Andy Williams

Pencil Portrait by Antonio Bosano.

Andy Williams Pencil Portrait
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The quality of the prints are at a much higher level compared to the image shown on the left.

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A3 Pencil Print-Price £45.00-Purchase

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*Limited edition run of 250 prints only*

All Pencil Prints are printed on the finest Bockingford Somerset Velvet 255 gsm paper.

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Last update: 24/12/16

By 1958, there were an estimated 350,000 colour sets in the United States, the bulk of which were manufactured by RCA, and that number had jumped to 500,000 by early 1960 . Despite the greater potential for colour programming – and more importantly, from the advertiser’s point of view, colour commercials – the only network actively pushing colour programming was NBC, which had 179 affiliates broadcasting in colour by February of 1961. NBC “colour days,” which started in November of 1960, saw the bulk of an entire day’s worth of programming broadcast in colour.

One weekly event that benefited greatly from NBC’s commitment to colour broadcasting was The Andy Williams Show.” Watching clips of early episodes, with their razor sharp quality and vivid technicolour, one cannot help but contrast the viewing experience of millions across the great pond at that time in Britain. Grainy black & white broadcasts on 425 lines – ‘Grandstand,’ ‘Juke Box Jury,’ ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ etc – remain enduring testimony to the technological gulf that existed at the time.

We truly were light years behind.

http://retrolisa.tripod.com/andywilliams.html

Williams’ life began with a strict, Presbyterian upbringing in Midwest obscurity, eventually spiralling up to national fame, notoriety and scandal with his involvement in one of the most talked-about celebrity murder trials ever staged. It’s hard to imagine any star less deserving of such emotional turmoil, and if the truth be told, the entertainer was never quite the same again. After all, it’s one thing to marry a considerable younger woman when you’re elderly and ‘loaded’ – the King of Croon was 63 when he took the plunge for the second time – but it’s an invariably more heartbreaking experience earlier in one’s life. He was thirty four when he married Claudine Longet in 1961, and she was still a teenager. Having burnished his clean-cut appearance and demeanor throughout a lengthy career, it must have hurt him terribly to have it tarnished in the 1970s by a scandal involving his ex-wife and the mother of his three children. The background details to the case, and the less than satisfactory verdict, are recalled via the following link:

http://murderpedia.org/female.L/l/longet-claudine.htm

Williams was a tenor. The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C (A4) in choral music, and up to high C (C5) in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B♭2 (two B♭s below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to two Fs above middle C (F5). The term tenor was developed in relation to classical and operatic voices, where the classification is based not merely on the singer’s vocal range but also on the tessitura and timbre of the voice. With numerous hit singles and albums and as the host of a major television series, Andy Williams became the Emperor of Easy. He came across as he was in real life: a relaxed, even-tempered and thoroughly decent man.

Recommended listening

Dear Heart (1965)

Born Free (1967)

Devoid of songwriting skills, Williams relied upon others for material. On occasions, his choice of numbers was squarely aimed at the youth market in an ill-advised attempt to appear hip. Unlike Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett or Bobby Darin, Williams was also unable to refashion his material, and with a few notable exceptions his records now seem straightforward interpretations of familiar material, warmly performed with perfect diction to be sure, but more sentimental than exciting. Being a tenor with a wide range including a seemingly effortless falsetto, Williams would later admit that there was too much echo on some of his recordings. He felt the “Born Free” album (1967) captured his most natural sound.

Love, Andy (1967)

Happy Heart (1969)

Solitaire (1973)

Recommended viewing

Andy Williams Collection (3 Discs) [DVD] [2010]

During its nine year run on NBC (1962-1971), “The Andy Williams Show” was enjoyed by millions of people around the world and won three Emmys for “Best Variety Series.”

This 3 DVD boxset is a star-studded collection of over sixty songs and features the world’s greatest performers, all singing alongside Andy Williams. There’s a veritable who’s who in this remastered collection – Julie Andrews, Pearl Bailey, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland, Phil Harris, Simon and Garfunkel, Lena Horne, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Johnny Mathis, The Osmond Brothers, The Williams Brothers etc – in addition to a selction of clips from his popular Xmas shows.

The epitome of MOR, he was hardly ‘cutting edge’ but a class act nonetheless.

One for the multi-region DVD players……

Recommended reading

Moon River and me (2009)

Surfing

The Andy Williams Discography

http://www.lpdiscography.com/?page=discography&interpret=820