Mason Williams

In 1968, Williams won three Grammy Awards for his guitar instrumental "Classical Gas".[5]^:200 "Classical Gas" was released as a single from The Mason Williams Phonograph Record in 1968. "Classical Gas" won three Grammys that year for "Best Instrumental (theme) Composition", "Best Instrumental (theme) Performance", and "Best Instrumental Orchestra Arrangement", Mike Post, arranger. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[6] He also wrote songs for The Kingston Trio. For both Handmade and Sharepickers, Mason received two more Grammy nominations for "Best Album Cover Design".Together with Nancy Ames, he wrote "Cinderella Rockefella", a 1968 number one hit for Esther and Abi Ofarim in the United Kingdom.[7]

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".[8]

Williams has recorded more than a dozen albums, five on the Warner Bros. label (The Mason Williams Phonograph Record, The Mason Williams Ear Show, Music, Handmade, and Sharepickers). The LP cover for the 1968 Music was painted by pop artist Edward Ruscha. The credit reads "Sorry, Cover by Edward Ruscha.[9]

In 1987, Williams teamed with Mannheim Steamroller to release a new album on the American Gramaphone label. The album, titled Classical Gas, included a remake of the 1968 song. Another cut from this album, "Country Idyll", was a 1988 nominee for a Grammy in the country music category for "Best Instrumental Performance by a Soloist, Group or Orchestra". The album went gold in 1991.[10] Williams' plexiglass guitar appears on the cover of this album.

Williams released an acoustic instrumental album of Christmas and holiday music, A Gift of Song, on the Real Music label, featuring arrangements of traditional carols and original compositions. In 1992, the Vanguard label released Music 1968–1971, a compilation of cuts from his five Warner Bros. albums recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Williams relates when compiling the album that he went to Warner Bros. and asked "Where's that painting that Ed [Ruscha] did for that old [Music] cover?" and was told it had been thrown away; a probable loss of 3–5 million dollars.[11]

In conjunction with the release of this album, Williams added a "Holiday Concert Program" to his repertoire, featuring music from the album as well as other traditional music of the season. 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.[3]

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, including the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.[12]

In 1984, Williams released an album, Of Time & Rivers Flowing, on his own Skookum label, containing 14 of the approximately 35 songs performed in the concert. In 1993, the title cut from the album was used as the soundtrack for a ninety-second public service announcement (PSA) created by The American Rivers Council on the home video release of Robert Redford's film A River Runs Through It. The PSA was also on the 1995 home video release of The River Wild.

In 1995, Williams was invited to play for Oregon governor John Kitzhaber's inauguration and in 1996, Williams received an honorary Doctorate of Music from his alma mater, Oklahoma City University.

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.[13]

In 1999, Williams played again for the governor of Oregon's second inauguration. In February, Williams' "Bus" art piece was included in the Norton Simon Museum exhibition "Radical Past", in Pasadena, California. In the spring he played his Of Time and Rivers Flowing concert with the Oregon Children's Choral Festival, a two-day event involving 3,000 elementary school children singing water and rivers songs with Williams and his band. Williams received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Oregon in honor of his Contribution to Oregon's arts.

In the fall of 1999, he and the Bluegrass Band played for Byron Berline's Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival in Guthrie, Oklahoma with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.

Williams' music has been featured in several movies including 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.[14]

In 2003, Williams released an EP, Music for the Epicurean Harkener, and again was 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 as Mason Williams and Friends, the friends including Art Maddox, Mark Schneider, Thom Bergeron, Don Latarski, and Dennis Caffey, at concerts in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon and at the opening gala at the Richard E. Wildish Community Theater in Springfield.[3] He also made special guest appearances in September with many other guitarists at Primal Twang in San Diego, California, and with Craig Einhorn and the Umpqua Symphony Orchestra in Roseburg, Oregon.

