Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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WILLIAMSON, Claude

(d Claude Berkeley Williamson, 18 November 1926, Brattleboro VT; d 23 July 2016, Los Angeles CA) Jazz pianist. His father was a professional drummer. He attended the New England Conservatory of Music, and his classical training was evident his entire career in the smoothness of his playing and in his harmonic sense. He was drafted at the end of World War II and immediately reprieved, but was called up in 1951. The army heard he was a musician and needed a drummer; he was able to drum well enough to spend the Korean war at an officers' club in Okinawa.

He was a member of Charlie Barnet's band, and was featured on Manny Albam's 'Claude Reigns' in 1949. He was June Christy's accompanist for two years, landed in Los Angeles and became the house pianist at Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach in 1950, and was believed to be the last surviving member of the Lighthouse All-Stars, where his brother, trumpeter Stu Williamson (b 14 May 1933; d 1 October 1991) was a regular. His was initially inspired perhaps by Teddy Wilson, then his idols were East Coast jazzmen like Al Haig and Bud Powell, but he fit right into the West Coast cool jazz scene, which seemed to be always coming and going, with his perfect pitch and his consummate taste: his music seemed effortless. He played in the Bud Shank Quartet in the late 1950s, settled in Studio City and played recorded regularly with Red Norvo, Barney Kessel, Art Pepper, Frank Rosolino and many other California stalwarts. His harmonic sense allowed him to be a leader, to back vocalists or to play with anybody as a sideman.

In the 1960s when jazz work was thin on the ground, he turned to television, playing for Andy Williams, Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie, and even the Brady Bunch during their short-lived variety hour. As a soloist he enjoyed a second wave of fame in the 1980s when his music was rediscovered in Japan. Hallucinations '95 was a trio album with Dave Carpenter on bass and Paul Kreibick on drums, showing the influence of Bud.

In 2014 he hadn't played much for years and was physically frail, but he agreed to appear at a jazz reunion. He was so weak he barely made it on stage, but when he did, the seamless, flowing style was still there. 'It was amazing,' his son Marc recalled. 'I'm so glad I was there.'  A ringsider told Williamson that he had 'knocked it out of the park', music to the ears of the bebop pianist who was also a lifelong baseball fan. [A charming detail from Jill Leovy in the L.A. Times]