ALTHOUGH he made his name playing hard bop and soul jazz as the pianist with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, alongside such luminaries as the Marsalis brothers, Branford and Wynton, the saxophonist Bobby Watson and the trombonist Curtis Fuller, James Williams had a softer side to his musical personality. On his solo tours of Britain in the late 1990s, he would still the audience with his own gospel-tinged compositions and arrangements, affectionately recalling an earlier era of African-American music, which he further explored in his own band Intensive Care Unit, formed in 1994. An accomplished musical educator as well as a pianist of considerable stylistic range, Williams was liked and admired throughout the jazz community, not least for the way he combined his skills as a pianist with a considerable flair for organisation and project management.
Appointed the director of jazz studies at William Paterson College, New Jersey, one of the leading courses in the United States, in 1999, Williams had previously taught at numerous other institutions, including a year alongside the altoist Jackie McLean at Hartford, Connecticut, as well as positions at the New England Conservatory and Harvard. He produced numerous concerts, including a regular jazz series at the Merkin Hall in New York, and he was also active as a record producer and entrepreneur.
Williams was born and brought up in Memphis, Tennessee, and his earliest musical experience was in that city’s rich blues and soul heritage. Although he began learning the piano at 13, it was not until his undergraduate studies at Memphis State University that Williams discovered jazz, not least because his contemporaries included two pianists who would go on to a similar level of fame and achievement, Donald Brown and Mulgrew Miller (who became his successor in the Jazz Messengers). At college, Williams discovered the music of the pianist Phineas Newborn, which was to be a major influence on his own playing, particularly in his unaccompanied solo work. Newborn’s approach to time, and to left-hand figures that avoided conventional styles of accompaniment, were seamlessly absorbed into Williams’ vocabulary.
Moving from Memphis to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he taught as well as furthering his own studies, Williams embarked on his professional recording career in 1976, as a background pianist for the “music-minus-one” educator Jamie Aebersold. The following year, he made his debut as a bandleader, with a session for the Zim label, Flying Colours, that involved the trombonist Slide Hampton, and a saxophonist who would become a regular colleague, Bill Easley. It was the first of more than 100 albums, that together make Williams one of the best-documented pianists in contemporary jazz.
He joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in late 1977, and remained with the band until 1981, making numerous records, including the celebrated Straight Ahead with Wynton Marsalis, for the Concord label. After leaving, Williams undertook an extraordinary variety of work, recording with the guitarists Emily Remler and Tal Farlow, and launching an impressive series of his own sextet recordings for the Sunnyside label. He played in and around Boston (often with the drummer Alan Dawson) until moving permanently to New York in 1984.
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Williams’ most memorable recordings include a tribute to Billy Strayhorn with the trumpeter Art Farmer, and a trio with Art Blakey and Ray Brown, both from 1987; his 1992 Memphis Convention project, which drew together many players from his home town; a typically humorous session Talkin’ Trash with the trumpeter Clark Terry from 1993 that includes Serenade to a Bus Seat; and the spiritual medley from his 1995 solo recital recorded at the Maybeck Hall in Berkeley, California.
The recipient of many awards, and still in his prime as a player, Williams was found to have liver cancer in April this year.
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James Williams, jazz pianist and educator, was born on March 8, 1951. He died on July 20, 2004, aged 52.