Joe Williams, jazz legend sang with Basie, Hampton in half-century career

Robert Macy

Wednesday, March 31, 1999 | 9:15 a.m.

LAS VEGAS - Joe Williams, a legendary jazz singer who performed with every great jazz artist of the past half-century, died Monday when he left his hospital bed and tried to walk to his home three miles away.

Williams was 80.

"We just lost the best blues and jazz singer the world has known," singer Robert Goulet, a longtime friend, said Tuesday. "I was in awe of him and his talent."

Williams died of natural causes, Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said Tuesday.

He had walked nearly three miles and was a few blocks from his home on the city's east side when he collapsed and died.

"He wanted to get out of the hospital desperately," Jillean Williams, his wife of 33 years, said Tuesday. "He just wanted to get out and play golf."

Mrs. Williams said her husband dressed himself and walked out of his private room at Sunrise Hospital Monday morning. The hospital reported Williams missing several hours before his body was spotted by a resident about 3 p.m. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police had launched a search for him after he was reported missing.

Singer Buddy Greco told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he spoke with Williams on Sunday night and that the ill singer said he was seeing spirits in his hospital room.

"I told him (the spirits) were there because so many people loved him," Greco said. "He sounded like he knew what was coming."

Williams performed alongside every great jazz artist of the past half century, including Count Basie, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan.

He earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and won a Grammy for his album "Nothing but the Blues."

Williams' appeal stretched to other mediums: He played Bill Cosby's father-in-law, Grandpa Al, on "The Cosby Show" in the 1980s. He and Cosby were friends, and the childhood memories Grandpa Al spun on the show were his own from Chicago.

"I believe that Joe Williams left the hospital to try to get home to be in the arms of his wife," Cosby said in a statement through his spokesman, David Brokaw. "One of my most cherished memories of Joe was when I heard him sing 'The Lord's Prayer' a cappella."

President Clinton said in a statement that Williams was a national treasure.

"For the better part of this century, America was blessed with Joe Williams' smooth baritone voice and peerless interpretations of our favorite ballads," Clinton said. "Hearing Joe Williams sing at the White House in 1993 remains one of my favorite memories."

Williams became a sensation in 1955 when he recorded "Everyday I Have the Blues" with Basie, and the two were together for seven years. Williams repeatedly was chosen the top male jazz singer in readers' polls for Downbeat and other magazines.

"I'm most pleasantly surprised at what still comes out of my throat," Williams said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thrilled and thankful. I remember Edward (Duke Ellington) saying, 'I'm just a messenger boy for God.' Much of what we do comes through us. I thank God for what comes through me."

Born Joseph Goreed Dec. 12, 1918, in Cordele, Ga., the entertainer was an only child raised by his mother and grandmother. He found fun in playing the piano and singing the spirituals he heard at the Methodist church where his mother was the organist and both she and his aunt were choir members.

In his teens in the 1930s, his big baritone voice led a singing group, The Jubilee Boys, in performances in Chicago churches. He began singing solo at a Chicago club and made his professional debut in 1937 with the late Jimmy Noone.

His big break came in 1943, when Williams was working as a security guard to support himself. He wound up guarding the front door of the Regal Theater and met jazz luminaries such as Ellington. The Regal's manager sent Williams to the Tick Tock in Boston to join Lionel Hampton's band, which had its own powerhouse blues singer, Dinah Washington.

The magic came with Basie. Williams said Basie hired him on the advice of his band.

"Basie said, 'I can't give you what you're worth. But, things get better for me, they get better for you.' I had the good sense to go with him," Williams said in the 1986 AP interview.

The two played together from 1954 to 1961, and Williams often performed with Basie until his death in 1984. Williams dedicated his renditions of "You Are So Beautiful" to Basie.

Tony Bennett recalled Williams once telling him: "It's not that you want to sing, it's that you have to sing."

"He defined who I really am," Bennett said in 1992.

In his later years, Williams sang on cruise ships, at festivals, in hotels and clubs, working about 40 weeks a year.

He was active in various charity events in Las Vegas, the city he called home since 1967.

Williams began performing a stint at Jazz Alley in Seattle on March 16, but was hospitalized three days later with respiratory problems, his wife said. He returned to Las Vegas March 22 and was admitted to Sunrise for continued treatment.

Band leader Jimmy Wilkins said he and Williams were scheduled to perform the annual Joe Williams Concert Music Scholarship Fundraiser on May 7 at a Las Vegas community college.

Williams addressed the state of his art in an article in August in the Las Vegas Sun.

"Jazz will survive even if schools cut funding for music," he wrote. "This music has survived slavery and no money at all. You can't squelch the human spirit."

Williams is survived by his wife and a daughter, Joanne. He also had a son, Joe, who died. Both children were by a previous marriage.

Services are set for April 7 at the First Church of Religious Science in Las Vegas.