Personal Life
Williams was born in Watertown, Maine. While playing in the CBS Orchestra in New York during the 1930s, Williams studied architecture at Columbia University.
His wife was named Esther (Towner) Williams (not to be confused with actress Esther Williams).
In a 2008 interview with Stan Warnow (Raymond Scott's son, a filmmaker) and Jeff Winner (of RaymondScott.com), John Williams explained that his father was also an expert marksman who won national awards in pistol shooting. "He made his own ammunition," said John, "We had a target range in our basement in Queens where he practiced for pistol competitions." Williams was a marine instructor during World War II, specializing in the use of the Colt .45 handguns. An early Raymond Scott composition on which Williams fired a loaded pistol on microphone in the pre-Quintette days was a novelty entitled "Duet For Pistol and Piano." In one surviving shellac of a live radio program where this number was featured, Williams had to improvise rimshots to simulate the gunshots after the pistol he was firing failed.
Williams died in Los Angeles, California.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Williams (drummer)
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I don’t like your miserable lonely single “front name.” It is so limited, so meagre; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)