Walter Williams: The Love Train Keeps Rolling
Reposted from: National MS Society
Walter Williams (left), cofounder of R&B act the O'Jays, was diagnosed with MS in 1983 at the age of 39. Photo credit: Beto De Freitas
Walter Williams had time to think. It was 1983, and Williams — a cofounder of famed R&B act, the O’Jays — had just finished a performance at the Tralfamadore in Buffalo, New York, and was driving the three hours down Interstate 90 to his home in Cleveland, Ohio.And what Williams was thinking about was his right big toe. Why it had gone from sort of numb to completely numb, and, perhaps more pressingly, why the numbness was creeping up his leg as he drove.The numbness had begun at the end of weeks of rehearsal in preparation for a cross country tour, but Williams brushed it off. “I thought because we had bought new uniforms to perform in for that Tralfamadore show that the shoe may have been a little bit too small, not giving my big toe enough room,” Williams says.“And then after my big toe got numb during the performance, the rest of my toes on that right foot got numb. On my way home, after that show, my whole foot became numb and then it started to come up my leg and my knee became numb by the time I reached Cleveland,” he says. “And it frightened me like, I don’t know what’s going on with this, but this has never happened before.”Williams soldiered on, performing the group’s intricate dance steps at night for audiences across the country and stopping at hospitals along the way during the day, hoping someone somewhere could help him. By then, the numbness had climbed up his body, stopping just below his pectoral muscles. “I would tell them what’s going on,” William says of the doctors he met, “and they would examine me, and they couldn’t really give me any answers.”Williams met with a doctor in Los Angeles who referred him to a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic. Finally, he had an answer. “He put me in the hospital for 4 days and they ran all kinds of tests,” William says. “They finally did a spinal tap to see if there was protein in my spinal fluid, and after the test, they told me I had multiple sclerosis. And they didn’t really have a treatment for it at that time.” Williams was 39 years old.More than 40 years later, Walter Williams is still going strong, refusing to let MS keep him from doing what he wants to do — namely, singing, dancing and entertaining with the O’Jays until he decides it’s time to stop.
Give the People What They Want
Born in 1943, Williams grew up in Canton, Ohio, where he met who would become the other original members of the O’Jays, Eddie Levert, Bobby Massey, William Powell and William Isles. Formed in 1958, the group performed under several names, including the Emeralds, the Triumphs and the Mascots. In 1963, the group changed its name for the last time, settling on “the O’Jays” after Cleveland disc jockey, Eddie O’Jay.In 1969, they began recording with Philadelphia International Records and famed producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who became known as the creators of the Philadelphia Sound, recording groups such as the Stylistics, the Spinners and the Jacksons.It would take the O’Jays until 1972 to truly hit it big with “Back Stabbers,” their song about scheming, untrustworthy people. The hits kept coming after that, including “Love Train,” “For the Love of Money,” “I Love Music,” and “Use Ta Be My Girl,” to name a few. Though they had their share of ballads and disco numbers, their music also dealt with weightier social issues: racial injustice, greed, harmony and peace.According to Billboard, the group has had 29 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including the No. 1 “Love Train” and 6 songs in the top 10. They’ve had multiple No. 1 hits on R&B charts, released a total of 18 albums, with 9 achieving platinum status in sales and 10 achieving gold. They’ve received multiple honors and awards, among them four Grammy nominations, the NAACP Award for Outstanding Vocal Group in 1991, the 2002 Soul Train Quincy Jones Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in the Field of Entertainment, the 2009 Black Entertainment Television Lifetime Achievement Award and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.
