Joe Williams

S = Jim Standifer
W = Joe Williams

S Elegance is probably the best word that I can think of to describe the individual with whom I am speaking and with whom we'll share some experiences in the next few minutes. There's another thing that I'd like to use-another word-is also respect and maybe even a kind of religion maybe of his own because a few moments ago you and I were talking about Count Basie.
W Oh, yes.

S I hadn't planned to start out this way, but you impressed me a great deal today about that. Could you tell me a little bit more about your relationship at that particular time?
W Do you mean after he died?

S Right. Well, when you called him, you mentioned that you...
W Oh, I called him on a Wednesday and I talked to his son, Aaron Wooderdon. Aaron said that - what he told me let me know that he was very tired. He said, "He's running as hard and as fast as he can." Now, when a man is 80 years old and he's running as hard and fast as he can, you know he's tired. The next morning, I got a phone call from someone who said, "Are you listening to the radio?" I said, "No." They said, "Basie died last night." I said, "What? I just told Aaron to be sure and tell him if he had a lucid moment, tell him that we loved him." And, he died the next day, and I went to the funeral. And this marvelous minister whose name escapes me just now-he's no longer there either-was talking about the fact that Aaron said, "Pop" as he called him, he said "Dad was a Christian. He was a Christian man and believed in the Christian faith and was close to the Almighty." And the minister said that it was like two friends who spent years in each other's company and they're going down the road together and finally one looks at the other and says, "You know it's getting dark. I think maybe I'd better go home." And the one friend says to the other, "Well, look, we're closer to my place than we are to yours, why don't you come and go home with me?" It took all of the sting out of his death, you know, that made it beautiful, I think.

S Well, it makes me feel on this Sunday morning that I've gone to church without having been in the pulpit or in the audience at all. There's another person you mentioned, I thought, was again that I hold in deep respect and I like as a father and a friend and that's Andy Courick(?).
W Yep. Yeah.

S Can you tell us something about your time with him?
W Andy Courick in the middle of the night-I met him years ago, but I went to work for him in 1946 and had a chance to observe him very closely. He was always a man who was quiet, he spoke softly, was elegant, he dressed impeccably, and the people who seemed to come around him, they, too, were reflections of this man and the way he was. I finally, after about six months of just watching him every single day and every night, decided that I wanted to be more like him than anybody I knew of. I liked what he was, what he was doing, and I knew how he got there. So, I began to deny myself all of the things that I was doing that were an impediment to my being the way he was.

S What were some of those things?
W Oh, heck, I was getting high every day, every day that God sent I would get high. Because of the nature of my work, working in a night club, I was changing clothes 3 times a night, just for shows alone. And then I'd wake up the next morning when I got home-I'd go to sleep and wake up the next morning, go out in one outfit, then I'd change clothes and go to my Mother's and have dinner and then I would go to work and then change clothes 3 times. I had no idea what I was doing with my money or anything. And one old fellow that I was living with told me "Son, the only time to save money is when you're making some. Because when you're not making any, you can't save anything." And I began to hear some of those things and it turned me around, really, and where I had to take my money and start to put it to work for us. So now every now and then you can give something to somebody else.

S I suspect, though, you probably had an early beginning in the church in terms of your belief in God, your belief in yourself and your belief in other people. Tell me something about your childhood. Did you have much involvement in the church?
W Oh, yeah. My Mother and my aunt sang in the church choir. My Mother and my aunt were both musicians who played the piano. There was choir rehearsal every Thursday and every Sunday, of course, services. Sunday morning was Sunday School and 5 o'clock was their ____ League. We were members of the CME Connection of the Colored Methodist-Episcopal Church.

S Ah, yes. I'm a member of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church.
W Well, anyway. Yeah, we'd spend the day Sundays in church, and it was the best show in town. Finest musicians, finest plays, of course, we did the Paul Lunce, Dunburn things, we did marvelous things. We'd have a concert there that you wouldn't believe. One of the members of our church was a young fellow named Raymond Willis Natts, who went on to join Duke Ellington's orchestra traveling around the world, and he used to conduct a symphony orchestra in St. Paul CME Church and Chicago, Illinois.

S So did he have a college music education?
W He played with the choir there. I don't know whether Ray went to college or not. He graduated from Wendell Phillips High School, as did Milt Hinton.

