The Dazzling Sound - Keith Williams

Wiki Wiki (Russ Garcia)

Solo (Bob Russell)

The Dazzling Sound
The Exciting Big Band Of Keith Williams

Producer: Russell Keith

Cover Art: Alex de Paolo

Engineers: Ted Keep, John Kraus, Val Valentin

Recorded in Hollywood during the fall of 1956

Liberty Records LRP 3040
1957

From the back cover: Sometimes, with some people, long exchanges of ideas and principles are unnecessary, for rapport. An occasional sentence, an unusual reference, a book – and you touch a well-spring; you strike a lode stone, and you know similar excursions have been undertaken. Here is a kinsman, and you acknowledge the discovery with a quiet respect and a patience the permits each encounter to build to a firm relationship.

I met Keith Williams while he was shuttling between "Limelight" (where he was musical director and conductor for Charles Chaplin), and "Range Rider" – a Gene Autry television series for which he was a staff composer and orchestrator. As a study in contrasts I doubt if any curriculum could have selected two more diverse instructors that Chaplin and Autry. Such courses can produce exceptional men of wide ability. Should the men be observant and flexible they grow and their horizons expand. I met Keith Williams at such a time.

An artist is a restless man – a kinetic force – and periodically as he grows, always trying to attain some impossible goal he sets for himself, he breaks out of his current confines into a new stage; a new development and there is no going back... only more quantitative changes to the next creative explosion.

I wasn't an observer to the evolution the led through interrupted college in September, 1942 to October, 1945, during which time Keith served as an USAAF pilot flying single engine fighter planes. I don't know what musical thought synchronized with the whirr of the propeller or the drone of the airplane engine. Nor am I the chronicler of the days of his return to Occidental College for his degree in music which he obtained in 1948. In the development of a talent one must also report the two and a half years employed as an orchestrator at Walter Lantz Cartoons and the subsequent arranging and orchestrating of twenty-eight full length motion pictures. 

I don't know which f the many paths is the road to achievement; which of the many test tubes the catalyst. I only know that one afternoon out of the clear blue Keith honored me with a phone call asking me if I would like to hear some audition records of a big jazz band. I said, "Whose?" He said his. I said, "Whose arrangement?" He said his. I said, "Who picked up the tab?" He said he had. I was impressed. A man has to believe in himself even if it requires pawning the family pawn shop. I said, "Come on over." And in blew one of the freshest breezes in the way of a band sound I had heard.

That a man has something to say or offer doesn't necessarily make him a town-crier. This role is reserved for other men who have the ability to recognize talent and the knowledge to showcase it. I took the audition tapes to Liberty Records who took them – tab and all – and took Keith to the nearest recording studios to complete the album.

Usually, at this point one is introduced to the compositions and acquitted with the instrumentation and the characteristics of each arrangement. I won and listen to many albums and have read many album notes. When I am told that a lazy, relaxed guitar solo leads me into the exotic "Toscana," or that a brass section in full swing over sparkling rhythm undertakes an all-out rendition of the fine standard "I Remember You," I am not impressed.

To me music is an experience – an adventure and I don't wish to be led by the hand to the next chapter or to have signposts to my next thrill. I want to find out for myself "who's doing what and to whom"... meaning me. After all, I did pay for this right by buying the particular album. I suspect that many people feel the same way.

With musicians of Keith's perspective, they view music as constantly unfolding horizons. Having attained the sound heard in this album a plateau has been reached. There is the hill beyond the hill beyond the hill. Don't expect the same sound, of shall I say the sameness of sound, in every subsequent album. Expect rather always a new experience in each new composition and each new album; an adventure in scope, depth and even texture of sound. That is music... at least to my ears.

Our horizons are limitless because our resources are boundless. Yours as well as Keith's – he's tune it on something. Listen...

– Bob Russell (Russell wrote the notes as well as "Solo", one of the featured songs on this album)

From Billboard - May 13, 1957: Liberty has captured a good "big band" sound on this disk. Hi-fi-wise it also rates a hearing. The program is nicely balanced between standards and original material and it could do will if pushed. "Wiki-Wiki" is a good bet for hi-fi demo with its emphasis on percussion and bass. Full-color cover will attract.

I Remember You
Carioca
Toscana
Winter Interlude
Easy To Love
Wiki Wiki
Bernie's Tone
Sleeping Princess
When Your Lover Has Gone
Caleta
Solo
Why Not?