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No Jock
William B. Williams

By DAVID HINCKLEY

The most and perhaps only public disagreement ever aired between singer Frank Sinatra and radio host William B. Williams concerned Williams' job title.

In some 40 years at WNEW-AM, Williams never personally minded being called a "disc jockey," common slang for a man who made his living spinning records. In Sinatra's world, however, "disc jockey" had a demeaning ring, conjuring the image of music being shuffled about as casually as one might shuffle cans of tuna fish.

William B. Williams, Sinatra explained to an audience one night at Radio City, was no more a "disc jockey" than Van Gogh was a "brush jockey." William B. Williams, said Sinatra, was a radio personality — host of "Make-Believe Ballroom," a man who presented fine music in the style fine music deserved.

Beyond being a high compliment, this was also Sinatra holding up his end of a mutual admiration society — repaying the man who first dubbed him the "Chairman of the Board."

Since the mid-1940s, Williams had embraced Sinatra as a sterling performer of the golden-age standards he personally adored. Williams would play Sinatra on his radio program daily, and one day, while rhapsodizing about the man and his talent, Williams decided that if Benny Goodman was the King of Swing and Duke Ellington was a duke, Sinatra needed a title as well.

Chairman of the Board it was, and Sinatra loved it the moment he heard it.

Sinatra's debt to Williams also extended beyond mere verbal coronation. Come the early '50s, Sinatra's career was spiraling downward. Other crooners were moving into his spot and his producer at Columbia, Mitch Miller, was trying to bring him back with novelty songs Sinatra despised.

And that's without even mentioning Ava Gardner.

Through it all, however, Williams kept playing Sinatra every day, the good stuff. Loyalty being a language Sinatra spoke, he never forgot.

In personal style, Williams was in many ways the opposite of Sinatra. Where Sinatra was hot-blooded and wore everything on his sleeve, Williams' public demeanor was Bing Crosby mellow. Although he had a friendly manner and he was active in the Friars Club, he was reserved, not a naturally boisterous hail-fellow-well-met. On the air at WNEW, he would sometimes stand behind the microphone with his hands in his pockets, leading some regular listeners to say they could hear him jingling coins in his pocket as he spoke.

Most listeners, however, heard only his voice, one of the defining radio voices of his generation, smooth and mellow and possessed of a natural tone often called "silver."

His sign-on line for the "Make Believe Ballroom" was "Hello, world," and he would work that whimsical tone throughout the show, occasionally identifying himself as "Guillermo B. Guillermos."

Born William Breitbard in Babylon, Long Island, in 1923, he latched onto music early. His primary distinction at Babylon High, he would say years later, was that he could list all of Benny Goodman's records in alphabetical order. He attended Syracuse University for a year before he left to seek a job in radio, for which his only preparation was a short course at NBC "pronouncing school."

He briefly held down the night shift at WAAT in Newark before serving three years in the Army and making his way to WNEW, which fired him in 1947 for striking too aggressive a tone in his position as union shop steward.

After short stops at several other stations — including WOR, where he hosted a comedy show — a management change got him rehired at WNEW in 1953.

He soon became a fixture, and as he gradually met the stars who passed through, he became friends with many of them, including the likes of Lena Horne and Tony Bennett.

As rock 'n' roll seeped into popular music, Williams moved quickly and firmly into the camp of those who hated it. "Most of it's so bad it's embarrassing," he said. "In the days of the big bands, a vocalist had to be able to sing." But he added that teenagers weren't tone-deaf, just misguided.

"I believe teenagers are hungry to hear good music," he said, "and at some point we must assume a lot of the blame for the quality of what is being heard. I use the word 'we' to mean disc jockeys and radio stations in general."

This sentiment no doubt further bonded him with Sinatra, who was telling Congress around this time that rock 'n' roll was "the martial music of every juvenile delinquent in America."

Although Sinatra would eventually sing Beatles songs and WNEW would flirt with soft rock in the '70s, neither man ever became a fan. WNEW ran a newspaper ad with a large headline that said, "We asked William B. Williams what he thought of rock 'n' roll," over a large photo of Williams holding his nose.

By this time, Sinatra was inviting Williams to his California compound and rearranging his schedule to emcee a 40th anniversary celebration for Williams in 1984.

Two years later, Williams died of leukemia, a few days before his 63rd birthday.

"He was the best friend I ever had," said Sinatra. "He was the best friend anybody could have had."

Daily News: Originally published on October 11, 2005