Billy Williams

Born on 28 December 1910 in Waco, Texas, Billy Williams died on 17 October 1972. While enrolled in theology studies at Wilberforce College in Ohio during the early 1930s, he assembled the acclaimed gospel ensemble the Charioteers. The quartet secured steady broadcast engagements in Cincinnati and New York and collaborated with Bing Crosby along the West Coast. Throughout the 1940s the group issued seven charting singles under its own name and additionally reached the charts alongside Frank Sinatra. Williams departed in 1949 to establish the Billy Williams Quartet, whose lineup featured Eugene Dixon on bass, Claude Riddick on baritone and John Ball on tenor. The ensemble made frequent television appearances, among them more than 160 spots on Sid Caesar’s Your Show Of Shows. Initial recordings for Mercury Records and MGM Records produced negligible commercial response; after signing with Coral Records in 1954 and weathering several unsuccessful R&B covers, the quartet accumulated nine entries on the US charts. Its strongest showing came with a 1957 revival of Fats Waller’s “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter,” which climbed to the US Top 3 and the UK Top 30. Diabetes cost Williams his voice in the early 1960s. He relocated to Chicago, where he worked as a social worker on a model cities project and assisted alcoholics until his death.