‘Moon River’ crooner Andy Williams dies at age 84

BOB THOMAS, JIM SALTER

Asso­ci­ated Press

BRANSON, Mo. — For many Amer­i­cans, par­tic­u­larly those on the older — OK, squarer — side of the gen­er­a­tion gap, Andy Williams was part of the sound­track of the 1960s and ’70s, with easy-listening hits like “Moon River,” the “Love Story” theme and “The Most Won­der­ful Time of the Year” from his beloved Christ­mas TV specials.

The singer known for his whole­some, middle-America appeal was the antithe­sis of the coun­ter­cul­ture that pro­duced rock and roll.

“The old cliche says that if you can remem­ber the 1960s, you weren’t there,” Williams once recalled. “Well, I was there all right, but my mem­ory of them is blurred — not by any drugs I took but by the relent­less pace of the sched­ule I set myself.”

The enter­tainer, who died Tues­day night at his Bran­son home fol­low­ing a year­long bat­tle with blad­der can­cer, had a plain­tive tenor, boy­ish fea­tures and clean-cut demeanor that helped him out­last many of the decade’s rock stars and fel­low croon­ers such as Frank Sina­tra and Perry Como. He remained on the charts into the 1970s and con­tin­ued to per­form into his 80s.

Williams became a major star in 1956, the same year as Elvis Pres­ley, with the Sinatra-like swing num­ber “Cana­dian Sun­set.” For a time, he was pushed into such Pres­ley imi­ta­tions as “Lips of Wine” and the No. 1 smash “Butterfly.”

But he mostly stuck to what he called his “nat­ural style” and kept it up through­out his career. In 1970, when even Sina­tra had tem­porar­ily retired, Williams was in the top 10 with the theme from “Love Story,” the Oscar-winning tear­jerker. He had 18 gold records, three plat­inum and five Grammy award nominations.

Williams was also the first host of the live Grammy awards tele­cast and hosted the show for seven con­sec­u­tive years, begin­ning in 1971.

Movie songs became a spe­cialty, includ­ing his sig­na­ture “Moon River.” The long­ing Johnny Mercer-Henry Mancini bal­lad was his most famous song, even though he never released it as a sin­gle because his record com­pany feared such lines as “my huck­le­berry friend” were too con­fus­ing and old-fashioned for teens.

The song was first per­formed by Audrey Hep­burn in the cher­ished 1961 film “Break­fast at Tiffany’s,” but Mancini thought “Moon River” ideal for Williams, who recorded it in “pretty much one take” and also sang it at the 1962 Acad­emy Awards. Although “Moon River” was cov­ered by count­less artists and became a hit sin­gle for Jerry But­ler, Williams made the song his per­sonal brand. In fact, he insisted on it.

“When I hear any­body else sing it, it’s all I can to do stop myself from shout­ing at the tele­vi­sion screen, ‘No! That’s my song!’” Williams wrote in his 2009 mem­oir titled, fit­tingly, “Moon River and Me.”

“The Andy Williams Show,” which lasted in var­i­ous for­mats through the 1960s and into 1971, won three Emmys and fea­tured Williams alter­nately per­form­ing his sta­ble of hits and ban­ter­ing with guest stars.

It was on that show that Williams — who launched his own career as part of an all-brother quar­tet — intro­duced the world to another clean-cut act — the orig­i­nal four singing Osmond Broth­ers of Utah. Four decades later, the Osmonds and Williams would find them­selves in close prox­im­ity again, shar­ing Williams’ Moon River The­ater in Branson.

Williams did book some rock and soul acts, includ­ing the Beach Boys, the Temp­ta­tions and Smokey Robin­son. On one show, in 1970, Williams sang “Heaven Help Us All” with Ray Charles, Mama Cass and a then-little known Elton John, a vision to Williams in his rhine­stone glasses and black cape. But Williams liked him and his break­through hit “Your Song” enough to record it himself.

Williams’ act was, appar­ently, not an act. The singer’s unflap­pable man­ner on tele­vi­sion and in con­cert was mir­rored offstage.

“I guess I’ve never really been aggres­sive, although almost every­body else in show busi­ness fights and gouges and knees to get where they want to be,” he once said. “My trou­ble is, I’m not con­structed tem­pera­men­tally along those lines.”

His whole­some image endured one jar­ring interlude.

