Line #15 Music/DonWilliams


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_1111.JPG]]
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3	Donald Ray Williams (May 27, 1939--September 8, 2017) was an American CountryMusic singer with a career spanning from the 1960s to TheNewTens. He started out as a member of the Pozo-Seco Singers, a folk quartet that had a handful of hits on the pop charts.
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5	Williams signed with JMI Records as a solo artist in 1972 and scored a few hits, but achieved his breakthrough in 1974 with "I Wouldn't Want to Live If You Didn't Love Me" on ABC/Dot. He stayed with Dot until it was bought out by MCA, and later recorded for various other labels. He scored 17 #1 hits on the country charts throughout the 1970s and '80s, and even had a few hits into the early '90s. He had been semi-retired since about 1992, but continued to record sporadically up until his death.
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7	Williams's material was characterized by his soft singing voice and lighthearted ballads. He established a longstanding collaboration with acclaimed songwriter Bob [=McDill=], whose literate, but unpretentious, lyrics suited Williams's voice perfectly. His most successful crossover hit is "I Believe in You" in 1980, which went to #24 on the pop charts. His 1979 hit "Tulsa Time," as close as his material ever got to classic/southern rock, would be covered a year later by Music/EricClapton, while another 1979 Williams' hit, "It Must Be Love," was covered by Music/AlanJackson in 2000.
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9	!!Tropes present in his work:
10	* BSide: One of Don's earliest country hits was 1973's "Come Early Morning"/"Amanda," for which radio stations played both sides.[[note]]This was despite radio stations, by this time, being serviced only with 45 RPM records having the same song on both sides of the record; the record companies by the early 1970s were wanting specific songs played on radio, and supplying records this way discouraged disc jockeys from flipping a record that had flopped over to find a song they might have liked better ... something that had happened many times over the years.[[/note]] Despite only reaching No. 12 on the country chart, the song was one of the biggest hits of the year thanks to an extended chart run and popularity -- from mid-May to early October -- that rotated from radio station to radio station, region to region and record store to record store ... it was never massively popular all at once, but the big picture showed it was one of 1973's biggest hits despite its relatively modest chart finish.
11	* ChronologicalAlbumTitle: His first three albums were called ''Volume 1'', ''Volume 2'', and ''Volume 3''.
12	* TheCityVsTheCountry: "Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy" finds the country boy mourning the loss of his childhood hangouts to suburban growth.
13	* DyingTown: The subject of "Old Coyote Town".
14	* GentleGiant: He was nicknamed the "gentle giant" for the contrast between his imposing height and soft gentle singing voice.
15	* GoodOlBoy: "Good Ole Boys Like Me" is about one who feels out of place in society.
16	* HotGypsyWoman: "I Recall a Gypsy Woman".
17	* ListSong:
18	** "I Believe in You" is a list of things that the singer does ''not'' believe in, capped off with his lover as one of the things he does. (Incidentally, the original song lyrics were really a list of things he didn't believe in, such as "the rising cost of getting high." At Williams' behest, the lyrics were modified, such as in the example "the rising cost of getting '''by'''.")
19	** "Good Ole Boys Like Me" tosses out a bunch of names of people who were part of the youth of a Southern Baby Boomer, like Music/HankWilliams, Creator/TennesseeWilliams, Creator/ThomasWolfe, [[Film/SongOfTheSouth Uncle Remus]], [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Gen. Stonewall Jackson]], Creator/WolfmanJack, and John R., a legendary Nashville DJ.
20	* ThePowerOfLove: "Then It's Love" is about how love can't be defined in concrete terms, but rather, by "how it makes you feel" ("Well, if it knocks you off your feet, then it's love…"). "True Love" from 1991 is a more sincere take on the same approach, comparing love to Adam and Eve or "Love Me Tender".
21	* RefrainFromAssuming: He may "believe in love" but the song is called "I Believe in You".
22	* RhymingWithItself: "Tulsa Time" rhymes "time" with "time" repeatedly.
23	* SelfDemonstratingSong: "Tulsa Time" is a prime example of a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_sound "Tulsa sound"]] song.
24	* WithLyrics: His 1981 hit "Miracles" uses the melody of Music/AntoninDvorak's "Largo" from the ''New World Symphony''.

Context Music / DonWilliams