, for the
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild label; they have not been released.
Well into the 1990's, Williams
was one of the most dependably moving performers in jazz. Standing
nearly still, perhaps with his hands
folded in front of him, he would make
ballads sound like resonant, intimate
conversation, then open up a blues
with a voice that was both knowing
and heartsick. "There is nothing
wrong," he told an interviewer,
"with singing a song the way it is
written, with making a song say,
'Please like me.' "
He is survived by his wife and
daughter.
