Masters of Louisiana Music:
Clarence Williams

By Thomas L. Morgan

Born:
October 8, 1898
Plaquemine, Louisiana

Died:
November 6, 1965
New York, New York

The most successful African-American music publisher of the early 20th-century, Clarence Williams played piano in Storyville, introduced Bessie Smith to her first microphone and composed “Sugar Blues,” an ode to the butter-and-sugar po-boy.

Clarence Williams was the most successful African-American music publisher of his time. He blazed a trail of entepreneurship in the American recording industry that was unmatched. Highly energetic and adept at all sides of the music business from writing, publishing, and performing to managing other artists, his business acumen took him from his rural Louisiana roots to work with the major jazz and blues recording artists and labels of the time.

Williams understood and took advantage of the growing interest in blues music by white-owned record companies. He worked his way into the industry by becoming a talent scout for a number of recording companies, thus giving him the power not only to find musicians and record them but in the process to develop the early career of the most famous female blues singer, Bessie Smith.

The songs Clarence Williams wrote were popular across the United States; as a composer he wrote lyrics and music with artists such as Fats Waller, King Oliver and Armand Piron. Some of his compositions like “Royal Garden Blues” and “Sugar Blues” in the traditional New Orleans style have become classics. At the end of his career he sold his catalogue to one of the biggest record companies of the time.

The success of early jazz recordings can be clearly linked to Clarence Williams who was more highly skilled as a businessman than he might have been as a musician. Yet it was his knowledge of the new music called jazz and the people best able to play and record it that gave this roots music the push which allowed it to become an art form that has become world famous.

As a vocalist, pianist and jug blower Williams recorded hundreds of songs in a recording career that lasted almost 20 years. His early group, Clarence Williams’ Blue Five, was said to have been the inspiration for the later historic Hot Fives and Sevens recordings of Louis Armstrong.

Williams was born on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, in Plaquemine, Louisiana, on October 8, 1898. He was of Choctaw Indian and Creole heritage. His father Dennis was a bass player who made his living as a hotel owner. The family moved to New Orleans when Clarence was six. As a child, Williams began his musical education performing in the family hotel and singing in the streets. When he was 12, he left home and joined Billy Kersands’ famous minstrel show as a singer. Shortly thereafter, he became the troupe’s pint-sized master of ceremonies.

“A RESPECTABLE PLACE”

On Williams’ return to New Orleans around 1912, he started a suit-cleaning service for the style-conscious piano professors in the city. He began playing piano in honky-tonks of New Orleans’s Storyville. In this legendary red-light district, Williams, a man not noted for his modesty, admitted that he was overshadowed by Tony Jackson, the influential rag pianist who wrote “Pretty Baby.” Williams later remarked, “Tony played all the best places in the District, Lulu White’s and Countess Willie Piazza’s. In fact, I followed Tony into Willie Piazza’s.”

Williams invested much of his time learning new material, even writing to New York for the latest songs. He also managed his own cabaret. Williams later talked about this time in his life for the book Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya, a book of musician quotes edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff.

Williams said: “I became manager of a cabaret in 1913, a place on Rampart Street right across from Union Station, a very rough place where the railroad fellows would hang out. The kind of a place where, from time to time, they would break it up when there was a fight. The man who owned the place came to me and asked me to run it. He told me, I’ll furnish the liquor, and you furnish the entertainment and the girls. Well, I put my brother in charge and hired a floorwalker six feet tall who carried a police stick. I had the place cleaned and scrubbed and painted and made a strict rule. Nobody was allowed in ’less they would wear a coat and a collar. It turned out to be a respectable place, and if anybody got rough, the floorwalker would knock those fellows out and throw ’em outside. I made more than fifteen hundred (dollars) that Mardi Gras week. I had different musicians, all top-notchers, and girls to sing, Creole girls. I would give them fifty percent on all the drinks they sold. They were cocktails, only the girl’s drink would be some soda with a cherry in it. Of course, the guys would get the real thing. Some of those girls made as high as twelve or fifteen dollars a night.”

