Career
He is best known for his talking blues style. His biggest hit was the novelty song, "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)", which held the number one position on the Billboard charts for sixteen weeks in 1947. "Smoke" was the Number. 5 song on Billboard"s Top 100 list for 1947, and was Number.
1 on the country chart that year.
lieutenant can be heard during the opening credits of the 2006 movie Thank You for Smoking. Williams started out in the early 1940s as vocalist for the band of Western Swing king Spade Cooley, based in Venice, California.
Williams" backing band The Western Caravan numbered about a dozen members. At first they recorded polkas for Capitol Records with limited success.
That was changed by the success of "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke" written in large part by Merle Travis.
In April 1956 Williams appeared on the Chrysler-sponsored Columbia Broadcasting System television broadcast "Shower of Stars". His final radio show was a lengthy conversation taped by Bill Aken"s radio program The Country Call Lincolnshire while Williams was in the Newhall, California hospital. He died two days later.
Aken ran the entire hour and a half tape without commercial interruption, as a tribute to his long-time friend and former employer.
Williams died of pancreatic cancer on October 11, 1985.