Melvin Williams was born on the 21st of June 1953 in Smithdale, Mississippi, Unites States. William was born to Leon Pop Williams, who passed away from a car accident in September 1989. His mother, Amanda Williams, passed on at the age of 94 on 30th of August 2014. Melvin has three brothers, of whom two are alive. He is the second born in the family after Leornard and his younger brother Doug Williams.
Melvin Williams is currently 68 years old and was a gospel musician at the prime of his life. Melvin started his music career aged 35 in 1988 by releasing a solo record titled “Back to the Cross”. He is now estimated to be worth over one million dollars. It is believed that Williams accumulated this wealth from his successful gospel music career.
Career
Williams played the acoustic guitar when producing most of his music. He specialized in traditional black gospel and root gospel during his career. Melvin worked as a singer, songwriter, producer, and overall musician during his career. He has worked with various record labels, including Blackberry, New Day Christian, Melvin Williams Entertainment and Compendia.
Williams’s second album was released in 1992, titled “Living Color”. Six years later, he released his third album, “Never Seen your Face”, with the help of Blackberry Records. The fourth album by Melvin Williams was titled Duets and was released in 2001.
His fifth and sixth albums were released on the same date in 2007. The fifth and sixth albums were titled “Crazy Like Love” and “Love like Crazy”, respectively. The next album was released in 2009, titled “The best of Melvin Williams”. “Where I Started From” was William’s eighth album and was a testament to his long career in the face of adversity. It was released in 2017. “Where I Started From” was released under his Vanity label Melvin Williams Entertainment in partnership with New Day Distributors and featured 12 new tracks. Williams runs the Blackberry Records Inc. and The Williams Brothers record label together with his younger brother Doug.
Interesting Facts
For more than five and a half decades, Melvin played the guitar in vassapoo. This is where the musician holds a right-handed guitar in reverse on the left hand, making the guitar strings sit in the reverse position. A few other talented musicians were able to perform the same trick. Melvin Williams was nominated by the Grammy Awards in the category for Best Soul Gospel Perfomance, male. His song “Back to the Cross” was responsible for this nomination. In 1991 his song “This is your Night” was nominated by the Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Music. “Still Here” was nominated for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album in 2004. The Journey Continues was also nominated in 2009 for the Best Traditional Gospel Album.
US Ambassador
Melvin Willliams served as the US Ambassador for the department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural affairs and jazz at the Lincoln Center. He attended international tours hosting master classes under this title.
