Music career rings true for Roger Williams

By Jerry Fink

Friday, July 23, 2004 | 8:54 a.m.

Who: Roger Williams.

When: Tonight through Sunday.

Where: Suncoast Showroom.

Tickets: $39.95.

Information: 636-7111.

"My dad was a boxer-turned-preacher," Williams said recently during a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "He saw his best friend killed in the ring and he walked away. Became head of the largest Lutheran church in the country, in Des Moines (Iowa).

"I had a pair of gloves on me from the beginning. When you're a preacher's son who plays the piano, you get called sissy a lot. I learned to use my dukes pretty good. I was a champ in the Navy, but I had no knockout punch and fans don't like to see you dance for 10 rounds."

The 79-year-old pianist, who will perform at the Suncoast through Sunday, is still tough.

"Five days a week I jog three miles a day," Williams said. "I hate every step but the last one, but if I have any talent at all it's a talent for discipline.

"You want to know the kind of discipline I have? When I was a kid my mother used to make me sit at the table till I finished my vegetables. I hate vegetables, so now I grind up all the vegetables I hate -- carrots and things -- put it in a big glass, hold my nose and drink the stuff. I don't have to fool with salads."

His toughness and his discipline converge on his birthday, Oct. 1.

Since 2002 he has celebrated the day with a piano-playing marathon, an event that was inspired by a brush with death that year -- he had skin cancer of the face, which required the removal of much of his nose and part of his cheek.

Williams has fully recovered and is in excellent health.

"If I was any better, I'd be famous," he said.

William's first marathon lasted 13 hours. Last year he played for 13 1/2 hours.

"It's fun," Williams said. "But it's hard work. You play that long and you feel it. Sometimes my hands are bleeding at the end."

He will try to break the record this year when he performs at the Jimmy Carter Center Museum Library in Atlanta. He and the former president share the same birth date and will celebrate together.

Billboard Magazine calls Williams the greatest-selling pianist of all time. Earlier this year he released his 116th album on Universal, "The Best of Roger Williams."

His 22 biggest hits have sold millions of copies, spanning four decades.

His first was "Autumn Leaves," which was No. 1 in 1955. Billboard says it is the only piano instrumental to ever reach the top spot on its singles chart.

Many more hits followed -- "Born Free," "The Impossible Dream," "Til," "Almost Paradise," "Maria," "Lara's Theme" from "Dr. Zhivago" and many, many more.

Williams began playing the piano at the age of 3. By age 12 he could play 13 instruments.

"I played anything I could get my hands on, including girls," he laughed.

Music came easily to him, so he didn't take it seriously.

When he was 15 he played piano on WHO radio in Des Moines, sharing air space with a sportscaster named Ronald Reagan.

"As a kid, if I made doughnuts I wanted to make the greatest doughnuts in the world," Williams said. "I was always ambitious to make it big in whatever I did. But music was so easy, it's like the grass is always greener on the other side of the road."

Age 16 he enrolled in Drake University in Des Moines as a piano major, but didn't stay long.

"An old German professor there heard me playing 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' for a girlfriend in a practice room," Williams said. "He kicked me out of his class."

Williams dropped out and joined the Navy, which sent him to school to get a B.A. in engineering. When his tour of duty ended he re-entered Drake for two years and then went to Juilliard.

His big break came while at Juilliard in 1952. He was to play backup for another Juilliard student who was going to sing on "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts."

"She got cold feet," Williams said. "So I played and won."

Dave Kapp, who left RCA to form Kapp Records, heard Williams' performance and signed him to a contract.

Williams began performing in Vegas soon after his career skyrocketed in the '50s.

"I headlined for years in the Blue Room at the Tropicana," he said. "Then I was at the MGM Grand. I performed with a symphony a couple of times."

He has never considered performing in Vegas to be a stigma, as some artists did.

"I hear this from artists all the time," Williams said. " 'I hate Chicago' or 'I hate Des Moines,' but what they are really saying is that they were lousy in Chicago or they were lousy in Des Moines. I'm the last guy in the world to ever criticize a town that supports me."

In recent years, Williams has been crusading for music education for children.

"You don't hear music in schools like we did when we were growing up," Williams said. "Every school had music appreciation -- but kids don't have that now."

Williams said when Reagan was governor of California (1966-'74), he took music out of schools to cut costs.

"Most of the other states did the same," he said.

Williams' efforts to restore music appreciation to schools motivated California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to name him "Champion for Youth 2004."

"I'm going into a lot of schools and performing," Williams said. "I just recently played at Hollywood (California) High for over 1,000 kids. I asked them, 'How many of you know George Gershwin?' and about 12 of them responded.

"This is scary -- but the funny thing is, when I played Gershwin, they loved it. They just need the exposure."

Williams says he doesn't come down too hard on today's popular music.

"I love all kinds of music, as long it's played well," he said.