Ray Williams (producer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since November 2005. |
Ray Williams, born in 1947, London, England, is a A&R music publicist; married (as of April 29, 2003), with daughter Polly married to actor Max Brown.
[edit] Brief biography
Ray Williams, born in 1947, known as 'the man who discovered Elton John and introduced him to lyric writer Bernie Taupin. Ray has been a prominent figure of the music and film industry for many years as press agent, A&R head, artist manager, film music producer and publisher.
During the 1960s he worked with Kathy McGowan who presented "Ready Steady Go"; he was press agent for a number major artists such as Sonny & Cher, Cream, Robert Stigwood and for Brian Epsteins Saville Theatre.
He moved on from there to head up the A&R department for Liberty Records where he signed upcoming artists who went on to achieve major successes with Jeff Lynne (Idle race and ELO), The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Mike Batt, among others.
By this time Ray’s reputation for discovering major talent was gaining credence. In 1967, he discovered Elton John and introduced him to Bernie Taupin, thereby setting in motion one of the most successful song-writing partnerships of the modern era.
Ray managed Elton for his first five albums as well as launching and managing Stealers Wheel (Gerry Rafferty) and The Blues Band.
Since 1984 Ray has been one of Europe’s leading film and television music producers / supervisor. His impressive credits include Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" (1988) which collected the Academy Award (The Oscar) for best score; the Golden Globe Award, the Grammy and the LA film critics’ award for best score plus "The Sheltering Sky" (1990) which also won the Golden Globe and LA film critics’ award.
The year 1996 brought more success as Ray produced the soundtrack for Lars Von Triers "Breaking The Waves", critically acclaimed around the world and winner of the Grand Prix Award at Cannes and an Academy Award nomination in Hollywood.
From 1997 to 2002, Ray went on to produce and supervise several soundtracks including "Saving Grace", the film which won Robert Redford‘s Sundance Festival Best Film Award; and "Dancer in the Dark", Lars Von Trier’s classic film starring Bjork, the film went on to win the coveted Palme d'or Award for best film at the Cannes Film Festival.
During this period Ray was instrumental in the acquisition of Bill Lowery’s legendary Atlanta-based Lowery Music Publishing Group for Sony Music Entertainment. The catalogue included the songs "Be Bop a Lula", "Young Love and "Rose Garden". He was appointed Sony’s consultant for three years to oversee the transition of the business.
Ray currently runs his own music publishing / production company, "Crumbs Music" and continues to sign new artists, composers and catologues.
