Martin T. Williams

Martin T. Williams (1924–1992) was born in Richmond, Virginia. Williams attended St. Christopher Episcopal Preparatory School. After his military service during World War II including Iwo Jima, he first studied law, then literature at the University of Virginia (BA 1948), at the University of Pennsylvania (MA 1950) and at Columbia University. He was a critic, specializing in jazz and American popular culture. He wrote for major jazz magazines, notably Down Beat, cofounded and coedited The Jazz Review, and wrote many books on jazz, summing up his understanding of its history in The Jazz Tradition (1970). From 1971 to 1981 he directed the Jazz and American Culture programs at the Smithsonian Institution, where he compiled The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (1973), acquiring rights from all major record labels in order to produce the first truly comprehensive historical anthology.

Animation historian Michael Barrier credits Williams as being responsible for Oxford University Press publishing his book Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Williams and Barrier also co-edited A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics (1982).