By Claudia Levy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 31, 1999; Page B07

Joe Williams, 80, the mellow-voiced crooner who got his start in the big-band era and was still considered one of the powerful male voices of jazz, collapsed and died March 29 near his Las Vegas home.

Authorities in Clark County, Nev., said Mr. Williams had walked several miles from the Sunrise Hospital, where he was under treatment for a respiratory ailment. The hospital had reported him missing, authorities said.

A professional singer since the age of 16, Mr. Williams apprenticed with the bands of Lionel Hampton and Coleman Hawkins. During his first two decades as a singer, he helped support himself by working as a security guard and door-to-door salesman. He sang briefly with big bands and appeared at blues and pop music clubs in the Midwest.

National fame came after he joined the Count Basie Band in late 1954, and recorded a hit, "Every Day I've Got the Blues." Mr. Williams toured with Basie for seven years and then launched a successful solo career. He was repeatedly picked, as recently as 1991, as the top male jazz singer in readers and critics polls by magazines such as Downbeat.

Mr. Williams was revered by other performers for his 2 1/2-octave range, his impeccable and sophisticated musical taste and his humor. Fans loved his emotional range and his ease with everything from blues and romantic ballads to swinging jazz arrangements.

His records won Grammy awards, the last in 1992, and his hits included "All Right, OK, You Win," "Smack Dab in the Middle" and "Going to Chicago."

Still in demand on the jazz circuit in his 80th year, Mr. Williams toured internationally, appearing at at festivals, on cruise ships and at big-city nightclubs. He also sang with orchestras, including the National Symphony.

"I'm most pleasantly surprised at what still comes out of my throat," he said in a 1986 interview. "I'm thrilled and thankful."

Mr. Williams was familiar to television audiences in the 1980s for his role on the top-rated "Cosby Show" as the father-in-law of Bill Cosby. Mr. Williams was a friend of the comedian, and liked to spin tales on the show that sprung from his own childhood memories.

The jazz and blues singer, born Joseph Goreed, was first exposed to music as part of the church life of his home town, Cordele, Ga. His mother, a church organist, encouraged him to play the piano and sing. She moved with him to Chicago when he was a child and furthered his musical education by taking him to classical concerts and playing opera on the radio.

He led a gospel group as a teenager, dropping out of school to perform in the Chicago area. While working as a security guard in 1943 at Chicago's Regal Theater, he met jazz luminaries who included bandleader Duke Ellington.

That led to his first big engagement, with Lionel Hampton's band in Boston. His appearances with the big bands were relatively brief, however. His initial failure to catch on as a national star, plus his growing anger over America's racial divides, led to a period of depression and withdrawal from the music scene.

Mr. Williams was hospitalized in the late 1940s and treated with shock therapy. He said later that he taught himself to temper his anger with humor and realized that he had to take an active role in seeking fame. The result was his "overnight" success in 1954 with the Basie group, which the bandleader had reorganized from the ashes of his earlier orchestra.

"I can't give you what you're worth," Basie told him at the time. "But if things get better for me, they get better for you." The two performed together off and on until Basie's death in 1961.

Mr. Williams's survivors include his wife, Jillean Williams of Las Vegas, and two children.