S Milt Hinton, right.
W Well Milt Hinton was playing first violin in the orchestra. And Ray was playing 2nd violin.

S But these were members of the Church or at the ....
W Oh, well, the Church was the Bedrock Foundation, you know. You went to church and you got the knowledge in things that would get you through the grease, you know. One day I remember hearing specifically, "God is Love." Now that alone will clear away a lot of cobwebs, you know, and a lot of other things that you're trying to figure out why, what happens and how it happens, and come to think of it, we all are the direct results of an act of love, in fact. You know? And God is Love. And so, the Church is in you. It's in your heart. Do you understand? And so you must have a pure heart-as pure as you can make it. All of us slip now and then. Even Christ said, "Why me?"

S Right.
W "I mean can't you pass this on to somebody else?" You know, like, "hold it. Jesus Pop lighten up."

S Well tell me, how did you get from this though to blues. There are really 2 Joe Williams obviously, at least that most people talk about.
W All about blues. Blues is where people live. A lot of the Blues is getting people what the old folks used to say is "Getting people told."

S Maybe you ought to elaborate on that a little on that because I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.
W You know what I mean. Okay. A lot of the Blues is payback. A lot of the Blues is an explanation. A lot of it is dismissal, you know. A lot of it is longing. A lot of it is-the Blues is many, many things. A lot of it is celebration. The Blues is so much. And it's the truth-always the truth-and people recognize it all over the world. The fact that it is the truth.

S How would you compare, say, Blues and Gospel in terms of what it tries to do? You said Blues is a way to get them told, so to speak.
W Now, that's difficult for me, because when I grew up, the two were not intermingled at all. One was one thing, because the Gospel was a splitter. It was one of those things that came off of the Negro spiritual, and the music of the church and the music of the nightclubs or the houses of pleasure or whatever, they just didn't mix at all. So, it's difficult for me to put the two together. One thing about Gospel that I find is each song that they sing they use the same tricks we'll say, you know, for each song. And consequently there isn't as much to grab hold of, say, they don't give you enough variance, maybe. Because it's all going to be that same thing you know where it's going. And the difference between one tune and another is lost many times because it's all going to be, "now, I'm going to do that Gospel feeling thing, here. I'm going to sing that Gospel feeling thing here, you know." So, consequently, it's lost. It's like if every song I sang I would say "no ho ho ho body loves me", you know. I only do that on one tune. I don't do anything approaching it on any other tune that I perform. I remember one of the guys in New York saying to me, "Hey, Joe, on this tune, here's where you can do that thing, you know, that you did on Every Day I have the Blues." I looked at him, because making records for me was never a search for trying to get a hit record. Because the music is going to be there after you're gone and if all you wanted to do was to make some money, then you're in the wrong business. You can get a job to make money.

S You're saying let the music speak for itself.
W There you go.

S Sippy Wallace, as you probably know, she's played in the Gospel world of the Church, if you will, but she always tried to relate the Gospel with the Blues and, of course, Thomas Dorsey as you mentioned a few moments ago-and she talked about this-you said "No ho ho body loves me", he said if you take that phrase, no one can really tell whether you're singing Blues or Gospel there. And, of course, he also pointed out you didn't mix the two, but I think Sippy's point was pretty much your as there is that relationship that exists in there, especially in terms of the music. The words change, though, significantly and make the differences.
W Right.

S Do you have to have all those feelings you sing about in the Blues in order to convey them?
W I think I have had them.

S Or have had them. Okay.
W Yes, I've had them. You don't have to.

S In other words you have to be a good actor?
W Yes, but if you've lived it or experienced it, Jesus, I think almost every human being at some point or another must have felt unattractive, you know? And with that feeling of being unattractive, 'well, nobody wants me and nobody loves me' you know, or whatever. I don't even want me.

S Maybe that's what makes Blues really universal. I mean whether you're white, black or whatever, everyone has had that feeling of that kind.
W That's right. It's like Losfus(?) used to say, "Pose it. Everybody pose." You'll pick a pose and stop. The position is everything in life. Right? The people pose, I mean they pretend and act ___. Wow, it's all right. It's not all right.

