Mason Douglas Williams (born August 24, 1938) is an American classical guitarist, composer, singer, writer, comedian, and poet, best known for his 1968 instrumental "Classical Gas" and for his work as a comedy writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and Saturday Night Live.
Early life
Williams was born in Abilene, Texas, the son of Jackson Eugene (a tile setter) and Kathlyn (née Nations) Williams.
Williams grew up dividing his time between living with his father in Oklahoma and his mother in Oakridge, Oregon. He graduated from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1956. In Oklahoma, he began his lifelong friendship with the artist Edward Ruscha.
He attended Oklahoma City University (1957–60) and North Texas State University for one semester, and served in the United States Navy from 1961 to 1963. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.
He also wrote songs for The Kingston Trio. Together with Nancy Ames, he wrote "Cinderella Rockefella", a 1968 number-one hit for Esther and Abi Ofarim in the United Kingdom.
In 1970, Williams made a television appearance on a variety show, Just Friends, which reunited regulars of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. To create a visual element for his performance, he used a special playable classical plexiglass guitar built for him by Billy Cheatwood and a prop designer for ABC. For the performance, Williams filled the guitar with water and added a couple of goldfish. He then used the plexiglass guitar to finger-sync his hit version of "Classical Gas".
Warner Bros. albums and collaborations
Williams has recorded more than a dozen albums. Five were released on the Warner Bros. label: The Mason Williams Phonograph Record (1968), The Mason Williams Ear Show (1968), Music by Mason Williams (1968), Hand Made (1970), and Sharepickers (1971). For both Hand Made and Sharepickers, Mason received two more Grammy nominations for "Best Album Cover Design".
Benefit concerts and orchestral performances
In December 1970, Williams performed benefit concerts for the Pala Indian Reservation Cultural Center hosted by Clairemont High School. Sponsored by the nonprofit Americans for Indian Future and Tradition, with the help of Ken Kragen and Friends, Williams performed two shows. The event raised enough funds to pay for the construction of the block walls.
Williams then concentrated on a variety of programs for his concert appearances. His "Concert for Bluegrass Band and Orchestra", also titled "Symphonic Bluegrass", has been performed with over 40 symphony orchestras. These include the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, and Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. In 1994, he played six sold-out concerts with the Oregon Symphony in Portland, Oregon. In the 1990s, he also performed with the Eugene Symphony with friend Ken Kesey. Williams' plexiglass guitar appears on the cover of the album.
He released an acoustic instrumental album of Christmas and holiday music, A Gift of Song, on the Real Music label. It featured arrangements of traditional carols and original compositions. In 1992, the Vanguard label released Music 1968–1971, a compilation of tracks from his five Warner Bros. albums recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In conjunction with the release of this album, Williams added a "Holiday Concert Program" to his repertoire, featuring music from the album and other traditional music of the season.
In 1998, BMI, the performance-rights organization that tracks air-play performances on radio and television, presented Williams with a Special Citation of Achievement in recognition of the great national and international popularity of "Classical Gas". By 2008, the song logged over six million broadcast performances, to become the all-time number-one instrumental composition for air play in BMI's repertoire.
Film, television, and recent work
Williams' music has been featured in several movies. These include The Story of Us, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Dish, The Heidi Chronicles, and Heartbreakers. His compositions also have been played on the television series The Sopranos.
In late 1999, the Bluegrass Band and he played for Byron Berline's Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. In February 1999, Williams' "Bus" art piece was included in the Norton Simon Museum exhibition "Radical Past", in Pasadena, California.
In 2003, Williams released an EP, Music for the Epicurean Harkener. He was again nominated for a Grammy in 2004 for best instrumental album. In 2005, he collaborated with UK guitarist Zoe McCulloch on the album Electrical Gas. In June 2006, Williams performed at his 50th high-school reunion at Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City. He performed with other musicians as Mason Williams and Friends at concerts in Eugene and Springfield (Oregon) and at the opening gala at the Richard E. Wildish Community Theater in Springfield. and artist Edward Ruscha, performing at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. In October 2007, he was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and co-headlined a concert with Everclear and Paul Revere and the Raiders.
