Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Francis Williams was born September 20, 1910 in McConnell’s Mill, Pennsylvania. His first gigs were with Frank Terry’s Chicago Nightingales in the 1930s.

In 1940 he moved to New York City, and in the first half of the decade played in the bands of Fats Waller, Claude Hopkins, Edgar Hayes, Ella Fitzgerald, Sabby Lewis, and Machito. From 1945 to 1949, and again in 1951, he played and recorded extensively as a member of Duke Ellington’s orchestra.

Williams worked primarily with Latin jazz ensembles and New York theater bands in the 1950s and 1960s, and played with Clyde Bernhardt and the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. In addition to working with his own quartet, near the end of his life he worked with Panama Francis.

Trumpeter Francis Williams, who was a single father of two, had one son, actor Greg Morris, passed away on October 2, 1983 in Houston, Texas.

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