Robert Hover
At Oklahoma City University, Mason Williams studied mathematics and music. After classes, he played guitar and sang in folk clubs, briefly joining up with the Wayfarers Trio. Following a hitch in the Navy, Mason took up playing music full-time. At a coffee house in L.A., he met Glenn Yarborough of the Limelighters, who introduced him to Tommy Smothers.
Mason and Tom Smothers became good friends, and eventually shared an apartment together.
Williams joined the Smothers Brothers back-up band, composed tunes for the clean-cut, but controversial duo and even wrote some comedy material for them. Johnny Desmond, Gale Garnett, the Kingston Trio and Claudine Longet recorded some of his compositions. Esther and Ali Ofarim’s cover of his “Cinderella Rockefeller” topped the British charts, and Longet’s work on Mason’s marvel in 10/4 time, “Wanderlove,” was a sizable seller in Singapore.
By the release of “Classical Gas,” which he described to Goldmine magazine as “half flamenco-half Flatt and Scruggs and half classical,” Williams was a writer for the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” the highly-popular television program. Before the Smothers Brothers TV demise and Mason’s departure from the show in 1969 for other creative endeavors, Williams won an Emmy award for “Outstanding Writing Achievement for a Variety Show.” “Classical Gas,” his three-minute classic, garnered three Grammys: “Best Instrumental Arrangement,” “Best Contemporary Pop Performance,” and “Best Instrumental Theme.” “Classical Gas” was a favorite of Glen Campbell’s who performed it in his own show.
Over the next year, Warner Brothers records did a rather brisk business of selling Williams’ mongrel music. His first three record albums—”The Mason Williams Phonograph Record” (1968), “The Mason Williams Ear Show” (1968), and “Music by Mason Williams” (1969)—were all best sellers.
A few of his single releases dotted the lowest reaches of the Hot 100: “Baroque-A-Nova” (1968), “Saturday Night at The World” (1969), and “Greensleeves” (1969).
Mason Williams periodically pops up in the record store racks on one label or another. In the meantime, he is certainly not idle. He has had, at last count, seven books published, including such tomes as “The Mason Williams Reading Matter” and “The Bus Book”, plus at one time writing material for Glen Campbell, Petula Clark, Pat Paulson, Andy Williams, and of course, the Smothers Brothers.
For a period in the early 1980s, he was the head writer for NBC’s Saturday Night Live.” At the age of 87, Mason Williams is alive and well and living in Eugene, Ore.