S But you and other Blues singers, shouters, though must have gotten a special whisper from somebody up there, because you're able to do it in such a way that we listen and we empathize with you. That's why I say-I've had those feelings, but I couldn't communicate like you.
W You couldn't express it.

S No.
W Well, yes. We're blessed like that. I mean we're very, very blessed. I just did a Christmas album and I've never done a Christmas album before. And I was singing songs that I haven't sung in years, you know, like Silent Night, you know, and I just couldn't get them right-for me. I just couldn't get them right. Something wasn't right. The throat wasn't right, the breathing wasn't right, the inflection wasn't right. It's like Ellington's music used to be, I never felt that I was able to do it quit well enough, you know, and for the spiritual music, that is the feeling I get again, because I haven't concentrated on it for a long time and I also haven't asked permission to come back in the house. You see? You've got to that permission first, that little permit. You have to go back and get permission, you know, to come back in the house.

S I see, you respect these different daughters as if it was a great deal.
W Oh, yes. And I realized that, backed off and said, "Oh, my gosh. I didn't ask permission to go back there."

S Well, look at all the dues you've paid, though. Do you need to get permission in spite of all that?
W Yes. Yes, because that's another thing altogether. That is not only important, it's serious. Yeah. Christmas music. The true meaning of Christmas.

S Well, since you mentioned the Christmas music, we read a lot about you as a balladeer. In fact, maybe that's one of your strengths; you're able to do both ballads and Blues equally well. How are you able to segue or modulate from one to the other in the same program so easily as we've all seen you do? I mean do you feel like you have to sort of switch gears or something in order to get, "Okay. Now' I'm going to do a Blues and then I get into a Ballad and then...?"
W Mostly, I do a couple of things when I'm performing. One is so that it doesn't get boring to me, I switch keys, I sing in all of them from A to G, you know. I switched tempos which I learned an invaluable lesson sitting at the side; the piano and watching Mr. Basie manipulate orchestra and a group of people. I mean, for dancing and for whatever, and programming you tried to get things that dovetailed. I did an album with George Shearing with whom I'm working now called "The Heart and Soul of Joe Williams and George Shearing".

S Is this on Sheba label?
W Yes, it was on Sheba. Yes. And in all the songs we started with "Heart and Soul" and "I Let a Song go out of my Heart?" and "Humpty Dumpty Heart" and "Body and Soul". Each song had Soul or Heart, you know, in it. We had a wonderful time with these things. We're doing some of that work now, you know, in concert, and the beginnings of music, piano and voice was where it was anyway, you'd Roland Hayes and I heard Paul Robson, you know, I've heard Marian Anderson with Hans Rupp on piano and many artists with just voice and piano. So we're getting back to acoustical sound as opposed to blasting somebody's ears off and we're also getting to the point where we can warn the young people who are doing the engineering that when there is a quiet moment, it is a quiet moment because we have created the quiet moment so that later on we can go to, you know, to fortissimo, for whatever reason. But we have created it. They didn't do it. But as soon as you get quiet they'd start turning you up thinking, "We lost them, didn't we?" Now you talk about understand -- dynamics.

S Okay. Now you've pointed out about the young people. Now many of them emulate, respect and want to be a Joe Williams. What do you think about some of the George Bensons or the Whitney Houston's in what they're trying to do?
W I'm flattered. I'm flattered if they feel like I've done something worth emulating. Clark Terry talks about that when he's giving the clinics-first in High School, you know, the young people he talks about them and says, "Don't be afraid to imitate someone, because most of start by imitation." I started as a small boy like 3 years old. I can remember singing the songs of the church, singing all the parts, trying to sing everything-the bass line to the soprano lines, and sing the accompaniment. Much like a Bobby McFaren. Just do the whole thing myself, you know, all of it. And then later on, I found myself listening to Louie Armstrong and said, "Well, no, I can't make that kind of thing, but I can get part of the feeling from the way he phrases, I can get part of that feeling." And then there were Billy Holiday and Ethel Waters, you know? And later on Fay Terro. He was

S He was with Andy Courick wasn't he?
W He was with Andy Courick. Fay Terro, Dan Grissom with Jimmy Lundsford, Sonny Woods who was with Louis Armstrong's band, you know.

S Just the people that you perform with comprises ...
W Sonny was dynamic. He was an absolutely dynamic performer. He'd come out there and just wrap that audience up; when he got through you were sitting this high off your seat, or you were on your way up.

