Williams' Wagon Keeps Rolling Through The World

According to his manager, "he's a megastar in Zimbabwe." Ed Stewart—veteran DJ at BBC AC network Radio 2, the U.K.'s most-listened-to radio station—simply states, "We'll be playing him forever."

The man they're referring to, Don Williams, is an industry anomaly. For 30 years, Williams has successfully exported that most American of musical genres—country music—to audiences from Africa to Australia, although he is now on the fringes of popular consciousness back home.

On Dec. 1 in Springfield, Ohio, Williams winds up a lengthy tour that began March 30 in Winston, Ore., and took in a recent extensive 16-date U.K. leg. Williams' attention will be more focused on his international audience in 2002, his Nashville-based manager Robert Pratt says. "Next year, he's extremely busy—Australia [and] New Zealand at the end of April, back to America, then Europe in July, and the U.K. in October. [And] in between, he's touring in America."

The latest tour was largely in support of a new album available only in the U.S., Live Greatest Hits Volume II (Row Music Group). Pratt reports that MCA also recently issued another best-of set, titled Millennium Collection Vol. 2 in the U.S. "Live Greatest Hits Volume II came out [in the U.S.] May 1 and at the last count had sold 50,000," he notes. As well as any new material, Pratt's Oiyal Chimes Music Group has rights to recordings released by Williams through the American Harvest imprint in the 1990s.

A 20-track mid-price compilation titled The Best Of, covering Williams' output from 1974 to 1982, was released by MCA in the U.K. in September, ahead of the tour. Although Williams has only made The Billboard Hot 100 once as a solo artist—with "I Believe in You" (MCA), which peaked at No. 24 in 1980—in the U.K., he had two top 40 singles in 1976 with "I Recall a Gypsy Woman" and "You're My Best Friend" and scored no fewer than six top 30 albums between July 1976 and September 1979.

In Britain, Williams sells "quite regularly as a catalog artist," says Rudy Osorio, London-based HMV U.K. specialties manager. "On our own HMV Easy label [repackaging EMI catalog], he is consistently our second-best-selling country artist in the U.K. and Ireland, after Slim Whitman." HMV Easy has a catalog of single-artist jazz, country, and easy-listening compilations, Osorio notes. The material on the imprint's Williams album comes from his period on the Capitol label in the late '80s. Radio 2's Stewart notes that the station's fondness for the artist comes down to the simple facts that "he has a big fan base in Britain—and he sings good songs."

Williams' chart career began in 1966, when he scored two top 40 hits on The Billboard Hot 100 as part of Columbia-signed Texan trio the Pozo-Seco Singers. In 1971, he headed to Nashville and achieved solo success on the ABC label. The next 10 years brought him a host of honors, including the Country Music Assn. awards for male vocalist of the year in 1978 and album of the year, for I Believe in You (MCA), in 1981. Williams was a regular visitor to the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart throughout the '80s and into the early '90s.

Williams says the inspiration behind his stripped-down approach to country was an obsession with early forms of popular music. "When I was growing up, I listened to everything—pop music and what became rock'n'roll and country music."

When he began his solo career, Williams recalls, "the majority—if not all—of the records had really big productions. What I was doing was more basic, and most people in the industry in Nashville would say, 'Well Don, it's really good, man, but I don't think it's gonna fly.' So we just did everything we could to get it out there [so that] people could make up their minds."

Although the U.K. country fraternity's affection for Williams has long been apparent, his popularity in other territories is less well-documented. The most unlikely Williams stronghold is Zimbabwe. "People in America don't realize how big Don is in southern Africa," says Pratt, who moved from Glasgow, Scotland, to Nashville to manage the singer in 1998. "The biggest artist [there] is Jim Reeves—I'm sure the people down there don't realize he's dead."

When Williams toured Zimbabwe four years ago, "he did an outdoor show for 20,000," Pratt recalls. He notes that the president of neighboring country Malawi, aware of Williams' popularity in the region, "wanted Don to do an interview rubber-stamping his campaign, because he felt Don would help it." Williams declined that invitation.

In March 2002, the Williams wagon train rolls into Lancaster, Pa., kicking off the year's touring. "He does on average 10 to 12 shows a month," explains Pratt, who says the audiences in the midwest will average capacities of "between 2,000 and 3,000. New York state and the Eastern Seaboard is 1,500-2,000." On Williams' recent U.K. dates, the biggest venue was London's 5,000-capacity Royal Albert Hall.

At 61 years old, the desire to continue touring is down to "the fans more than anything else," Williams confides. "A couple of times I thought it was time to hang it up and hang around the farm in Tennessee, but we met with such opposition that my wife and I decided that as long as I enjoy it and people enjoy coming, I'll keep doing it."