Clarence Williams: The Businessman Who Put Jazz and Blues on Record

Few musicians of the 1920s understood both the art and the business of Black music as well as Clarence Williams. Born October 8, 1898, in Plaquemine, Louisiana (some records give 1893), he ran away as a boy to travel with a minstrel show and was playing piano and singing in New Orleans by his teens. By the time of his death on November 6, 1965, he had written or published hundreds of songs and produced some of the most important early jazz and blues records ever made.

From Storyville to Sheet Music

In New Orleans, Williams saw that the real money in music was in owning songs, not just playing them. Around 1915 he and violinist Armand J. Piron opened a music publishing company, a rare venture for Black musicians in the Jim Crow South. They printed and sold sheet music for the blues and ragtime tunes pouring out of the city. Williams later moved the business to Chicago and then, in the early 1920s, to New York, where Black-owned publishing could reach the national market.

The Man Behind the Microphone

In New York, Williams became a key figure at OKeh Records, scouting talent and supervising "race records" made for Black buyers. He played piano on Bessie Smith's first record, "Down Hearted Blues," in 1923. With his Blue Five, he brought together Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet for sessions in 1924 and 1925, including "Texas Moaner Blues" and "Cake Walking Babies from Home," recordings that jazz historians still study. His name appears as composer, co-composer or publisher on songs such as "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home" and "Royal Garden Blues."

A Family in Music

In 1921 Williams married the singer and actress Eva Taylor, who recorded with him for decades and became a radio star. Their grandson, Clarence Williams III, became a well-known actor, remembered for The Mod Squad and Purple Rain.

Owning the Work

Williams sold his catalog to Decca in 1943 and later ran a shop in Harlem. Critics sometimes questioned how much of the music credited to him he actually wrote, a common dispute in an era when publishers often added their names to songs. But his larger achievement is clear. At a time when white companies controlled most of the industry, Williams showed that Black musicians could own, publish and sell their own work, and in doing so he helped carry New Orleans music to the world.