Claude Williams (musician)

Claude Gabriel " Fiddler " Williams ( born February 22, 1908 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, † April 25, 2004 in Kansas City ) was an American jazz violinist, guitarist ( and occasional singer ) of the swing.

Williams was the son of a blacksmith and has played with 10 years mandolin, cello, banjo and guitar, among others in the band of his brother Ben Johnson. For jazz, he came when he won the by -trotting Joe Venuti played in his hometown heard. In 1927 he was a member of the Family Orchestra by Doc Pettiford ( with his son Oscar Pettiford ) and in the same year ( the band headed before Andy Kirk) at the "Twelve Clouds of Joy" in Tulsa with Terrence Holder, with whom he 1928 's made the first recordings and was in 1930 in New York. The band - pianist Mary Lou Williams arranged a number of his compositions. He was in Kansas City and a member of the bands of Eddie Cole ( in which also his brother Nat King Cole played ), Alphonse Trent, George E. Lee ( where he gave private tuition its own recollection Charlie Parker) and 1936 /7 of the predecessor of Freddie Green in the Count Basie band. Although he led several times the " Downbeat " polls as a guitarist, but went because his game the impresario of the Basie Band, John Hammond did not like. Because among other things he could therefore play anyway at no solos Basie, Williams saw that on hindsight a godsend. In the legendary jam sessions of Kansas City also his violin style was formed, when he had to prevail in solidarity against the dominant saxophonists Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Ben Webster. Williams played in the 1940s with a WPA band in Michigan, in Chicago with the "The Four Shades of Rhythm" and in New York, among others with the quintet from Austin Powell. From 1950 he used electrical amplifier for his violin. 1951/2, he played in Los Angeles with " Roy Milton 's Blues Band" and pulled then back to Kansas City. He played among other things with Buddy Tate, Don Byas (as from Muskogee ), from 1953 in his own combo with Eddie " Cleanhead " Vinson and Hank Jones and - in the 1970s - with the Kansas City jazz legend Jay McShann (also from Muskogee, together they took 1972 " The Man from Muskogee " on ). As one of the last surviving swing musicians of the Kansas City jazz he experienced in the 1980s made ​​a comeback with appearances on television, the revue "Black and Blue" ( 1989), concerts at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, some European tours ( in which including " Call for the Fiddler " in 1976, at Steeple Chase, Horace Parlan with ) and the White House with Bill Clinton.

Williams was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1989.