Williams always had a reputation as an astute producer who could find the best musicians and get them to work together to produce superb results. Certainly this was something that Williams did from the very beginning of his career . This is what he said about some of the early jazz greats from the city: “A lot of the best musicians worked for me there, among them King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and young Louis Armstrong, who was about twelve or thirteen years old, ... and workin’ on a coal cart. Most all the musicians in New Orleans worked with me. Do you know that I took Bunk Johnson away from home, and he played with me in a sportin’ house in Alexandria? And I took Bechet when he was in knee pants. We went all over Texas. Joe Oliver came with me, too, in my own show. “

Even as a youngster Sidney Bechet remembered the experience and Williams’ business sense. According to Bechet, “Clarence Williams and I toured through Texas with Louis Wade. Louis played piano, I played clarinet, and Clarence sang. Much of the time, we plugged early numbers that Clarence had written, numbers that everyone knows today. We played every kind of date—dances, shows, and one-night stands. We even played in ten-cent stores to sell sheet music.”

In 1915, Williams and Armand Piron started the first black-owned music publishing company in New Orleans. Their offices were set up at 1315 Tulane Avenue. Piron became the leader and violinist with the Peerless Orchestra in 1910 and in 1913 took over the Olympia Orchestra when its leader and trumpeter, Freddie Keppard, went to California. Piron added King Oliver to replace Keppard. At that time, the group featured Eddie Vinson on trombone, Sidney Bechet on clarinet and Clarence Williams on piano. In 1913 and ’14 the Peerless Orchestra played the famous scrip dances at the Tulane University Gymnasium, so called because the cover charge was payable in student body manufactered money. Piron’s only recordings were made in New York City and New Orleans in the ’20s though he continued to lead his orchestra here and on the steamer “Capitol” for many years. Piron was critical to Williams as a partner, Williams said: “Piron had one of the best orchestras in the city, playin’ at the best hotels. Piron was important to me because he could write the songs down for me.”

THE MOST MONEY EVER PAID FOR A SONG

In 1916 Williams wrote his first money-making composition, “Brownskin, Who You For?,” recorded on Columbia Records. The $1,600 check he received for it was, according to Williams, the most money anyone in New Orleans had ever made for a song. Williams later remembered the incident.

“Well, in 1916 I was sittin’ in the studio one day by myself and somebody sticks a long envelope under the door. It was a check from the Columbia Record people for sixteen hundred dollars! Up until then, we had gotten royalty checks, oh fifteen or twenty dollars for piano rolls, at the most. I looked at that check and actually thought it was for sixteen dollars. It was for a song called ‘Brown Skin, Who You For?’ and the Columbia people had sent a representative down and they recorded it on a dictaphone and sent it up to New York. A band recorded it there and the next thing I knew, I got this check. I believe it was the most money anybody ever made on a song in New Orleans. After that, everybody was writing songs down there. The news got around and, in the Mardi Gras, all the bands were playin’ ‘Brown Skin, Who You For?’ Canal Street was decorated with brown-skin leather, and all the children were singin’ it. Walkin’ down Rampart Street, it was the biggest day of my life.”

At about this time, Williams claimed to be the first songwriter to use the word jazz on a piece of sheet music. He said: “I don’t exactly remember where the words came from, but I remember I heard a woman say it to me when we were playin’ some music. ‘Oh, jazz me, baby.’” Later in life Williams’ business card began touting him as “The Originator of Jazz and Boogie Woogie.” According to his son, Spencer, Williams made a recording in 1915 with steamboat bandleader Fate Marable which has been long lost. If ever found, maybe Williams’ claim might be close to the truth, at least in regards to the first jazz recording.

Williams and Piron Publishing remained in business for several years. The last publication in their names came out in 1919, but by that time they were working out of separate offices. Piron had moved to 102-103 Pythian Temple Buildings in New Orleans. Probably the most famous song to come out of the company was “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” a song Louis Armstrong always claimed to have written and sold to Piron for $50.

In 1917, Piron and Williams put together a vaudeville act, and achieved moderate success with Piron on the violin and Williams playing piano and singing. While touring, they became acquainted with the “Father of the Blues,” W. C. Handy, who helped them place some of their compositions in Memphis music stores. When an important concert in Atlanta was moved from a black auditorium to a white one because so many whites wanted to attend, Handy asked Williams and Piron to join him to strengthen the program. The concert was a triumph: the New Orleans duo stole the show.