S Well, you do that.
W Couldn't wait for them to get through, you know. I've done it in the past, but I don't do that so much.

S No, I mean you do that to us. Those of us consumers out there-that's what you do. But you know I keep thinking in the back of my head and I want to ask you this because I've tried to listen to Joe Turner and everything I read says, "Hey, look, Joe Turner is one of the strong influences in Joe Williams' life. Is this true?
W That's true. It's true because Joe Turner I could understand what he was singing. Many of the itinerant Blues singers that came from the South had accents that were almost unintelligible. And you could not - you had to get a decoder book and say, "I think he said, or I think he said that." You couldn't really understand what they said. Some of them mumbled, some of them sounded like, "gimme one mo oh kiss, Mama, befo I go. Gonna leave here runnin cause walkin is much too slow." Now, that is like English compared to the way it sounded to me when I heard it long time ago. Joe Turner came out with "I got a girl that lives up on a hill." I said, "Oh, yeah? I can understand that." Well, Memphis Slim now is another friend of mine.

S Well Memphis Slim now.
W Yeah. Slim is another friend of mine. I had to study them the same way you study Paul S. Dunbar. I had to study these people to know exactly what they were doing, you know. Howling Wolf and Memphis Slim, and H___ Roosevelt Sykes, and Big Bill Brunsley and folks like that, you know. Slim was a trip. I told him, I said, "Slim, whatever you do, don't sell "Come Back", and he didn't. And I recorded every day and the "Come Back" which was his.

S Who wrote every day?
W Memphis Slim. Peter Chatman is his proper name.

S Okay. Now was he the first to record it? Memphis Slim?
W Yeah. He wrote it and he recorded it before anybody else did a long time ago probably. But those are days of race records.

S Ah, yes. So he probably made very little if any money from it I imagine, right?
W Thirty-five cents. Well every year the record company would buy him a new Cadillac Convertible.

S Were you-can you remember any serious discriminatory practices that were ___ed out against you as a performer? I know you've been all over the world and you've been around here for a while.
W Well I know they put me in more of a catch-22 position. After a while it was like, "Hey, you sing too good."

S laughter!
W You know. That kind of thing. "I can't give you that little money. Come on and have a drink." We became social buddies with the owners. It's the Black and White. With that somebody else got the job, you know. Somebody was coming and singing "Wagon Wheel", "Ole Man River", or one of those, you know. George Acer would go for a job and I'd walk in and sitting in the corner with a cane and a Fedora hat. The cape was George Dewey Washington, and I'd say, "Ohhhh, no." I kid about it now sometimes, you know, I'm in the middle of a presentation and I'll say, "Ole Man River, dat ole man river, he don't". We don't have to do that to ____, we have the job now.

S When you performed with Andy Courick, Anne mentioned very often that she would perform only for White audiences and even at those places where she performed; the Blacks weren't permitted to go. Did you have any short misgivings about performing for all Whites knowing full well that-I mean it was a job, I know, but...
W No. I didn't have any problems with that if you wanted to get paid. You've got to perform where they pay you.

S That's right.
W Well, the kind of music that we do has always been patronized, you know, the patronage of Whites, which is one of the reasons why when they took the music out of Harlem, they took the music out of the South Side of Chicago, or St. Louis or wherever the Blacks were. I mean they took it out, "Bring it down to the Chase Hotel." "Bring it to the Waldorf in New York City, where I played there with Sarah Vaughn and Basie.

S Have you had some good managers?
W I only had one.

S The whole time?
W Yes. After Basie only one. John Levy from Chicago. He used to be the bass player Stuff Smith. Yeah, he and Jimmie Jones and

S Then I can't ask that question that I was going to ask, had you been taken advantage of by a manager. So many bright performers who have been around for a long time, at least...
W I've got a Black lawyer, too. Godfred Murane in New York City. The only one I ever had. But before, I had a Black Manager too-Levy Morris is a Black attorney in Chicago. Levy Morris.

S Have you made a lot of money?
W Yes. I'm sure that some people must be very, very rich.

