As an avid viewer of the usually wonderful series Unsung, sometimes I scratch my head over their choices. On what planet are George Clinton and Isaac Hayes considered unsung? I’ve no idea, but Oakland-bred soul man Lenny Williams surely satisfies the criteria. While the man has spent most of his life writing and singing popular music with the influential funk band Tower of Power (“What is Hip,” “Soul With a Capital S”) as well as his own solo hits “Choosing You” and classic midnight baby making anthem “’Cause I Love You,” many folks still have a hard time recognizing the face behind that richly beautiful voice.
Unlike many recording artists of any generation, Williams, who recently released a new single called “Hooked on Love,” wasn’t all about the glitter and fame as much as he was about the work. “Even when I started out, I already had two sons, so I wasn’t one of those people popping pills or doing heroin,” Williams says from his Bay Area home via telephone. “I wasn’t no angel, but I only tested the waters, I didn’t dive in completely. Maybe it was my home training or being raised in church, but I stayed away from much of that scene.”
Williams’ family relocated to Oakland from Little Rock, Arkansas when he was only a baby. “I lived on 7th Street, which was the center of Black life in Oakland,” Williams explains. “The clubs, the church and the radio station was only a few steps from my house.” Having grown-up singing gospel in church, he was also inspired by the secular soul of Lloyd Price, Clyde McFadden and Sam Cooke. “I learned from those people, singing their songs. The radio was the best right there and it was free; I used to listen to everything.”
Unlike his old church buddies Sly Stone and Billy Preston, Williams didn’t get his big break until he was almost ready to give up. “I was working a job at the Ford Motor Company, because I needed something secure with a steady check,” he says. “But, that factory work was back breaking.” Having gotten in good with the then-small jazz label Fantasy Records, he recorded the track “Feelin’ Blue” with an unknown writer/producer named John Fogerty, who’d go on to fame as the leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
“John and I both worked at Fantasy with (owner) Saul Zaentz and were friends before Creedence took off,” Williams explains. Although “Feelin’ Blue” was a good song, it didn’t do much in terms of the charts and Williams stuck with his day job. Creedence would go on to become one of the biggest groups of the era while he was still punching the clock at the Ford plant. However, a chance meeting with bassist (genius) Larry Graham, whose nimble fingers plucked for Sly & the Family Stone, changed Williams’ life in a way he’d anticipated for years.
“Sly had moved to Beverly Hills by then, but Larry was still living in the Bay Area,” he recalls. “One day, I happened to see him in the middle of the street. His GTO had broken down, but I pulled over and helped him get his ride running. After I introduced myself, I told him I was a singer-songwriter, and he invited me to his house that night to jam with some friends.” Williams, always the gentleman, arrived with a bottle of wine. “Larry told me, ‘Man, I invite people to my house all the time, but you’re the first to ever bring anything.’ We became good friends after that.”
Lenny began working with Larry on a handful of songs, a few of which appeared on the self-titled Graham Central Station album in 1974. Williams appears on the tracks “Tell Me What It Is” and “The Ghetto,” although contrary to Wikipedia, he was never an official member of the band.
“One day Larry said he needed to get some horns on the tracks, and he mentioned a group called Tower of Power,” Williams says. “But, when they got to the studio, I realized that I knew these guys under their old name which was the Motown Blue-Eyed Soul Band.” After reconnecting with the crew of funky white boys (Williams and keyboardist Chester Thompson were the only black dudes in the band), they began working on material that would become seminal soul tracks for their third album simply titled Tower of Power (1973).
Although he didn’t have a hand in writing “What is Hip,” the hit from that album, Williams’ voice was essential to making that song iconic. “It was a pretty easy song for me to sing,” he says modestly. “We recorded it at Wally Heider Studios. Heider was a famous recording engineer. The song was pretty straightforward. Other songs were harder, but I had a pretty good time singing that.”
