Clarence Williams

Biography

Clarence Williams (October 8, 1893 – November 6, 1965) was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher. Clarence Williams' Blue Five were a series of recording sessions that featured some of the best Jazz musicians and Blues singers of the early 1920s. Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Bubber Miley all were featured as soloists, and Blues singers such as Sippie Wallace, Margaret Johnson, Virginia Liston and Williams' wife, Eva Tay...

Clarence Williams (October 8, 1893 – November 6, 1965) was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.

Clarence Williams' Blue Five were a series of recording sessions that featured some of the best Jazz musicians and Blues singers of the early 1920s. Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Bubber Miley all were featured as soloists, and Blues singers such as Sippie Wallace, Margaret Johnson, Virginia Liston and Williams' wife, Eva Taylor all contributed vocals. Louis Armstrong was playing in New York with Fletcher Henderson at the time these recordings were made. Clarence Williams obviously understood Louis' greatness more than Henderson and featured him on 21 of these songs.

Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersand's Traveling Minstrel Show, then moved to New Orleans. At first Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, but soon became known as a singer and master of ceremonies. By the early 1910s he was a well regarded local entertainer also playing piano, and was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams was a good businessman and worked arranging and managing entertainment at the local African-American vaudeville theater as well as at various saloons and dance halls around Rampart Street, and at clubs and houses in Storyville.
Williams started a music publishing business with violinist/bandleader Armand J. Piron in 1915, which by the 1920s was the leading African-American owned music publisher in the country. He toured briefly with W.C. Handy, set up a publishing office in Chicago, then settled in New York in the early 1920s. In 1921, he married blues singer and stage actress Eva Taylor with whom he would frequently perform.
He was one of the primary pianists on scores of blues records recorded in New York during the 1920s. He supervised African-American recordings (the 8000 Race Series) for the New York offices of Okeh phonograph company in the 1920s in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. He recruited many of the artists who performed on that label. He also recorded extensively, leading studio bands frequently for OKeh, Columbia and occasionally other record labels.

He mostly used "Clarence Williams' Jazz Kings" for his hot band sides and "Clarence Williams' Washboard Five" for his washboard sides. He also produced and participated in early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, Virginia Liston, Irene Scruggs, and many others. King Oliver played cornet on a number of Williams's late 1920s recordings. He was the recording director for the short-lived QRS Records label in 1928.
Most of his recordings were songs from his publishing house, which explains why he recorded tunes like "Baby Won't You Please Come Home", "Close Fit Blues" and "Papa De-Da-Da" numerous times. Among his own compositions was "Shout, Sister, Shout" (1929), which was recorded by him, and also covered by the Boswell Sisters, in 1931.
In 1933, he signed to the Vocalion label and recorded quite a number of popular recordings, mostly featuring washboard percussion, through 1935.
In 1943 Williams sold his extensive back-catalogue of tunes to Decca Records for $50,000 and retired, but then bought a bargain used-goods store. Williams died in Queens, New York City in 1965 and was interred in Saint Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. On her death in 1977, his wife, Eva Taylor was interred next to him.
Clarence Williams is the grandfather of actor Clarence Williams III.

Clarence Williams' name appears as composer or co-composer on numerous tunes, including a number which by Williams' own admission were written by others but which Williams bought all rights to outright, as was a common practice in the music publishing business at the time. Clarence Williams hits include "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" (as publisher - not composer), "Baby Won't You Please Come Home", "Royal Garden Blues", "Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do", "Shout, Sister, Shout", You Rascal You, and many others. Clarence Williams also is the author of Hank William's 1949 hit My Bucket's Got A Hole In It, a song that was later recorded by Louis Armstrong. In 1970, Williams was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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