| ANDY
WILLIAMS (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Howard Andrew Williams (born December 3, 1927 in Wall
Lake, Iowa), known as Andy Williams, is an American pop singer. Andy
Williams has recorded 18 Gold and 3 Platinum certified albums. He
has performed with Ray Charles, Elton John, Ella Fitzgerald, Simon
and Garfunkel, Mama Cass and Michael Jackson. When Ronald Reagan was
President, he declared Andy's voice to be "a national treasure". He
has had his own TV show as well as starring in a number of films. He
also owns his own theatre, the Moon River in Branson, Missouri.
Williams first
performed in a children's choir at the local Presbyterian church.
Williams and his three older brothers Dick, Don, and Bob, formed a
quartet, the Williams Brothers, in the late 1930s, and they
performed on radio in the Midwest, first at WHO in Des Moines, Iowa,
and later at WLS in Chicago and WLW in Cincinnati. Williams
graduated from Western Hills High School in Cincinnati. The Williams
Brothers appeared with Bing Crosby on the hit record "Swinging on a
Star" (1944). This led to a nightclub act with entertainer Kay
Thompson from 1947 to 1951.
Andy Williams finally
began his solo career in 1952, making several appearances on Steve
Allen's Tonight Show before signing a contract with Archie Bleyer's
Cadence Records in 1955. He hit the Top Ten in 1956 with his third
single for the label, "Canadian Sunset." One year later, his
soft-toned cover of the Charlie Gracie rockabilly nugget "Butterfly"
hit number one (it's still his biggest hit). Additional Top Ten
entries "Are You Sincere," "Lonely Street," and "The Village of St.
Bernadette" followed before Williams moved to Columbia in 1961.
During the 1960s,
Williams became one of the most popular vocalists in the country and
was signed to what was at that time the biggest recording contract
in history. He was primarily an album artist, and at one time he had
earned more gold albums than any solo performer except Frank Sinatra,
Johnny Mathis and Elvis Presley. By 1973 he had earned as many as 18
gold album awards. Among his hit albums from this period were Moon
River, Days of Wine and Roses (number one for 16 weeks in mid-1963),
The Andy Williams Christmas Album, Dear Heart, The Shadow of Your
Smile, Love, Andy, Get Together with Andy Williams, and Love Story.
In these recordings Williams displays an incredible vocal technique
along with an uncanny ability to make each song his very own, often
rivaling or surpassing the version by the original artist. These
attributes, along with his natural affinity for the music of the
1960s and early 1970s, combined to make him one of the premier easy
listening singers of that era. In the UK, Williams continued to
reach high chart status until 1978. The albums Can't Help Falling In
Love (1970), Andy Williams Show (1970) Home Lovin Man ( #1 1971),
Solitaire (1973), The Way We Were (1974) and Reflections (1978) all
reached the Top 10.
Andy Williams remained
very popular during the '70s, especially for British audiences. His
single "Solitaire" hit the Top Ten there in 1973, though it didn't
even chart in America. Two of his subsequent albums also performed
well, but only in Britain. He released relatively few LPs during the
1980s, but returned to the pop world in the early '90s when he
founded his own theater/resort in the home-grown entertainment
capital of Branson, MO.
In 2007 Andy appeared
as himself on a few episodes of As the World Turns - based at his
Moon River Theatre. He has just completed a sold out ticket UK Tour
2007 in which he performed at several major concert halls including
Royal Albert Hall, singing among other classics, Van Morrison's
"Have I Told You Lately". This September he'll take the stage in
Branson with Charo through the end of October. In November and
December of this year he will present his annual Andy Williams
Christmas Concert at his Moon River Theatre, followed by a "mini"
Christmas tour in the western U.S. with stops tentatively scheduled
in Los Angeles and Palm Desert, California among others.
(info edited from Wikipedia & AMG)
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