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Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 250 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Over the years, “Black Music Sunday,” has featured drummers from a variety of musical eras and genres—from Dixieland through big band, from be-bop to funk, AfroLatin, and fusion. Drums, drumming, and percussion are foundational to all Black music, and “give the drummer some,” is a shout often heard from the audience after a stunning solo.
And so it’s time to pay tribute to a drummer whose impact on jazz can’t really be measured, no matter how effusive his acclaim: Anthony Williams, known in the music world as just “Tony.” He joined the ancestors on Feb. 23, 1997, at the young age of 51, leaving a storied body of music behind him.
Here’s the intro to Tony’s Musician Guide biography, written by pianist Marjorie Burgess:
Anthony Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 12, 1945. His family moved to Boston when Williams was a toddler. His father, Tillman Williams, introduced Tony to music at the various jazz clubs around Boston, where Tillman played saxophone on the weekends. "I would sit in the audience when I was a kid," Williams recalled to [DownBeat writer John] Ephland, "and just watch the drummer." Williams asked his father if he could sit with the band in one of the clubs. He played his first set of drums that night in front of an audience at age nine. As an 11-year-old, he was drumming in the Boston clubs on his own. The next year Williams was performing with Art Blakey, and the following year, with Max Roach. He took private lessons from Alan Dawson, who was a teacher at the Berklee College of Music, but never got on campus. At age 15, he had a reputation as one of the best drummers in Boston. His adolescence was spent gigging with key jazzmen Sam Rivers, Gil Evans, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor, and Jackie McLean. McLean discovered Williams in Boston and took the sixteen-year-old to New York to perform. "So Jackie was the reason for me to really get to where I am," Williams recounted to Ephland. "He was the link."
Williams had not been playing with McLean more than a few months when McLean invited Miles Davis, who was in town from California, to hear his band. Williams had met Davis before when he was guesting at a Boston club. He had gone backstage after one of Davis's sets to ask Davis if he could sit in with his band. Musicians around Boston often let the young Williams join them, but Davis was not as casual. Williams told Ephland he was rebuffed at age 14 when he approached Davis. "Miles turned around and said, "Go back, sit down, and listen.'" Their second meeting fared much better in New York. One month later, Williams received a call to join Davis. "Tony Williams erupted onto the jazz scene in 1963, a 17-year-old prodigy with a full-blown, volcanic style of drumming that would blow hard-bop tastiness out the door," wrote DownBeat, describing Williams's debut in California. The Jazz Workshop, a club in San Francisco, waived its liquor license to have the underage Williams perform. The grouping of trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams in the sixties was one of the outstanding jazz quintets in the archives of jazz history.
I’ve seen the term “prodigy” used to describe quite a few musicians, and Tony Williams certainly merits it. To start playing in clubs at 11 and to be respected by major jazzmen by 17 is phenomenal.
The “Off Beat” YouTube channel has a short documentary which includes Williams talking about his beginnings as a drummer.
Yet another deep dive into Williams’ legacy can be found on the “Drum History Podcast.” Here, Australian drummer and music scholar Dave Goodman helps tell Williams’ story.
From the “Drum History Podcast” YouTube video notes:
My guest, Dave Goodman, wrote his 100,000 word doctoral thesis on Tony and we have condensed all that great information into an hour long episode that covers Tony's early life, lessons with Alan Dawson, rise to fame, evolution of his equipment, and everything you would want to know about the great Tony Williams.
That 100,000-word doctoral thesis can be found here.
Matthew Aquiline at All About Jazz lists some of Williams’ earliest recordings as a sideman.
After a partnership with Sam Rivers at age 13, Williams was hired by Jackie McLean at age 16 and eventually recorded on his 1963 album One Step Beyond (Blue Note, 1963)—an adventurous effort that firmly established Williams as a sought-after session drummer for Blue Note Records. As word of his virtuosity spread, Williams eventually landed sessions with some of the leading musicians in post-bop and the avant-garde whose albums have since reached legendary status. Williams left an indelible mark on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964), Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1964), and Sam Rivers' Fuchsia Swing Song (Blue Note, 1964) to name a few.
As Williams continued to reinvent what the drummer's role was in jazz, Blue Note founder Alfred Lion—a champion for documenting new and innovative music, even if it didn't sell—offered him his own recording dates, which were then collected for the release of his 1964 debut studio album, Life Time. To fully comprehend the grasp that Williams had over jazz at the time, he was only 18 and managed to conjure a lineup that included Sam Rivers (tenor saxophone), Herbie Hancock (piano), Bobby Hutcherson (vibes, marimba), and three bassists: Ron Carter, Richard Davis, and Gary Peacock. Along with leading a post-bop dream team, all of the compositions on the album were penned by Williams himself.
All About Jazz also covers Williams’ tenure with Miles Davis.
At 17 Williams found considerable fame with Miles Davis, joining a group that was later dubbed Davis's "Second Great Quintet." His first album as a leader, 1964's Life Time (not to be confused with the name of his band "Lifetime," which he formed several years later) was recorded during his tenure with Davis.
Williams was a vital element of the group, called by Davis in his autobiography "the center of the group's sound". His inventive playing helped redefine the role of jazz rhythm section through the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation (transitioning between mathematically related tempos and/or time signatures). But perhaps his overarching achievement was in demonstrating, through his playing, that the drummer need not be relegated to timekeeping and accompaniment in a jazz ensemble; that the drummer may be free to contribute to the performance as an equal partner in the improvisation.
There’s a fascinating backstory behind the Quintet’s live recordings at the Plugged Nickel, which were sparked by Williams, which NPR shared in 2004.
Music critic Michelle Mercer shares a new story about The Miles Davis Quintet's legendary recordings at Chicago's Plugged Nickel club. She says the quintet's sidemen — Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter — were just playing a musical game. It turned out to be a defining moment in the evolution of jazz.
