Product DescriptionPaul Williams came out to Hollywood in search of an acting career, and he's done some interesting parts, including succeeding Michael Dunn as Dr Loveless, Jr. in The Wild Wild West and the character Swan in Phantom Of The Paradise. He also starred alongside Kermit and Miss Piggy in The Muppet Movie. But it was as a songwriter, and subsequently a performer, that he earned his greatest fame.
After he signed on with A&M as staff writer (teamed up with Roger Nichols), several of the duo's tunes were recorded as b-sides and album tracks by various A&M artists, but their first significant commercial breakthrough came when "Out In The Country" became a Top 20 hit for Three Dog Night. Not long thereafter, they wrote a jingle for Crocker Bank, "We've Only Just Begun," that was warmly embraced by the public, including a young Richard Carpenter. He saw it as a potential hit track, if expanded past the sixty-second confines of a television spot. He was right. The Carpenters' version of the tune went gold and hit #2 on the pop charts on its way to becoming perhaps the second-most played tune at weddings, following the ubiquitous Mendelssohn march. Welcome to the big time.
Williams signed to A&M as an artist, making his solo album debut with 1971's Just An Old Fashioned Love Song, and throughout the Seventies he recorded half a dozen discs for the label. While he is modest about his singing talent, there's an intimacy to his versions of many of his hits that renders them immediately engaging. Like many artists, he went through a bad patch in his personal life in the Eighties, but he has emerged triumphant on the other side, and continues to write and perform.
Spanning the half-dozen years he was with the A&M label, Evergreens offers a unique insight into one of pop music's great songwriters, both as writer and performer. And for people who don't know Williams' work as a singer, it places into a new context songs that have occupied considerable acreage.