In 1976, his ex-wife, for­mer Las Vegas show­girl Clau­dine Longet, shot and killed her lover, ski­ing cham­pion Spi­der Sabich. The Rolling Stones mocked the tragedy in “Clau­dine,” a song so piti­less that it wasn’t released until decades later. Longet, who said the slay­ing was an acci­dent, spent only a week in jail. Williams stood by her. He escorted her to the cour­t­house, tes­ti­fied on her behalf and pro­vided sup­port for her and their chil­dren, Noelle, Chris­t­ian and Robert.

Also in the 1970s, Williams was seen fre­quently in the com­pany of Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s widow. The singer denied any roman­tic involvement.

He was born Howard Andrew Williams in Wall Lake, Iowa, on Dec. 3, 1927, and began per­form­ing with older broth­ers Dick, Bob and Don in the local Pres­by­ter­ian church choir. Their father, postal worker and insur­ance man Jay Emer­son Williams, was the choir­mas­ter and the force behind his children’s career.

When Andy was 8, Williams’ father arranged for the kids to have an audi­tion on Des Moines radio sta­tion WHO’s Iowa Barn Dance. They were ini­tially turned down but kept return­ing until they were finally accepted. The show attracted atten­tion from Chicago, Cincin­nati and Hol­ly­wood. Another star at WHO was a young sports­caster named Ronald Rea­gan, who would later praise Williams as a “national treasure.”

The broth­ers later worked with Kay Thomp­son, a singer who even­tu­ally became famous for the “Eloise” children’s books. She had taken a posi­tion as vocal coach at MGM stu­dios, work­ing with Judy Gar­land, June Allyson and oth­ers. After three months of train­ing, Thomp­son and the Williams Broth­ers broke in their show at the El Ran­cho Room in Las Vegas, draw­ing rave reviews in New York, Los Ange­les and across the nation and as much as $25,000 a week.

After five years, the three older broth­ers, who were start­ing their own fam­i­lies, had tired of the con­stant travel and left to pur­sue other careers.

Williams ini­tially strug­gled as a solo act and was so broke at one point that he resorted to eat­ing food intended for his two dogs.

A two-year TV stint on Steve Allen’s “Tonight Show” and a con­tract with Cadence Records turned things around. Williams later formed his own label, Barn­aby Records, which released music by the Everly Broth­ers, Ray Stevens and Jimmy Buffett.

Williams was a life­long Repub­li­can who once accused Pres­i­dent Obama of “fol­low­ing Marx­ist the­ory.” But he acknowl­edged exper­i­ment­ing with LSD, opposed the Nixon administration’s efforts in the 1970s to deport John Lennon and in 1968 was an ener­getic sup­porter of Robert Kennedy’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. When Kennedy was assas­si­nated in Los Ange­les in June 1968, just after win­ning the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary, Williams sang “The Bat­tle Hymn of the Repub­lic” at his funeral.

“We chose that song because he used it on the cam­paign trail,” Williams later said of Kennedy, who had been a close friend. “He had a ter­ri­ble voice, but he loved to sing that song. The only way I got through singing in church that day was by say­ing, ‘This is my job. I can’t let emo­tion get in the way of the song.’ I really con­cen­trated on not think­ing about him.”

After giv­ing up tour­ing, he set­tled in Bran­son, with its dozens of the­aters fea­tur­ing live music, com­edy and magic acts, and was among the first wave of national enter­tain­ers to per­form there regularly.

When he arrived in 1992, the town was dom­i­nated by coun­try music, but Williams changed that with his classy, $13 mil­lion the­ater in the heart of the enter­tain­ment dis­trict, where he did two shows a night, six days a week, nine months of the year. Only in recent years did he cut back to one show a night. His most pop­u­lar time was Christmas.

Not every­one in Hol­ly­wood accepted his move to the Mid­west. “The fact is most of my friends in L.A. still think I’m nuts for com­ing here,” he told The Asso­ci­ated Press in 1998.

He and his sec­ond wife, the for­mer Deb­bie Haas, divided their time between homes in Bran­son and Palm Springs, where he spent his leisure hours on the golf course when Branson’s the­aters were dark dur­ing the win­ter months fol­low­ing Christmas.

Retire­ment was not on his sched­ule. As he told the AP in 2001: “I’ll keep going until I get to the point where I can’t get out on stage.”

Williams is sur­vived by his wife and his three children.

Posted by AP News on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.