Andy Williams, back when he was a star, just before the UL Version, when rock and roll was still fringe, the world was a different place and there was room in it for sleepy, quiet, high melodic men like Andy Williams. A guy who seemed to take the Bing Crosby who discovered microphones didn't mean you had to shout any more, and built a career around it.With his signature cardigans and low beat croon, which was like a murmur but a murmur wrapped in melody. When she hear him today, he is livelier than you might remember. I mean, this is the guy SCTV satirized as falling asleep in a chair while he sang. So I don't think that it isn't that the MOR anti-rock singer was a bore, or didn't care, but that he didn't push into you. Examples of his underplaying abound: "Moon River", "Born Free", "Love Story", "Speak Softly Love"… he hangs back on full orchestrated pop pap. Of the four listed, only the Henry Mancini is a classic. The other three may stamp your nostalgia ticket, but that's about it.
The Andy Williams Show which aired between 1962 and 1971, was a place for pop to doze while the world swirled around and about it. In the middle of the wildness of the 1960s, it was calm and safe, no wonder Williams ended his career at Branson, Mo. He was a blandly handsome purveyor of bad songs. It isn't that Williams didn't know his way round a good song, it is just that he settled his career on the last gasps of the Great American Songbook. Songs that have barely survived the test of time. Many haven't.
When given a great melody, Williams could caress it with restraint, though when asked to emote he wasn't' quite that hot. When given a weak song, stuff like "Charade" (he sang an endless number of movie themes), he could not really swing it, nut if you gave him the goods, listen to his "God Only Knows", where his vocal is the only thing that saves the lame duck arrangement. And he wasn't great at the big American songs either, his "The Way You Look Tonight" takes around three years to get to the point.
But all his Christmas albums are very warm and cheerful and "No Place Like Home For The Holidays" has become a standard and decidedly so. Personally, it is my favorite American seasonal song. In exemplifies so much that I love about the States, and is kinda love about the country. The States, say post-Vietnam, was considered a gentle giant and even if it wasn't true, still it felt like that. And singers like Andy Williams exemplified a middlebrow, Christian, white, peacefulness.
Not surprisingly really, Williams began his career as part of the William Brothers, and sang back-up to Bing Crosby on "Swing On A Star". You can see the connect the way you can see how some singers took various parts of Mick Jagger's persona and amplified it to form a new one. That's what William achieved in his career. A kid from Iowa, who made a career by being sincere, self-effacing, in himself and in his songs. Williams died last month at the age of 84. People aren't that simple anymore.