S (laugh) ...because of you...
W One of them died recently, you know, and I said, "Did he leave us any money?" Well that was one day. I was some place and a fellow with me said that right now this man was talking about making an $11 million deal with some people to sell part of the repertoire that he had when he had Dinah Washington, Sara Vaughn, Billie Eckstein, Count Basie, Joe Williams and he was selling part of that catalogue if not all of it for about $11 million. Then, I was wondering, "Gee, I wonder if any of that is ours?" Any part of it, you know.

S But you don't know that.
W I don't know. He's dead. I can't ask him now.

S Are you getting any royalties from, say, things that you came out with.
W The only thing that I'm getting any royalties from is a thing that I did for Charlie Brown's birthday.

S When was that?
W Oh, I did that very recently. Very recent. I'm getting royalties on that.

S And those songs that you've written or arranged yourself, were those?
W Oh, no. You don't get any money.

S You just sell outright to that.
W No. You don't sell outright. You just don't get any money.

S If I looked a little surprised, you know, because every time one does something on television or radio or whatever, either you assume that a few bucks goes to the performer or the writer or.
W We are supposed to be compensated but they run their businesses very strange like that. Very strange. This guy who died said I owned him-every time I got a statement from him he said I owned him $80,000.

S laughs
W I had to feel, though, that he paid me in some way. I mean, some jobs or something that I made good money on, I'm sure he must have been instrumental in my getting those jobs. I must say. I believe that, because I can't believe ill, just totally ill to someone, and I think that these people see to it that you - as you said, they see to it that you get a good shot at it.

S We have about 2 minutes left. Can you say a word or two about Sarah Vaughn? I was impressed with her. She was quiet a lady. When she here we - she did the concert barefoot which I liked, in this blue flowing gown. But I know you've performed with her. I've seen you on TV with her. What do you remember? That something that we normally don't know about you and Sarah Vaughn.
W Well, Sara was a love and an unbelievable talent. She would throw her most perfect self at an audience every time I heard her and I was always amazed and always entertained by her. She, I think she loved music and performing there and the search for excellence-constant excellence. That was Sarah Vaughn and the performer, and fun to be with. We had many a drink together and spent time together over a long period of time. We met in 1943. She just joined the Aero Heinz Orchestra.

S What about Mary Lou Williams? I know that the Kansas City group she used to be. Can you say a word or two about her?
W Another unbelievable talent. This lady was an arranger and a composer and a teacher. After she left Andy Courick she started her own group and she was working in Cleveland, Ohio, and she was training a young drummer from Pittsburgh named Art Blakey.

S Oh, yes. I'm familiar with him.
W Yes. He was with her. Her husband at the time was Harold Baker, a trumpet player. Marvelous trumpet player who later went on to work with Ellington. I heard him first with Don Redmond I think, another great musician. I had a chance to work with her every single night, you know, this was in the 40s.

S If you had it all over to do again in terms of your career, I wish we had some more time on this, because I think this is the beginning of something, but what would you do differently, if anything?
W I'd do what the young people are doing today. I'd go to school and study and study and study and study. I'd study harmony and theory forever and never stop studying harmony and theory. So that you'll be many faceted, you not only could then perform, but you could spend a lot of time writing, you could produce, you can do it all. And that's what you should do. You should be able to be aware of it all, you know. That's the only way, because if you want to enjoy it fully, if you want to enjoy your gifts fully, find out as soon as possible what you enjoy doing so that your instructors can help you. And then the other thing is, as Mr. Ellington used to say, "Listen."

S Well, I've tried to listen towards your interview and I listened on my way over here, and I want to share something with you. You've impressed me more than any person I've interviewed in the past 10 or 15 years. I'm not sure why, but I think that the word Ellington...
W You held me in such low esteem that...
Laughter

S I just want to say that it's been a wonderful experience for me to have you here on campus. I look forward to
W Well, Dr. Standifer, let me interrupt you and tell you that I am impressed, too, because teacher-I've had a romance with people who were teachers all my life. To me, they are the most admirable of all, because through you comes all of our young tomorrows and you touch the lives and excite them and motivate them and I am pleased that I was able to spend some time here in school again.

S Well, your life is a picture and a model for us and the fact that you did it and did it your way and did it with such elegance, again, is I have the last word.
W You do you have the last word?

S I think so.
W All right. It's marvelous. Go right ahead.

S Thank you very much.
W Thank you very much.

END OF INTERVIEW