Episode Details

Today on Too Opinionated, we talk with singer-songwriter H. Jack Williams!

You'd be hard-pressed to find a life, a career, or a body of work quite like that of singer/songwriter/performer/composer H. Jack Williams. Jack himself credits equal parts luck, talent, and tenacity. "My whole life, I've gone out and gotten stuff done," he says. "I think I have unique emotional connections within me, and I've always found a way to make that connection musically." But for one of Nashville's hardest-working songwriters and most in-demand co-writers – and now with flourishing work in film and television – it's been a one-of-a-kind 40+ year ride with some of the biggest names in Folk, Rock, and Country. And in many ways, he's just getting started. Raised in the tiny town of Eureka, Florida, Williams began writing songs shortly after his 1971 discharge from the US Marines Force Recon. It was while working in Atlanta as a trained Escoffier chef and moonlighting as a roadie that Williams went after his first break by knocking on Richie Havens' hotel room door. "Banged on it all night long," Jack laughs, "until he opened the door and I handed him a cassette." The Woodstock icon invited Jack to New York City to be his opening act, eventually playing on and producing the demo that got Jack a $500 advance from Clive Davis (who insisted on first playing Jack the demo of 'Mandy'). By 1974, Jack was back cooking in Atlanta when he spotted a tour bus belonging to The Who. Still, in his chef whites, Williams approached the road crew and boldly asked for an introduction to Roger Daltrey. "I knew Roger loved songwriters," Jack says, "and Pete Townsend knew songs." Williams was ushered backstage that night and spent the next few months on tour with the band, eventually signing a deal – his first – with the publishing company owned by Daltrey, Townsend, and Who manager Bill Curbishley. For two years and dozens of unmentionable road stories, Jack was mentored by one of the greatest acts in rock history. Towards the end of his Who deal, Williams got a phone call from Ken Hensley, lead vocalist and primary songwriter of UK proto-metal rockers Uriah Heep, who invited Jack to move to London as the band's first outside in-house songwriter. Jack jumped at the invite, and amid opening UK shows for Havens and demo sessions with neighbors like Alvin Lee and George Harrison, Uriah Heep would record four of Jack's songs for the Gold albums Innocent Victim and Firefly. But it was a group of fellow small-town Florida boys that triggered the next chapter of Jack's career. "Lynyrd Skynyrd came to London for their Knebworth concert", Jack explains. "I got to know the band, played Ronnie Van Zant some of my songs, and he suggested I come to Florida and be part of the Southern Rock scene." Williams moved back to the states, founding the Sarasota-based band Streets Of Ice, landing cuts with acts like Blackfoot and Molly Hatchet, and writing with Gregg Allman. Dickie Betts became a good friend and began producing the Streets Of Ice project. But when the band imploded just before signing their major label deal, Betts suggested that Jack's songwriting skills could find a full-time home in Nashville. With a $50 loan and a one-way bus ticket, Williams landed in Nashville and signed a publishing deal with The Oak Ridge Boys, who soon recorded Jack's songs 'Seasons' and 'Everybody Wins'. Jack then had his first major hit, co-writing – with The Allman Brothers Band's Warren Haynes – Gregg Allman's 'Just Before The Bullets Fly. But when the mid-'90s Country Boom began to fade, Williams returned to his culinary background, opening restaurants in North Carolina, Memphis, and Olympia, running kitchen teams on research vessels in the Aleutian Islands and the Azores, and with supply ships during the Gulf War for which he earned a Medal of Bravery from President Bush. "I'd also played clubs in Seattle, which is how Leonard Chess signed me to a writing deal with Ch