Charles "Hungry" Williams (February 12, 1935 – May 10, 1986) was an American rhythm & blues drummer, best known for the innovative and influential technique he used on numerous recordings that came out of New Orleans in the 1950s and 1960s.
"[2] When Williams got out of the Municipal Boys Home he moved to McDonoghville, a neighborhood community of New Orleans on the West Bank of the Mississippi River.
"[2] Williams told Tad Jones, "Paul Gayten and Earl Palmer and all of 'em used to come up there (to Club Tijuana) just to listen to me play, because they couldn't understand what I was doing.
"[5] During his time at Club Tijuana Williams often took part in drumming contests with Ricardo Lopez, a Cuban percussionist who played bongos and congas.
Williams added Latin effects to his stylistic influences that included marches, country and western, and the music of the Spiritual church of his youth.
[6] In Ridgely's "When I Meet My Girl", Williams came upon the well-known drum set figure of performing the high-low conga accents with rimshot-on-snare and open snare or tom-tom, as he did in Huey Smith's "Free, Single and Disengaged".
Record label owner and producer Al Reed acknowledged, "The change came when Funky Charles started playing drums... and a whole lot of people right now aren't hip to his contribution to rock.
Funky rhythms went as far back as Congo Square and Second Line, particularly in the distinctive styles of drummers like "Tenoo" Coleman, his pupil Williams, Smokey Johnson, and Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste of The Meters.
"[7] Palmer wrote in his autobiography, “A guy we called Hungry, Charlie Williams, was a mother on drums, a guy who never knew how good he was.”[8] In the early 1950s Williams joined pianist Paul Gayten's band during the band's residency at the Brass Rail club on Canal Street.
[9] Warren joined fellow Abbeville swamp pop musician Bobby Charles Guidry in seeking out rhythm and blues artists.
[10] Storm and Bobby Charles would visit the Brass Rail and listen to Paul Gayten's R&B band featuring tenor sax star Allen and- at different times- world-class drummers Palmer and Williams.
[9] Learning from drummer Charles "Hungry" Williams, Warren formed a band in 1956, known as the Wee-Wows (later the Jive Masters).
The band included pianist Huey Smith, saxophonist Robert Parker, and blind singer/ guitarist Billy Tate.
It was the Dew Drop Cafe cook, Huey recalled, who noticed Williams' habit of ordering double portions and subsequently described the drummer as "hungry".
The cuts featured Smith on piano and vocals, Lee Allen on sax, Billy Tate on guitar, Roland Cook on bass, and Williams on drums.
Three tracks from a June 1958 session "Rhythmatic Rhythm", "I Cried All The Way Home," and "What Can I Do" remained unreleased until 1984, appearing on Chess: New Orleans R&B.
Mac Rebennack, also known as Dr. John, explained, "I believe it was Eddie Mesner (of Aladdin Records) that offered Earl the job out on the West Coast, and he took it and cleaned up...
[13] In the late 1950s, Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns toured the South including Florida with the Silas Green Minstrel Show.
In an interview with writer and funk drumming historian Jim Payne, Clayton Fillyau said the most important rhythmic lesson of his life was taught to him by the drummer in Huey "Piano" Smith's band The Clowns.
They started jamming, and the older man, probably Charles "Hungry" Williams, showed him a little lesson in New Orleans drumming, taking him from standard stiff beat-keeping to secrets of the second line.
He was also part of the Ace Records studio session personnel that included Alvin "Red" Tyler on tenor and baritone sax, Lee Allen on tenor sax, Melvin Lastie on cornet, Allen Toussaint on piano, Frank Fields on bass, and Justin Adams on guitar, and Williams on drums.
Other artists recorded for Ace included Sugarboy Crawford, Benny Spellman, Chuck Carbo, Jimmy Clanton, Joe Tex, Bobby Marchan, James Booker, Lee Dorsey, Big Boy Myles, and Mac Rebennac.
Using his "double clutch" style, his hard-driving rhythms punctuated and enhanced hundreds of records on various labels with artists like Fats Domino, Paul Gayten, Professor Longhair, Mickey and Sylvia, Smiley Lewis, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters's, Art Neville, Bobby Mitchell, Frankie Ford, Allen Toussaint, Earl King, Bobby Charles, Chris Kenner, Roy Brown, Dave Bartholomew, Lee Allen, and dozens more.
[21] In the early 1960s, Williams lost his position as the first call studio drummer in New Orleans to John Boudreaux, and dropped out of the recording scene.
New York City became Williams' adopted home as it had for New Orleans expatriate drummers jazz and R&B stickman Idris Muhammad and Charles “Honeyman” Otis, who played drums with Professor Longhair.
“I remember Dr. John was playing 'Iko Iko'", said Barbara Becker, a close friend to Williams, “and Charlie thought the drummer didn't have the beat right.