Williams was born in
Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the son of Daniel and Millie Williams. At the age of 7, Williams' father was
murdered, and the family returned to his mother's hometown of
Monmouth, Illinois, where he grew up.
Williams attended
Brown University, where he was a
track star and outstanding
football player. He also served in the
First World War. During the 1920s, he played professional football with the
Hammond (Ind.) Pros, becoming one of three black athletes (along with
Paul Robeson) to play in the fledgling
National Football League during its first year.
After graduating in 1921, he moved to
Chicago. Although he continued to play football until 1926, his first love was music and in 1924 he joined
Paramount Records, which had recently begun to produce and market "race" records. Williams became a talent scout and supervisor of recording sessions in the Chicago area, becoming the most successful blues producer of his time. Two of his biggest discoveries as recording artists were singer
Ma Rainey - already a popular live performer - and
Papa Charlie Jackson, the first commercially successful self-accompanied blues singer. He also recorded
Blind Lemon Jefferson, among others.
In 1927, he left Paramount and started The Chicago Record Company, releasing jazz, blues and gospel records on the "
Black Patti" label. One of these releases was The Down Home Boys' "Original Stack O' Lee Blues", believed to be the first recorded version of the song better known as "
Stagger Lee", and of which only one copy is now known to exist. Black Patti soon failed, and Williams moved to
Brunswick Records and its subsidiary label
Vocalion, where he recorded
Clarence "Pine Top" Smith and
Leroy Carr, among others. However, after the
Wall Street Crash of 1929, record sales plummeted, and Williams found new work as a football coach at
Morehouse College in
Atlanta.
In 1934, Williams was hired as head of the "race records" department at
Decca, where he recorded such musicians as
Mahalia Jackson, Alberta Hunter, and
Blind Boy Fuller, as well as pioneering the recording of the increasingly popular small group sound with such groups as
The Harlem Hamfats.
Williams was accused by some black musicians of a "dicty" attitude - that is, acting as though he was a member of the white middle class. He acted as manager of many of the artists he recorded, and assumed at least some of the ownership of many of their songs. Songs on which he is credited as co-writer include "
Corrina Corrina", Nellie Lutcher's "Fine Brown Frame",
Louis Jordan's "Mop Mop", and
Stick McGhee's "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee".
After leaving Decca, Williams worked freelance and ran several small, independent labels. In 1946, he formed Ebony Records in Chicago, where he recorded the young
Muddy Waters, and which he continued to run until the early 1970s. He died in 1980.
Williams was a member of the National Football Hall of Fame Association, and, in 2004, was posthumously inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame.
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