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WILLIAMS, Roger

(b Louis Jacob Weertz, 1 October 1924, Omaha NE; d 8 October 2011) An easy-listening pop pianist who released 116 albums (including compilations). His father was a cowboy and a boxer who found religion and built St John's Lutheran Church in Des Moines IA; his mother was a music teacher. Roger played piano at age three, played in a Des Moines restaurant as a teenager and also boxed until his nose had been broken several times. He studied at Drake University until a music teacher heard him playing a jazzed-up version of 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' and refused to teach him any more. He ran away and joined the Navy, got an engineering degree and did some more boxing in the Navy, then went back to Drake, then on to Juilliard and studies with Lenny Tristano and Teddy Wilson. He was a winner on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts programme, then on Dennis James's Chance of a Lifetime show, where he was spotted by Dave Kapp, who was starting a new record label, signed the young pianist and changed his name. 'Dave didn't have any money, so we did a solo album -- just me and the piano -- for which he didn't even pay me union scale. But it got a good reception.'

Then they used leftover time from a vocalist's recording session to record 'Autumn Leaves', originally a French song from 1947. 'Problem was, the song ran three minutes and five seconds, and in those days disc jockeys wouldn't play anything over three minutes. Well, I really went to town, sped up the arperggios and brought it in at 2:59. The French horn player almost had a stroke.' It was no 1 for four weeks in 1955, the only piano instrumental ever to make no. 1. Of 22 more hits through '69, top tens included a revival of Francis Craig's 1947 smash hit 'Near You' in '58, and film theme 'Born Free' in '66; 'Two Different Worlds' '56 had a vocal by Jane Morgan. He had an incredible 38 LPs in the USA top 200 '56-72, and recorded for Bainbridge and MCA '85-6.

In Des Moines he had met a young sportscaster named Ronald Reagan, and they remained lifelong friends. His pianism never hit it off with the critics, but one suspects he didn't mind that too much.