Lifelong wingnut and multiple Grammy nominee Andy Williams has died at the age of 84. Over a career spanning six decades Williams scored dozens of Top 40 hits and 17 gold or platinum albums. The song most-associated with Williams, Moon River, was not released as a single.
With a string of gold albums, a hit TV series and the signature "Moon River," Andy Williams was a voice of the 1960s, although not the '60s we usually hear about. "The old cliche says that if you can remember the 1960s, you weren't there," the singer once recalled. "Well, I was there all right, but my memory of them is blurred — not by any drugs I took but by the relentless pace of the schedule I set myself." Williams' plaintive tenor, boyish features and easy demeanor helped him outlast many of the rock stars who had displaced him and such fellow crooners as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. He remained on the charts into the 1970s, and continued to perform in his 80s at the Moon River Theatre he built in Branson, Mo. In November 2011, when Williams announced that he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer, he vowed to return to performing the following year: His 75th in show business. Williams died Tuesday night at his home in Branson following a yearlong battle with the disease, his Los Angeles-based publicist, Paul Shefrin, said Wednesday. He was 84.
You might recall that Williams was a ugly critic of President Obama and gave Rush Limbaugh permission to use his hit recording of Born Free to mock the animal rights movement. In 2009 Williams said this about the president: "Don't like him at all. I think he wants to create a socialist country. The people he associates with are very Left-wing. One is registered as a Communist. Obama is following Marxist theory. He's taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail."