Anticipating the exodus of talent from New Orleans, Williams moved to Chicago around 1918. (The date of his moving to Chicago has been listed in some publications as early as 1917 and as late as 1920.) The music store he opened near the Vendome Theater proved so lucrative that he eventually owned three stores in the city, but Williams did not confine his energies to mere proprietorship. He had been hearing about something new going on in New York City. In 1920 Mamie Smith recorded Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” and “It’s Right Here For You.” When the public first heard a black woman singing the blues on record, they wanted more. Williams’ entrepreneurial skills enabled him to profit from the next phase in entertainment business: selling recordings of black female blues singers.

Since New York City was the center of the music publishing business, Williams sold his Chicago music stores around 1920 and moved there. (Again, this date is listed as early as 1919 and as late as 1923.) He rented space in the Gaiety Theater Building at 1547 Broadway, which was already established as an office building for other African-American entertainers including Bert Williams, Will Vodery, Pace and Handy, and Perry Bradford.

“A GLASS FULL OF GIN”

In February of 1923, he was asked by Columbia Records to go to Atlanta and bring back a blues singer by the name of Bessie Smith to record her first sides. Williams said that Smith had never seen a microphone before and wanted to have a spittoon in the studio. Williams said: “I just gave her a water glass full of gin and she was fine.”

The first two releases featured Bessie Smith accompanied by Williams on piano: “Gulf Coast Blues” was composed by Williams and published by his company. He was less than honest with the singer. He convinced Smith that she was under contract to Columbia. In reality, she had signed a contract naming him as her manager, and he was pocketing half of her recording fee. This episode came to a swift conclusion when Smith and a boyfriend made a surprise trip to Williams’ office, demanding that she be released from that obligation and allowed to sign directly with Columbia. Even though their relationship may have been strained at the time, he and Smith recorded again. In fact, Williams accompanied Smith on many of the songs she recorded during that highly productive year including numbers Williams penned such as “Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home” and “T’ain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do.” Smith was also a visitor to the Williams household. The youngest son, Spencer, remembered her as a sometime babysitter.

In Oct of 1921, Williams married blues singer Eva Taylor, who sometimes performed under the name of Irene Gibbons. She was one of the first African-American female singers heard on the radio, and her performances and style influenced many future vocal stars. Among the songs she and her husband collaborated on and performed together was “May We Meet Again,” written “in memory of our beloved Florence Mills,” one of the most popular black stage entertainers of the time. The Williams’ relationship became strained at times, but they stayed together for the rest of his life. Eva returned to the stage late in her life to sing her early blues numbers to appreciative audiences in Europe. The couple had three children, the youngest a daughter Irene, and two sons Clarence, Jr., and Spencer.

From 1923 to 1928, Williams was the artist and repertoire director for a number of record companies including OKeh, Pathe, Victor, Columbia and Brunswick Records. From this powerful position he was able to seek out and develop new talent. During this time, he organized numerous sessions which advanced the careers of many early New Orleans jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and Sidney Bechet. In fact, Bechet’s first recordings were made with Clarence Williams’ Blue Five. Harlem pianist and raconteur Willie “The Lion” Smith claimed that Williams was the first New Orleans musician to influence jazz in New York. He also credited Williams with helping other African-American songwriters like himself, James P. Johnson, and Fats Waller. Williams not only used these songwriters’ material, he also gave work to a great number of other early jazz musicians including Don Redman, Coleman Hawkins and other sidemen from Fletcher Henderson’s and Duke Ellington’s Orchestras.

Williams proved to be a prolific producer, organizing at least two recording sessions a month and recording over 300 sides under his own name. It was common for him to record with one company and, if he didn’t like the results, go across town and record the same session for another company under a different name. The Dixie Washboard Band and Bluegrass Footwarmers are but two of the many pseudonyms he used in his pursuit for the best possible session.

