Andre Williams: Farewell to the latest R & B storyteller | The music

ANDRE Williams died Sunday in Chicago at the age of 82 after being diagnosed with colon cancer two weeks earlier. For most people, his name will be unknown, but for me, he was one of the great heroes of American music.

Born in Bessemer, Alabama, Zephire "Andre" Williams escaped rural poverty in the limelight of Detroit around 1950. Motor City was booming and Williams, aware of the lack of voice but determined to succeed as a singer, created a humor and innuendo with the dominant R & B and doo-wop music styles of the time. Some have indicated that this vocal performance was one of the starting points of rap music.

In 1955, his unique style earned him a quest for local talent and a contract with Fortune Records, a tiny independent band led by Jack and Devora Brown. Williams wrote and sang a series of vigorous comic recordings that earned him the nickname Mr. Rhythm. His biggest success was in 1956 with Bacon Fat, a wonderfully bold dance record that reached # 9 in Billboard's R & B charts. His funniest (and most questionable) record, Jail Bait – with wonderfully twisted advice to any man who was considering a relationship with a teenager – would never be played on the radio.

In the 1980s, a series of bootlegs titled Songs the Cramps Taught Us, bringing together the original songs covered by Cramps, was my introduction to Williams, but information about him was scarce. What I found was that the Fortunes were marginal. When Williams ran into an aspiring mogul Berry Gordy at the barber, he accepted a job offer. Gordy hired Williams not as an artist but to produce and develop Motown's new signatures. He did so but did not like Gordy's autocratic way and left for Chicago where he did a similar job at One-derful. In 1963, he co-wrote Shake a Tail Feather for the Five Du-Tones, a minor hit, but almost immediately a standard R & B (the most famous was performed by Ray Charles in the movie The Blues Brothers).

The following year, he wrote Twine Time for Alvin Cash in the R & B and Pop group. Throughout the decade, he creates his own records while writing and producing for all, from Mary Wells to Parliament-Funkadelic to Bobby's "Blue" Bland. A call from Ike Turner inviting Williams to work with him in Los Angeles – Shake a Tail Feather was a staple of the Ike & Tina scene.

Williams did the housework in the 1980s and started working at the Chicago Blues clubs. He was surprised to find that he was followed by a cult. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion brought Williams to the UK in the mid-90s as support, and I finally got a look at the legend. He commanded the scene as the seasoned ringmaster and, backed by Spencer's band, composed old songs – garage R & B, rap punk, his music could carry many handles – which sounded unquestionably contemporary.

He badociated the Dirtbombs with garage rocker for his 1998 album, Silky, and it's a raucous and vigorous celebration. Black Godfather, released two years later, is noisy but lean in ideas. That year, Williams was playing at the Garage in London and I went backstage. A dapper man dressed in blood red shoes and a pink suit, Williams looked like he was out of the Detroit club around 1964. He was very funny on the street, calling Ike Turner "dog – dog", pleased to accept praise for being "the original rapper" and kind to those who had badured him an audience after his long disappearance. The support band The Countdowns was an American thrash band. Never before nor since then have I seen an artist and a group so badly badociated. The London audience, composed not of Mosh Pit regulars, but members of the vintage R & B group, was shocked by the group submitting each song to submission.

In 2007, Vampisoul Records in Spain released Movin & # 39; on With Andre, a superb double album presenting a glimpse of his career from 1956 to 1970. This brought Andre back to London in 2008 and during the interview. Before the concert, I discovered man: Andre drank Bacardi as we drink tea to most of us. He was still funny, but the performance of the evening, with a group barely less terrible than the previous time, found him confused and staggering. I've tried to get in touch with Williams later that year, while I was in Chicago, looking for my book More Miles Than Money, but no one knew where he could go. to be found.

During those years, the Chicago Bloodshot Records released several Williams albums, rather rushed efforts, but the 2012 Hoods and Shades, produced by the famous Detroit guitarist, Dennis Coffey, were a solid business. I asked for a phone interview and I had one. Williams was sober and happy to think about his life. He finally took control of his copyright for Shake a Tail Feather, calling this song a greater creation. He was, if I dare say it, softened.

I have never seen or talked about it, but last week I discovered the wonderful No Hit Records album in London and found a new EP, Williams's Fortune EP. Of course, I bought it and, after studying the sleeve, I was quoted. I line up behind my description of him as "an innovator with a smile on his face and a hard-on in his pants". Stay calm, André.