Claude "Fiddler" Williams

Few great jazz musicians enjoyed such a lengthy life and career as Claude "Fiddler" Williams, who outlasted virtually all his contemporaries and achieved his greatest successes at an advanced age. Williams began playing guitar at age ten; he was inspired to take up violin after hearing Joe Venuti play a gig near his Muskogee, OK, home. He played around Oklahoma with bassist Oscar Pettiford, among others. His first professional experience came in 1927 when he joined Terrence Holder's highly regarded territory band in Oklahoma City. Williams stayed on after Holder was ousted by ...