Clarence Williams’s house

[171-37 108th Avenue, Jamaica, Queens, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

A fellow lover of the music asked me if I knew the address for Clarence Williams, who lived across the street from James P. Johnson. I didn’t, nor did I know that Williams and Johnson were neighbors. But no. 171-37 was Williams’s house. The address is in his New York Times obituary.

Clarence Williams (1893 or 1898–1965), pianist, composer, and record producer, was a ubiquitous presence on blues and jazz 78s in the 1920s and ’30s, and another of the eminent Black Americans in music and sport who made Queens their home. (Wikipedia has Williams and his wife Eva Taylor living in Queens from the 1920s.) Among Williams’s credits as composer or co-composer: “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” “Cake Walking Babies from Home,” “Royal Garden Blues,” “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do,” “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” and “Sugar Blues.”

Here are just two samples of Williams on record:

From 1925, “Cake Walking Babies from Home” (Williams–Chris Smith–Henry Troy), by Clarence Williams’ Blue Five: Williams, piano; Eva Taylor (Mrs. Williams), vocal; Louis Armstrong, cornet; Sidney Bechet, soprano saxophone; Charlie Irvis, trombone; Buddy Christian, banjo. At 1:32 you can hear the piano preparing the charge into the last two choruses, in which Armstrong and Bechet take over.

And from 1929, “I’m Wild About That Thing” (Spencer Williams), with Bessie Smith and Eddie Lang (guitar). I love the way Smith’s performance builds in intensity from a sedate beginning. Williams takes it up a notch at the start of the sixth chorus. And as I wrote in a 2005 post, “Lang’s obbligato practically dances it way off the record.”

If you’re wondering, Williams was the grandfather of the actor Clarence Williams III. The resemblance was strong.

And if you’re wondering why address numbers in Queens are hyphenated, here’s an explanation.

Also in the Queens tax photographs: Fats Waller’s house. Like the Johnson house and the Waller house, no. 171-37 still stands.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[If you click for large, you’ll see that what appear to be holes in the fencing are shadows from the basement windows. I’d prefer Williams’s as the possessive at all times, but the record identifies the band as Clarence Williams’ Blue Five.]