Paul Williams (saxophonist)

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Paul Williams (1915 – 2002) was an American blues and rhythm and blues saxophonist and composer. In his Honkers and Shouters, Arnold Shaw credits Williams as one of the first to employ the honking tenor sax solo that became the hallmark of rhythm and blues and rock and roll in the 50s and early 60s.

After performing with Clarence Dorsey and King Porter he formed his own band in 1947. He was best known for his 1949 hit, "The Hucklebuck", a twelve-bar blues that also spawned a dance craze. He used the billing of Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers thereafter. Charlie Parker had four years earlier used the same riff for his "Now's the Time".

Williams' recording was covered by Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra, as well as by R&B artists Roy Milton and Lionel Hampton, but Williams' Savoy recording was still the best-selling rhythm and blues song of the year. Shaw points out that "The Hucklebuck" was an early example of crossover from R&B to mainstream popular music.

Williams later worked in the Atlantic Records house band and was musical director for Lloyd Price and James Brown.

[edit] Quotation

Push your partner out,

Then you hunch your back,

Start a little movement in your sacroiliac,

Wiggle like an eel, waddle like a duck,

That's the way you do it when you do the Hucklebuck