Courtney Williams

Courtney Williams is best known as one of Louis Jordan's musical henchmen, playing a horn style often described as "smudge-pot trumpet" and coming up with amusing, mildly insulting ditties such as "Flat Face," "I Like 'Em Fat Like That," and "Real Fine Frame." Williams hooked up with Cab Calloway in the second half of the '30s, when a combo that became known as Jordan's original Tympani 5 was assembled for a stint at a Harlem club. The trumpeter started out as a violinist at the age of eight and was several years into his teenhood before discovering the joys of brass. By the early '30s Williams was playing gigs, moving through a variety of bands such as those of Charlie Skeets, Al Henderson, and Henry Miller. In the combos of pianist and singer Fats Waller, Williams must have gotten a taste for the type of material he would subsequently write and arrange on his own -- at any rate, there is no denying the great influence Waller had directly on Jordan. Williams continued to play trumpet through 1947 with Jordan as well as saxophonist and arranger Benny Carter, pianist Claude Hopkins, and others. He then seems to have closeted his trumpet in favor of a civil service job for the city of New York, continuing to scribble out arrangements for studio bands. He should not be confused with the contemporary drummer and singer of the same name who uses the moniker C-Will. © Eugene Chadbourne /TiVo