[Dixielandjazz] Claude Fiddler Williams

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

I had the great pleasure of working with Claude at the Black Bull Jazz Club in Milngavie, near Glasgow in the Spring of 1980. As Steve points out, he was Basie's guitarist before Freddie Green arrived. He was a genial man with several huge gold fillings in his front teeth, so when he smiled, which he did a lot, it was a bit dazzling. It was the kind of dental feature you see nowadays only in Eastern Europe and probably the closest I'm likely to get to seeing the diamond in the front tooth that Jelly had. 

We had no run through before the gig, so when we got on stage, I reached for my brushes thinking I'd better keep the volume down until we'd all got the measure of each other. Claude called Sweet Georgia Brown with an 8 bar unaccompanied violin intro for the first number and tore into the intro with a fury and volume that had me grabbing for my sticks in case I got left behind. The rest of the gig was a riot. He swung like mad, was lovely company and kept us plied with tales of Kansas City jazz in the interval. It's lovely to hear he was still going strong in 1997 and is being remembered here today.

I'd have loved to hear Claude in the company of Al Casey, who played the Black Bull Club several times and was also genial company. Together they must have been dynamite. Al used to stay with us when he played the club and his pre-gig preparation consisted of listening to my Charlie Christian records. He used to say "Charlie had everything; he was my inspiration." After the gig, I used to get him talking about his work with Fats Waller (he was working with Fats while still at school), although he was usually reticent about the topic of Fats selling compositions when it came up. On one occasion, he did open up and spilled the beans on some of the deals Fats did with established Tin Pan Alley songwriters, who acquired outright ownership of some of his finest pieces. I won't risk litigation by going public on what I heard, but suffice it to say that some of the best jazz evergreens seem to have been written by Fats but carry someone else's name. One of these is easily verifiable: Fats and His Buddies recorded Lookin' for Another Sweetie around 1928. Its melody and chords, but not lyrics, are identical to those of I'm Confessin', published in 1930 by 3 entirely different songwriters. The fact that Fats didn't sue when the musical element was identical, suggests strongly that a deal had been done and the song was sold outright.

Regards,

Ken Mathieson