One of the coolest moments in the cult movie The Blues Brothers occurs at a mythical shop called Ray's Music Exchange.
Inside, the store’s owner, Ray Charles, starts to pound the piano, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi do the twist and, before long, there is a whole block party of funky dancers strutting their stuff on the street outside.
It's a classic scene, and owes much to the irresistibly catchy song that was chosen: Shake a Tail Feather, which was written not by Charles, but by Andre Williams (along with Otha Hayes and Verlie Rice).
When the film was released, in 1980, Williams was destitute.
“Well, they didn’t know who wrote it at that time,” says the now 79-year-old musician with a chuckle, speaking from Chicago. “That’s what made it so interesting. A lot of things, I didn’t get the royalties until later – it took time.”
Williams's life story is surprisingly neglected, given its memorable moments, which include a tough upbringing and controversial military career, Motown experiences, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, a huge downfall, then a cathartic comeback. Oh, and alternative rock. That resurgence continues with his latest release, I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City.
A suitably vibrant and varied listen, the album is a bluesy love letter to the downtrodden city that forged so many mighty musical talents, Williams included. Not that songwriting was his plan in the early days. Born in Alabama in 1936, he quickly learnt to live by his wits.
“I didn’t have nothing but my father, as my mother died when I was young,” he says. “It was a situation where I did it myself – get out and get it done.”
So Williams got out there and joined the navy – but he lied about his age, they discovered he was too young and took drastic action.
“I was [dishonourably] discharged, so I couldn’t go back to anywhere else,” he says. “Detroit was the last place where I could really get on to something.”
Music has been one of that city’s few growth industries in recent decades – from Motown to garage rock, EDM to Eminem – but both arts and business were still growing rapidly there when Williams arrived in the early 1950s.
“I loved the city,” he says. “And I loved to sing.”
He cut some tracks, but also worked behind the scenes for two fine labels, Fortune and Motown, and did pretty much everything it was possible to do, including writing Stevie Wonder's first single, producing records and managing Edwin Starr (best known for his 1970 chart-topper War). Working hard was the Motown way.
“You couldn’t just do things like you wanted to, you had to do it the way they wanted,” he says.
Williams had a tempestuous relationship with Motown’s founder, Berry Gordy, but refuses to badmouth his old boss. “We got along swell,” he says, with some affection. They eventually parted ways because “I wanted to explore things, get my own label. But it wasn’t that easy”.
A distinctively gravel-voiced vocalist, Williams's own material has been cited as an influence on rap. The largely spoken-word 1966 single Cadillac Jack is particularly worth tracking down.
He went on to write for Parliament/Funkadelic in the early 1970s – there are frequent nods to their psychedelic jams on the new album – and work with Ike and Tina Turner.
Shake a Tail Feather would become a staple of Tina's shows, which helped Williams's finances, but her husband was a less positive influence – Ike helped push Williams down a self-destructive path that had ruined his life by the 1980s.
“That was really an experience,” he says, with less affection, of Turner. And yet he mostly blames leaving home so early for the later issues he experienced.
“I was a man at 17,” he says. “I went straight from boy to manhood – I didn’t have that experience in the middle.”
The forgotten legend was rescued from reckless habits and homelessness by an unlikely source: alternative blues-rock.
The Cramps’ frontman Lux Interior and John Spencer of Blues Explosion fame were both fans, and Williams’s career was reignited, thanks to regular work with bands including Detroit rockers The Dirtbombs.
Elements of his rock era also crop up on the new album, which features illustrious musicians – the Dirty Three’s Jim White, Dennis Coffey from the Funk Brothers – laying down diverse grooves for the great man to growl over, while his lyrics remain wonderfully spiky.
Most interesting is Hall of Fame, on which he lists the possible reasons – scarlet women; his red suit – why that institution fails to recognise him. Does he get the respect he is due?
“I doubt it, but I don’t worry about that – if I do, I won’t think about tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve thought about doing a book, but it seems like every time I start, I’m doing something else. ‘No time, Andre, no time.’ There are still a few things I want to do.”
Has he ever wondered how his life might have worked out if the navy had kept him on?
“I would have done well,” he says. “I think the navy would have been proud of me, just as much as I am proud of myself.”
I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City by Andre Williams is out now on Bloodshot Records
artslife@thenational.ae
