With a tap of his foot and a smile on his face, Mike Williams launches the WMDs into the “Old Black and Bluegrass Widowed Blues.”

The champion fiddler wrote this, he recalls, after camping out at a bluegrass festival in Georgia in the 1960s and watching a woman take care of two toddlers.

“The husband was a banjo player, of course,” Williams says, laughing with his bandmates at the inside joke. “He’d just come back every once in a while to get another beer.

“… I wrote the words when I worked nights at a mental hospital. I’d bring my guitar with me; I had a lot of time on my hands.”

The WMDs — which doesn’t stand for Weapons of Mass Destruction; it’s the first letter of the last names of the three founding band members — is the latest in a lifetime of making music for Williams. He enjoys playing so much that the band and Williams’ friends will celebrate his 70th birthday playing at a music party at the Rathskeller (in the basement of the Montana Club) on Nov. 30.

It promises to be a big bash, because Williams has touched a lot of people’s lives since he first danced on a Florida beach when he was 2.

“He’s such a mover and a shaker,” notes longtime friend Barb Piccolo. “Mike’s a fabulous musician who’s willing to help people who are beginners get better. He plays anything and everything. He’s a wonderful person.”

A day after last week’s band practice, in his garage-turned-music studio and repair shop, the stout Williams offers up a black-and-white photograph of him dancing in his diapers in front of his family’s surf club in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was an only child, raised in a retirement community by a mother who sang and a father who whistled.

“Both are bona fide musical instruments,” he says earnestly but with a twinkle his eyes, making it hard to tell if he’s pulling your leg. “My mother’s sister played guitar and sang; my father’s sister lived down the street and played piano.”

His parents often took Williams to square dances in North Carolina, where he’d crawl into the cloak room and either fall asleep on the pile of coats or made up games he could play by himself. He didn’t realize it at the time, but the music he was hearing would shape his life.

“I was being conditioned,” Williams said. “My parents didn’t have any friends who had kids, so I listened to the radio all the time and created a rich fantasy life.”

He noodled around on an aunt’s piano for years, and tried but failed to play the clarinet when he was in the seventh grade.

“I wanted to be an overnight success on the clarinet, and I couldn’t. I quit after six months,” Williams said.

He took up the drums in high school, and played big band hits in a dance band. Williams got into jazz when he fell in with a trio while in the service, stationed in Guam.

“It was after the Korean War and before Vietnam. It was a good time to be in the military because no one was shooting at you,” Williams said.

He used the GI Bill to attend college, where Williams became what he jokingly calls a “professional student,” taking 11 years to earn degrees in philosophy and history. He’s still just one dissertation away from earning his doctorate.

Williams moved to Tallahassee, Fla., where he met his mentor, Cherrill Heaton, who handed Williams a mandolin and taught him three chords so they could play at a party that weekend.

“He was my guru,” Williams said. “He was the guy who got me started.”

And what a start it was.

Today, Williams plays the fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar and just about any other stringed instrument. He performs bluegrass, Cajun, Irish and Latin love songs and dance numbers, plus some music he refers to as “Puerto Rican hillbilly tunes.”

Williams moved to Helena about 33 years ago, where he became a charter member of the renowned Parlour Pickers, an “incubator group” that has spawned dozens of new bands. He’s organized numerous folk festivals, and his walls and shelves are cluttered with awards and accolades. He’s taught hundreds of people, ages 4 to 80, to play and still retains around 25 students.

“He’s renowned nationwide for the old-time stuff, but he’s also an all-around accomplished musician,” said Susan Mittelstadt, who learned mandolin from Williams 10 years ago and is a member of the WMDs. “Mike is the guy who holds it together. He has such a range of material and his ability to play with everybody and anybody, is just amazing.

He’s passed his love of music to his three children. Kyle, 24, started playing the ukulele when he was only 4 years old. Aaron, 18, plays electric bass in a reggae band. Emily, 17, plays fiddle, mandolin and guitar

And Williams retains his philosopher’s wonder of the world around him, and of the path he’s following.

“I’m always learning from somebody else. It’s like a process, like a river that’s never solidified, because a lot of the students give you insight into things,” the teacher says humbly. “I’m like a guide through the fog; I know one of many pathways and just try to point you in the right direction.”

Click the play buttons below to hear two Mike Williams songs recorded live by reporter Eve Byron:












Reporter Eve Byron: 447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com