Super Pops Will Feature Williams
Roger Williams? Didn’t he discover Rhode Island or something?
Oh, you young people these days. This Roger Williams, the guest star at the Spokane Symphony SuperPops concert on Saturday, happens to be the pianist who practically invented the easy-listening sound of the 1950s and ‘60s. Maybe more raucous acts like Elvis and the Beatles got more attention, but Williams was busy churning out hit album after hit album through the decades. He is, quite simply, the most commercially successful popular music pianist of all time.
Take a look at some of these credentials:
Billboard ranks Williams at No. 50 among the Top 100 artists of the post-1956 era, which means he has had more sales and radio play than Diana Ross, the Doors, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen and John Cougar Mellencamp, to name just a few.
Williams has had 19 albums in the Top 40, which puts him at No. 20 on the all-time list for album sales.
Between 1956 and 1972, he had 38 albums in the Top 200.
He had a No. 1 hit with “Autumn Leaves” in 1955, which became the best-selling piano recording of all time. He followed that in 1967 with “Born Free,” another pop chart smash.
He has just issued his 113th album, “Softly As I Leave You,” a tribute to Frank Sinatra.
So if you still can’t quite place Roger Williams, maybe you haven’t been paying strict attention.
Today, Williams is even beginning to get his critical due, as people re-evaluate the artistry of what used to be dismissed as elevator music. “The Music Hound’s Essential Album Guide to Lounge Music” notes that Williams created a new style by “blending disparate forms of popular song into a base of classical music, without abandoning the expressionism of jazz.”
Williams has strong roots in both classical music and jazz. Born Louis Weertz 73 years ago in Omaha, Neb., Williams attended the Juilliard School of Music as a young classical piano prodigy. There, he discovered cool jazz under the influence of Teddy Wilson and Lenny Tristano.
He received his first break when he was scheduled to accompany a fellow Juilliard student on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” radio program. The other student didn’t show up, so Williams played solo, to great success.
He was signed by Kapp Records in 1951 and started playing his own brand of abstract jazz. The company owner had something more commercial in mind, so he dragged a cigar-store Indian into the studio, propped it up and pasted a sign on its head reading, “Where’s the melody?”
Williams started working on more melodic arrangements, and in 1955 hit the mother lode with “Autumn Leaves,” a cover of a French song from 1947. With another solo piano star, Liberace, as inspiration, Williams began to build a pop career.
As the “Music Hound” points out, Liberace was the greater showman, but he never matched Williams for either chart appeal or musicianship.
Saturday’s concert will begin with Fabio Mechetti conducting the symphony in a selection of high-energy classics: Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla,” and Rossini’s Overture to “William Tell.”
Williams will take the stage for the second half of the show, and he will conduct from the piano. His selections will be announced from the stage.
ON STAGE Spokane Symphony Roger Williams and the Spokane Symphony will perform Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House. Tickets range from $31 to $15, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200), G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.