In January 2007, he was reunited with long-time friend[15] and artist Edward Ruscha, performing at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.[16] In October 2007, he was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.[17] and co-headlined a concert with Everclear and Paul Revere and the Raiders.[18]

Like many writer-performers, Williams was also 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", covering 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 for 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), and 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.[19]

Williams has written more than 175 hours of music and comedy for network television programming and was a prime creative force for CBS' controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.[20] His experience in folk music gave him the background for many of Tom and Dick Smothers' comedy routines and with co-writer Nancy Ames, also composed the show's musical theme.[21]

It was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that he created and perpetuated the 1968 "Pat Paulsen for President" campaign, an elaborate political satire.[20] Williams also helped launch the career of entertainer Steve Martin. Martin was hired by Williams as a writer on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which his contributions were initially paid out of Williams' own pocket.[22] In 1968, he won an Emmy Award for his work as a comedy writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.[23]

Other television personalities he has written for include Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Dinah Shore, Roger Miller, and Petula Clark.[24] In 1980, Williams briefly served as head writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live, but left after clashing with producer Jean Doumanian.[25] In 1988, Williams received his third Emmy nomination as a comedy writer for his work on The Smothers Brothers 20th Reunion Special on CBS.[23]

In February 2000, Williams participated in the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The sixth annual festival honored The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and its contribution to television. Williams performed a concert with Tom and Dick Smothers, and again on a late night show with performers that included Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Marc Shaiman.[26]

Also a photographer, Williams published a life-sized photo print of a Greyhound bus in the 1960s. He appeared with the print on the cover of his first album, The Mason Williams Phonograph Record. The print is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

• Them Poems, Rel. 1964
• The Mason Williams Phonograph Record, Rel. 2/1968
• The Mason Williams Ear Show, Rel. 11/1968
• Music, Rel. 3/1969
• The Mason Williams Listening Matter (Them Poems re-release), Rel. 3/1969
• Handmade, Rel. 3/1970
• Sharepickers, Rel. 10/1971
• Of Time & Rivers Flowing, Rel. 12/1984
• Music 1968-1971, Rel. 7/1992
• A Gift of Song, Rel. 9/1992
• Of Time & Rivers Flowing, Re-rel. 5/1997
• Classical Gas, at the Wildish Theater, Rel. 12/2006

• Love Are Wine b/w The Exciting Accident, Rel. 4/1966
• Classical Gas b/w Baroque-a-Nova, Rel. 1968
• Classical Gas b/w Long Time Blues, Rel. 8/1968
• Saturday Night at the World b/w One Minute Commercial, Rel. 1968
• Greensleeves b/w $13 Stella, Rel. 1969
• José's Piece, Rel. 1970
• Train Ride in G b/w Here I Am Again, Rel. 1971

• EP 2003: Music for the Epicurean Harkener, Rel. 12/2003
• O Christmas Three, Rel. 12/2009

• Folk Baroque, producer/arranger, Rel. 10/1963
• Introducing Jayne Heather, arranger/musician, Rel. 12/1965
• Tour de Farce, The Smothers Brothers, sideman/songwriter, Rel. 1965
• The Smothers Brothers Play It Straight, co-producer, Rel 1966
• Jennifer (Jennifer Warnes), guest vocalist, Rel. 1969
• Fiddle & A Song, Byron Berline CD, sideman, Rel. 9/1995
• 1995 Sony Disc Manufacturing Holiday Choir, producer, Rel. 12.1995

• Little Billy Blue Shoes b/w Run Comeun See, The Wayfarers Trio, Rel. 1960
• Folk Music as Heard at the Gourd, unknown group name, Rel. 8/1960
• Songs of the Blue and Grey, The Wayfarers Trio, Rel. 4/1961
• Away All Boats (EP), unknown group name, Rel. 4/1962
• More Hootenanny (LP), The Hootenaires, Rel. 8/1963
• Fresh Fish (LP), as Mason Williams & the Santa Fe Recital, Rel. 1978
• Classical Gas, with Mannheim Steamroller (LP), Rel. 10/1987
• Electrical Gas, with Zoe McCulloch (CD), Rel. 7/2005
• Classical Gas, with Craig Einhorn, Rel. 9/2006

• The Big Hootenanny, Rel. 1963
• I Am an American, Rel. 3/1963
• The Twelve-String Story Vol. 1, Rel. 1963
• The Twelve-String Story Vol. 2, Rel. 1963
• The Banjo Story, Rel. 1963
• 5-String Banjo Greats, Rel. 4/1964
• Rock Instrumental Classics Vol. 2 - The Sixties. Rel. 1994
• 1968 Billboard Top Pop Hits (CD)
• Cascadia (1996 Oregon Governor's Arts Awards) Rel. 4/1996

• 40th Anniversary of Classical Gas, Rel. 4/2008
• Source: Official site