There is always great joy in revisiting the early works of an artist we admire, or in discovering them for the first time. For some artists, those first bursts of creativity coincide with the moment they come to public attention. For others, the road to success involves years of working in near anonymity while honing their craft. John Williams belongs to the second group, though his career defies easy categorization. That makes it all the more interesting to look back at the work that predates his international breakthrough in the mid-1970s. Some fans look for the seeds of Williams’ future greatness, as if tracing the musical genome of the work that made them fall in love with his music. Others approach these recordings as a kind of archaeological dig into Williams’ now-distant past, looking for a fuller picture of his range as a musician. Alongside the “dean” of Hollywood film composers, they discover a pianist, arranger, and conductor equally at home in the popular music of the late 1950s and early 1960s and in the jazz vernacular. Both approaches offer a chance to explore Williams’ catalog beyond the familiar classics.
The occasion for this retrospective comes courtesy of the French independent label Frémeaux & Associés, which recently devoted a collection to a selection of early recordings from Williams’ vast discography. John Williams – Intégrale 1957-1962 – Jazz et musiques de films is a three-CD set that reissues six albums from Williams’ early catalog, including his first releases as a recording artist. It brings together The John Towner Touch (1957), World On a String (1957), Checkmate (1961), Rhythm In Motion (1962), The Johnny Williams Orchestra Plays Sounds From Screen Spectaculars (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1957). The set also includes tracks from Modern Jazz Gallery (1957), on which Williams was featured alongside titans of West Coast jazz, and a few rare 45 rpm singles. Williams appears primarily as a pianist, arranger, and conductor. The set also includes some of his earliest officially released music as a composer, such as the solo piano piece “Hello” and the original soundtrack album for the television series Checkmate, one of his earliest composing assignments in Hollywood. Although the title bills it as an intégrale, the set is a selective survey of those busy early years. It captures several facets of Williams’ musical personality, particularly his dexterity as a jazz pianist and his inventiveness as an arranger and interpreter.
These recordings originally appeared on labels such as Kapp, Bethlehem, Columbia, Craftsmen, and Tops, whose catalogs are now managed by either Sony Music Entertainment or Universal Music Enterprises. Many of the recordings have already been reissued over the years in several formats, including CD and vinyl. They now appear to have entered something of a gray area over sound recording rights, at least in some European Union countries and the United Kingdom—the UK-based independent label Jasmine Records is also reissuing early recordings by Williams, including, much to the puzzlement of completists, some of the same albums and tracks found in the Frémeaux collection. The recordings appear to have received some sonic polish, though they do not appear to have been remastered from the original tapes. The sound is good enough to let listeners rediscover Williams as an all-around musician. Project curator Olivier Julien contributes a succinct, informative essay tracing Williams’ life and career of more than 70 years. The set omits the original jacket notes and, regrettably, provides no performance credits, recording dates, or venues.
It’s illuminating to look at the context in which the young “Johnny” Williams made these recordings and began building a career in Hollywood. The late 1950s were a vibrant and creatively fertile period. The record industry was enjoying a resurgence thanks to the advent of stereo and high-fidelity recording, which brought greater clarity and a new sense of space to home listening. Jazz was arguably at its commercial peak, and rock ’n’ roll was about to take the world by storm. Meanwhile, the major film studios began pouring more money into large-scale productions and new technologies. With television now a fixture in American homes, the studios wanted to give audiences a reason to keep going to the movies.
In this rapidly changing landscape, John Williams took his first steps as a session pianist and arranger. He played piano mainly at film recording sessions for Columbia Pictures while freelancing as a pianist or arranger on recordings by artists such as Harry Belafonte, Carmen McRae, Marjorie Lee, and Yvonne DeCarlo. As Williams often recalled when looking back on his early days as a professional musician, he was a strong sight-reader, which made him an ideal session player, especially for film. He was also a natural jazz musician who could adapt his playing to a wide variety of settings. His arranging skills, honed during his studies with Robert Van Eps and his stint in the Air Force, were already highly developed and gave him similar versatility. Williams already had the mindset of what he would more than once call a “working musician.” He said yes to nearly every job he was offered and treated each one as a chance to develop and refine his already considerable skills.