In 2022, BGO Records announced the release of a two-CD collection of five of his early albums.
Comedy
Stand-up comedy and "them poems"
Outside of music, Williams performed as a stand-up comedian. He set most of his comic ideas to music and sang or recited the jokes in lyric form with guitar accompaniment.
In 1964, Vee-Jay Records released Them Poems, a record album on which Williams entertains a live audience with "them poems about them people". The album covered such varied topics as "Them Moose Goosers", "Them Sand Pickers", and "Them Surf Serfs". A typical "them poem" is "Them Banjo Pickers", which begins: "Them banjo pickers! Mighty funny ways. Same damn song three or four days!"
Several other "them" poems, along with many ditties, song lyrics, odd and amusing photographs from around the country, and assorted bits of visual and verbal silliness are collected in The Mason Williams Reading Matter (Doubleday, 1969). The Them Poems record album was reissued (also in 1969, on the heels of the success of "Classical Gas") as The Mason Williams Listening Matter.
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
Williams has written more than 175 hours of music and comedy for network television programming. He was a prime creative force for CBS' controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. His experience in folk music gave him the background for many of Tom and Dick Smothers' comedy routines. With co-writer Nancy Ames, he also composed the show's musical theme.
On the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he created and perpetuated the 1968 "Pat Paulsen for President" campaign, an elaborate political satire.
In 1968, he won an Emmy Award for his work as a comedy writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Other television work
Other television personalities for whom he has written include Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Dinah Shore, Roger Miller, and Petula Clark.
In 1980, Williams briefly served as head writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live. He left after clashing with producer Jean Doumanian.
In 1988, Williams received his third Emmy nomination as a comedy writer for his work on The Smothers Brothers 20th Reunion Special on CBS.
Other artistic work
As a photographer, Williams published a life-sized screenprint of a Greyhound bus titled Bus in 1967. Street photographer Max Yavno took the photograph, then enlarged and printed it on 16 billboard sheets. Williams assembled the prints using of Scotch tape. Williams appeared with the print on the cover of his first album. The project, published in an edition of 200, reflected the influence of Williams' friend and collaborator Ed Ruscha. As Williams remarked, "the film was to be a slow-motion aerial ballet in which an old bi-wing aeroplane skywrites 'draws' the stem and leaves of a flower in the sky beneath the sun, the sun itself thereby becoming the blossom of a 'Sun' flower." Due to technical difficulties dealing with filming directly into the sun, the film did not turn out. Nevertheless, the completed flower measured and lasted 40 seconds.
Environmentalism
After becoming involved in protests against a Willamette River hydroelectric power project, Williams eventually collected over 400 songs about rivers. He created a program called Of Time and Rivers Flowing that encompasses classical, folk, minstrel, gospel, jazz, country, pop, and contemporary rock music genres.
Personal life
Williams married Sheila Ann Massey on April 22, 1961; they had one daughter, Kathryn Michelle, before divorcing.
He remarried, to Katherine Elizabeth Kahn, in February 1994; the couple divorced after 10 years.
He lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his Canadian-born wife, Karen, an attorney.
Discography
Albums
As a band member
- Folk Music as Heard at the Gourd, Mason Williams, Steve Brainerd, Johnny Horton & Joe Lawrence, 1960
- Songs of the Blue and Grey, The Wayfarers Trio, 1961
- More Hootenanny, The Hootenaires, 1963
As principal artist
- Them Poems, 1964
- The Mason Williams Phonograph Record, 1968, No. 14 US
- The Sound of Mason Williams, with Paul Sykes & the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, 1968
- The Mason Williams Ear Show, 1968, No. 164 US No. 44 US