Doc Williams
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Doc Williams | |
Born | June 26, 1914 Cleveland, Ohio, United States |
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Occupation | Country music band leader and vocalist |
Spouse | Jessie Wanda Williams aka Chickie Williams (died 2007) |
Children | 3 daughters |
Doc Williams (born June 26, 1914) is an influential country music band leader and vocalist. He was born as Andrew John Smik, Jr. in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.
He got his professional start playing with the Kansas Clodhoppers during the early 1930s. Doc eventually formed his own band, Doc Williams and the Border Riders, and moved to WWVA Wheeling in 1937; soon, with the addition of comedian Froggie Cortez and cowboy crooner, Big Slim the Lone Cowboy, they became one of the station's most popular attractions.
In 1939, Williams married Jessie Wanda Crupe (died 2007), a singer who soon adopted the stage name Chickie Williams. The Williams' were popular performers. Although the couple and their band the Border Riders recorded, performed live and appeared on the radio for over five decades, they never had a national hit.
Doc Williams founded Wheeling Records in 1947 and through it released all of his and his wife's albums; occasionally, they sang together, and sometimes with their three daughters. Among his best-known songs are "Willie Roy the Crippled Boy" and "My Old Brown Coat And Me".