On his debut album, The John Towner Touch, Williams plays with grace and effortless dexterity, striking up lively musical conversations with guitar, upright bass, and drums on standards from the Great American Songbook and popular tunes of the day. The playing is unshowy and full of the easy swing and good humor of West Coast jazz. Backed by Joe Mondragon on bass, Jack Sperling on drums, and Howard Roberts on guitar, with occasional string accompaniment by Russell Garcia, Williams is the star of the album. Issued under the name John Towner, using his middle name as his surname, the record can be heard as the start of his public career as a recording artist. Perhaps more impressive is how much he did in 1957 alone. In addition to The John Towner Touch, Williams received front-cover credit as pianist, arranger, or conductor on at least three other albums, each with a different instrumental lineup and a repertoire ranging from jazz standards and movie tunes to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Throughout, Williams keeps the material fresh and vital with a measured, sophisticated approach. Several arrangements on The Johnny Williams Orchestra Plays Sounds From Screen Spectaculars, for example, show what he could do with limited resources on a commercial record and anticipate some of his later work. His breezy take on “Aquarela do Brasil” predates by 60 years his return to the tune in the Canto Bight sequence of The Last Jedi (2017). Jerome Kern’s “Long Ago and Far Away,” meanwhile, would become a staple during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Pops.
Williams has expressed little nostalgia for this phase of his career, describing it as “scut work” to biographer Tim Greiving. “I don’t think you could make anything serious out of that except as a result of a possibility. Most of it’s just irritating remembrances of a juvenile life.”1 Despite Williams’ self-disparaging assessment, these recordings are worth revisiting, especially in light of his later work for film and television. Williams was an ace pianist who rarely drew attention to his technique, and he became a first-call player for musicians including Russell Garcia, Jerry Fielding, Dave Pell, and Henry Mancini. Those sessions broadened his experience and show a young musician exploring what he could do. It’s perhaps his arranging, which sometimes borders on composition, that shines brightest, especially in the inventive charts on the 1962 album Rhythm In Motion. We’ve written before about how these arrangements connect Williams’ early influences with his later work, particularly in the way he absorbed and reinterpreted the music and orchestration of Claude Thornhill, augmenting the big-band setup with traditional symphony instruments such as french horn, tuba, reeds and harp. The charts are full of pizzazz and razzmatazz. The irresistible take on “Johnny One-Note” from Richard Rodgers’ Babes In Arms almost sounds like a preview of the sunny, rambunctious music Williams would write for the science-fiction series Lost in Space. The charts also show a sophistication that would become a hallmark of his mature work.
In many ways, Williams sought to follow in the footsteps of his friend and colleague André Previn, who had built a successful career as a pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor. Already an established name in Hollywood, Previn defied easy categorization and put his personal stamp on every assignment. He was equally at home playing jazz, conducting orchestras in his own lush arrangements of show tunes, and writing dramatic symphonic scores for films such as Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962). Previn admired Williams’ talent, helped him land gigs, and even played piano on a few albums that Williams arranged and conducted. Williams returned the favor by playing piano on Previn’s recordings. Previn remained a friendly but persistent influence throughout Williams’ career, often urging him to leave Hollywood behind and devote more time to “serious” music. Williams never took his friend’s admonitions entirely seriously, but Previn did encourage him to take risks. One of the biggest was accepting the offer to become principal conductor of the Boston Pops in 1980, a gamble that paid off handsomely in the years that followed.
It’s worth considering the recordings in this collection alongside Williams’ parallel career as a film and television composer at that time. Television gave him a place to flex his compositional muscles across genres and styles while learning to work under tight deadlines. His crime jazz score for Checkmate is an early example of how confidently he wrote in a style his friend and early mentor Henry Mancini had helped establish on television. For the album, Williams recast some of the music as irresistible, smoky big-band charts in the vein of West Coast jazz maestro Stan Kenton. The recording earned him the first of his 77 Grammy Award nominations. Taken together, these early recordings let us hear how a musician with considerable natural talent spent years patiently honing his craft, one job at a time. Indeed, a working musician.
Footnotes
- Quote in Tim Greiving, John Williams: A Composer’s Life, Oxford University Press, 2025, p. 78 ↩︎
