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Clarence Williams ran away from his home in Plaquemine, Louisiana at the age of 12, in 1910, and went to New Orleans where he quickly became a singer, piano player, master of ceremonies, manager and agent in vaudeville theaters and jazz clubs around Rampart Street and Storyville. In 1915 -remember he was seventeen years old in 1915- he and Armand J. Piron established a music publishing company which rapidly grew to become the largest African American owned music publishing company in the United States.

Williams toured with W.C. Handy for a short while, then set up an office for his publishing company in Chicago. By 1920 Williams had moved to New York, where he became a “record contractor” for Okeh records. Williams invented the role of record producer, putting together groups of musicians to record music, published by his publishing company, and selling the recordings to Okeh for release in their “race” records catalog.

Williams retired from the music business in 1946, selling his back catalog to Decca for $50,000 and opening a second hand store in Queens. He kept a couple of pianos in the back of this store where he would play duets with visiting jazz pianists. Sometime in the late 50s or early 60s a young aspiring jazz musician named Dave Van Ronk, according to stories told on stage, would sit in the store and listen to Williams and Willie the lion Smith play piano.

I have been looking for some live film of Clarence Williams without success. There are a number of slide shows set over recording that he made, though. Here is one, recorded in 1925, Clarence plays piano and is joined by Louis Armstrong on cornet, Sidney Bechet on soprano sax, trombonist Charlie Irvis, Buddy Christian on banjo and Clarence’s wife, vocalist Eva Taylor. They are billed a Clarence Williams’ Blue Five, even though there are seven people on the record.

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