However, when Tower of Power set off the following year to the Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle to record Back in Oakland, the prolific songwriter presented the group with “Don’t Change Horses (In the Middle of the Stream),” a song he’d co-written with the great Johnny Guitar Watson. Williams had met the great urban blues master whose classics include “Superman Lover” and “A Real Mother for Ya” at a party, and the two soon began writing together.
“I was still working at the Ford Motor Company,” Williams says, “and I would get hypnotized by the assembly line and one day I thought about ‘don’t change horses in the middle of the stream,’ which was one of FDR’s campaign slogans and I thought that would be a great idea for a song about relationships. I came down to Johnny’s place one weekend and we put that together. Johnny was a great keyboard player too, so he was in there playing the song and kids were dancing outside the window. That was a good sign. It was a hit, too.”
While Williams was racking up hit records and television appearances with Tower of Power, including the popular Soul Train and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, being on the road began taking a toll on him. “We were such a big group, we were forced to take on a lot of shows so people could get paid,” he says. “But, I had two young sons and I was missing their baseball games and school activities. I had a good time with Tower of Power. I did two years, three albums and then I left in 1974.”
Jumping ship for Motown, he recorded one album at “the house of hits” in 1975 (Rise Sleeping Beauty), but the record flopped. “It was so weird, because Berry Gordy paid me a lot of money, but I never met him until I left the label,” Williams laughs. “He and I are very good friends now, but back then my only dealings were with Suzanne DePasse.”
After asking DePasse for his walking papers, Williams signed with ABC Records in 1977; the label teamed him with songwriter/producer Frank Wilson, who was also a former Motown employee. “Frank had done great work with The Supremes (“I’m Going to Make You Love Me”) and Eddie Kendricks (“Girl You Need a Change of Mind”), so I knew I was in good hands,” Williams says. “The first song he sent me was ‘Riding the High Wire,’ it’s a great R&B song. Then, I played him one of mine and he was like, ‘Man, I love that.’ So, our collaboration was great.”
The first album they did together was Choosing You (1977), of which the title track became a big dance hit. In New York City, star DJ Frank Crocker played the song often as did the DJs at the Garage, where Larry Levan reigned supreme. “It was just amazing, I’d go to the clubs and people would be dancing and having a great time,” Williams said.
However, that was nothing compared to the next year when Williams and Wilson teamed-up for Sparks of Love, the long-player that featured maxi-album track “’Cause I Love You.” As a song that makes tearing out your heart and giving it to your woman seem mild by comparison, Williams loves so hard on that damn song, he makes Cupid look like a hater. “Some men need lots of women,” he sang aguishly. “For their passion to feel / But, I only want you girl, If it’s in, if it’s in, if it’s in God’s will / ’Cause I love you.”
Really? Who could compete with that? Williams cried, begged, prayed, and wept. Almost forty years later, Williams laughs. “The day I recorded that song Frank Wilson, may he rest in peace, said, ‘Hey, Andre (Crouch) wants to come by the studio and holler at you.’ I knew Andre from church, so I said okay. Later, I was in there singing and I see Andre, who I think was one of the greatest gospel singers ever, so I thought, ‘I got to really sing. Andre is out there looking at me.’” The album version clocked in at 7:07. By the end of the song, even dudes were crying.
Writing the song with his friend Michael Bennett a few years before, an earlier version appeared on Williams’ sole Motown album. “The early version was faster and the talking part wasn’t in there,” he explains. “Believe it or not, “’Cause I Love You” was never released as a single, but it was still very popular.” Indeed, the track has since been sampled by Young Jeezy (“I Do”), The Coup (“My Favorite Mutiny”) and Twista (“Overnight Celebrity”). While Williams continues to record and tour the world, nothing the brother sang afterwards ever reached the mountaintop of passion in the same way as “’Cause I Love You.”
Meanwhile, R. Kelly owes brother Williams a check for swiping some of his singing swag. “To me it’s flattering,” Williams admits. “R. Kelly is a bad dude, so talented. To think I might’ve inspired any of his musicality is wonderful. It’s hard to fathom that he even listens to me, but I know he does.” Indeed, he’s not the only one. Now, about that Unsung episode.