Williams’ 20-year recording career shows that he was not a great pianist when compared to other ticklers from the Crescent City like Jelly Roll Morton or Tony Jackson. But Williams always pitched his own material during his recording sessions. It might be a follow-up to a pop song like “Yes We Have No Bananas” with the “I’ve Got The Yes We Have No Bananas Blues”! Clearly Williams had the genius for setting up an at home atmosphere in the studio and then pulling the best out of his sidemen.

You never know what you might get from Clarence Williams. In 1930 he sat down at a pair of pianos with James P. Johnson. The recorded banter between the two as they play is amazing. You can catch a vision of what a Harlem rent party just might’ve sound like.

In the early ’30s, Williams’ washboard band recordings stand up to some of the best such as the Mississippi Sheiks or Gus Cannon’s Memphis Jugblowers, but they also lend an air of sophistication which one would associate with Williams’ new home, New York City.

In 1927, Williams tried his hand at musical theater. He wrote the book and music for the show Bottomland, which he also produced. It starred his wife, Eva Taylor. The show was not a critical success and closed after a short run.

THE BRILL BUILDING

Williams’ publishing company in the early ’30s moved into the Brill Building at 145 West 45th Street, a virtual popular music factory for many years. The building was set up as a kind of one stop shop where a singer could go from cubicle to cubicle hearing the latest works or selling their latest composition. A shrewd businessman, Williams was in a position to help new artists in many ways. He could arrange their recording sessions, supply their material, publish their compositions, and manage their business affairs. He was also capable of taking advantage of the unknowing performer, and he did so, probably with the same regularity as white agents, who were not known for even-handed dealings with artists regardless of their race.

It should be noted that Williams had a reputation for claiming credit for works he did not compose entirely on his own. He later explained to Al Rose, “But you understand I never stole anything. That was the way the music business worked in those days. If you couldn’t get a piece of the copyright, it didn’t pay to publish it. Songwriters understood that putting the publisher’s name on it, along with his own, was part of the original deal. Of course I published a lot of big hits.”

Williams’ writing partner on some songs during the late teens was Spencer Williams (no relation). Their “Royal Garden Blues” became a jazz classic. It was first recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, New York, May 25, 1921. The Royal Gardens was the legendary South Side Chicago dance hall where cornetist Bix Beiderbecke came to listen in awe to Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.

Another famous composition of Clarence Williams’ is “Sugar Blues.” Later in his life, William talked with jazz aficionado Al Rose about his inspiration for the song. “I needed it in a hurry for (King) Oliver. You see I already had told him I had this tune dedicated to him, because, you know, he always ate those sugar sandwiches. Po-boy bread, spread all over with butter and then as much sugar as he could get on it.” The song proved to be one of Williams’ bestselling compositions.

Williams not only published his own compositions, his catalog covered all the bases in popular and jazz music. Some of famous songs published by Williams are: “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” “West End Blues” and “Everybody Loves My Baby.” Williams’ New York publishing company prospered thoroughout the ’20s and ’30s and continued to do business until 1943 when he sold its catalogue of over 2,000 songs to Decca for a reputed $50,000.

One aspect that is little known about Williams’ business side is his interest in developing a musicians’ enclave in the New York City borough of Queens. Long before Louis Armstrong made the area his home, Williams at one time owned five houses he rented out to other musicians including stride pianist James P. Johnson. Later Fats Waller and Count Basie bought houses in the area.

From the late ’30s until he lost his sight after being hit by a cab in 1956, Williams spent time composing and running a hobby/junk store. His last public appearance was in 1947, when he appeared as a pianist on the WNYC Jazz Festival. He died in Queens, New York, on November 6, 1965. During his lifetime, he was a composer, pianist, vocalist, record producer, music publisher, and agent. He may not have been the inventor of jazz, but he was influential enough in his day to be forgiven that one exaggeration.

Selected CDs

Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home?
(Asv Living Era)

The Complete Sessions, Vol. 1 (1923-1926) (Document)

Dreaming the Hours Away (Frog Records)

New Orleans Pioneer: Great Original Performances 1923-1944
(Louisiana Red Hot Records)

Selected Book

From Cakewalks to Concert Halls:
An Illustrated History of African American Popular Music, From 1895-1930
by Thomas L. Morgan & William Barlow (Elliott & Clark, 1992)

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