By Rex Doane
“People now keep saying, ‘Andre, you’re too dirty. Quit being so lascivious!’” Williams says. “Lascivious! Shit. I didn’t know what that meant till a week ago, and I’ve been lascivious for on near 61 goddamn years.”
In 1954, Williams says, he received some distressing news from back home: Nathaniel Williams, who was supposedly already in the navy, had decided that he, too, needed a change of scenery. Navy officials, noticing that they now had two Nathaniel Williamses with the same parents, opted to keep the real one. Andre was plucked off the boat and sent to Washington, D.C., where he was dishonorably discharged. He left D.C. with everything he owned on his person: a pair of black pants, a red corduroy jacket, a Ben Hogan cap, and $25.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Despite his nascent marketing genius, Williams never received any royalties on his releases for Fortune. His biggest hit for the label, “Bacon Fat,” earned him only the down payment on a new Cadillac–even though the song was licensed to the nationally distributed Epic label and reached number nine on Billboard’s R & B chart in early 1957. But such an arrangement wasn’t unusual for black or white artists at the time, and today Williams even remembers the Caddy fondly. “That was a hell of a car back then,” he says with a smile.
At Motown, Williams produced singles by Mary Wells and the Contours and the first release by the Temptations. He also worked with Little Stevie Wonder, an experience he remembers less than reverently: “Stevie Wonder was a brat. No one wanted him around, ’cause he was a pest. You’d look around and here was this little blind boy running around, banging on the drums and knockin’ the piano out of tune. He’d go into the different offices and be messing with the girls so they couldn’t do their work. He even learned how to mimic people and get on the phone there and make prank phone calls. Berry eventually barred him from the Motown offices unless he was there to record a session.”
Despite a certain instability, Williams managed fairly well throughout the decade, coauthoring Alvin Cash’s hit “Twine Time,” producing the original version of “Mustang Sally,” by Sir Mack Rice, in 1965, and even waxing an R & B hit of his own, “Cadillac Jack,” for Chess in 1968. Williams also recorded a few sides at Motown, but his final falling out with Gordy ensured that none of them would be released. According to Williams, who by that time had divorced Carrie, he was supposed to marry Fay Hale, Gordy’s vice president of manufacturing. But he’d met a girl in Chicago named Yvonne Jarman and decided to marry her instead.
