Clarence williams musician biography

Clarence Williams (October 6, 1898 or October 8, 1893 – November 6, 1965) was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.

Biography

Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, to Dennis, a bassist, and Sally Williams, and ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersands' 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 Americanvaudeville 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

American jazz pianist, composer, producer, and publisher

Musical artist

Clarence Williams (October 8, 1898 or October 6, 1893 – November 6, 1965) was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.

Biography

Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, to Dennis, a bassist, and Sally Williams, and ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersands' 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 Americanvaudeville 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. They moved to Queens in the 1920s with the intention of creating a community of black artists. He envisioned a space where African American artists could live, work, and collaborate together, free from the racial di

1967—

Photojournalist, educator

Clarence Williams is one of the nation's most respected photojournalists. He rose to prominence quickly, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his work in the Los Angeles Times by the time he was thirty-one years old. Upon leaving the Times in 2003, he embarked on a series of solo projects, most notably an in-depth examination of the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.

Born on January 22, 1967, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Williams attended local schools before entering Temple University, one of the city's leading educational institutions, which granted him a bachelor's degree in mass communication in 1993. While at Temple he worked closely with a highly regarded journalism professor, Ed Trayes, whom Williams has identified as one of his greatest mentors. In his senior year he worked for several months as an intern in the photography department of the Philadelphia Tribune, where he gained further experience in the specialized techniques of photojournalism.

Following graduation, Williams obtained a job as a staff photographer for Times Community Newspapers, the publisher of more than a dozen weekly newspapers across northern Virginia. He remained in Virginia for a year, from 1993 to 1994, before moving to Los Angeles, where he won a spot at the Los Angeles Times, one of the nation's most influential newspapers, as a trainee in a well-known diversity program known as METPRO. Founded in 1984 by the Times Mirror Group, then the publisher of the Times, in an effort to increase the minority presence in its newsrooms, METPRO offered participants intensive, on-the-job training. Williams completed the program in 1994 and was offered a permanent position as a photographer for the Times the following year. In 1996 he received a promotion to staff photographer, a position he held until leaving the Times in 2003.

It was while working for the Los Angeles newspaper