Photo credit: Beto De Freitas
They’ve also performed for hundreds of thousands of fans over the years — an estimated 500,000 at a Fourth of July festival in Washington, D.C., in 1984, and another 200,000 at Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, also in Washington, in 2010. Williams says the Fourth of July show was one of his favorites, and calls looking out over the vast crowd from the stage “a dream come true.”“The fulfillment is just overwhelming,” he says, “and especially when they really like something and all you can hear is the crowd noise.”There were no disease modifying therapies (DMTs) when Williams was diagnosed in 1983, but he says he was told to take ice cold baths and showers daily to reduce inflammation and stem the disease’s effects.“I used to have to sit in a tub twice a day, 40 minutes of cold water,” he recalls. “because it cooled down the myelin sheath [the protective coating surrounding nerves that becomes damaged due to MS, disrupting proper functionality].”Williams says doctors also told him to keep a face towel in a bucket of ice water on stage, and if he felt weak or different or like he might pass out, to put the towel on top of his head.“I never had to do that, although we performed outside in Baltimore, down by the Pier in St. Louis, a lot of outdoor venues and it was hot,” he says. “And it never affected me like that, but I still dealt with it, with the numbness, when I touched my legs, my feet, my stomach area, all the way up to my pec muscles, it was just like I was touching something foreign.”No matter what, Williams remained committed to a promise he made himself when he was diagnosed.“I never stopped working. I refused,” Williams says. “I had a pity party for probably close to 2 months. ‘Why me? What is this?’ I just broke down. And then I got pissed and I said, ‘OK, if you are going to get me, this is probably going to be the worst fight that you’ve ever been in.’”
Movin’ and Agroovin’
Fellow O’Jay Eddie Levert has known Williams since he was 7 years old and Williams was 6, when the two sang on a local gospel radio station. Williams had shared his diagnosis with the group, Levert says, but didn’t seem to miss a beat.“He was very strong in it,” Levert says. “He knew he had the disease, but he put up the good fight. It was not a lot of crying, not a woe is me, not a lot of that. He just went about doing the gig we were performing.” Other than the daily ice baths and the Avonex shots Williams began taking in 1999, Levert says it was business as usual.“The energy level stayed the same,” Levert says. “He was taking shots and all of that, but he did not let that affect his work ethic. He put in the work.”What really struck Levert was Williams’ attitude in the face of the disease and the strength Levert found from it. “I haven’t said this to him but a few times,” Levert says. “But it made me stronger. Him having MS and him dealing with it and with that positive attitude, it also made me a stronger individual with anything that was wrong with myself.”Toby Ludwig, president of 21st Century Artists, Inc., an artist management and entertainment company that represents the O’Jays, met the group in 1985 when Ludwig worked at Associated Booking Corp. before leaving for the William Morris Agency. Their paths would cross over the years until Ludwig began co-managing the group in 2007, taking over full management a year later.“In the interim, I did not know a whole lot about Walter Williams other than he was an amazing vocalist,” Ludwig says. “As I got to know him, Walter at the time was getting his injections of his MS drugs. And he started telling me about how he had had MS since he was in his 30s, which was just amazing that this man got on stage every day, danced through a show without any complaints. I could see some days were better than others because he had a little bit of a limp. But that was about it.”
Williams’ fellow group members were supportive after his diagnosis and struggles with MS symptoms. Photo credit: Beto De Freitas
These days, Williams says he’s made a few concessions to the disease, but the audience likely wouldn’t know it. “It hasn’t affected my vocals,” he says. “It has affected the way I perform the choreography. The little stuff I can still sell, but when it comes to the spins, the turns, the stuff that I have to put real energy in to make it happen, if I have to make a turn in a half a beat, if I have to do something contrary to the beat, that’s giving me a problem now.”Where possible, Williams says he’s learned how to adapt. “I’m figuring out ways to do it and make it still look good,” he says. “I know that, for the most part, the audience doesn’t know I’m modifying.”Williams has had MS-related bladder issues over the years and underwent surgery to address it. He has also had two occasions where his right foot didn’t work properly.“I can make a nice decent step with my left side,” he says, “and then the other one is just a plop down. And I had enough strength in it that it didn’t make me look like I’m limping. But I knew it was there. And that’s happened twice.”William says he looks forward to “finishing my career on an upbeat note” and doesn’t see MS forcing him to retire any sooner than he wants. “I don’t see myself going out with MS or anything related,” he says. “That’s why I get up and I go out, and I play golf. I’m trying to live and sustain as normal and natural as I can. I know it lurks in the back of my head because I think about it often, but I don’t worry about it. I’ve dealt with it at its worst for me.”
Mike Knight
Mike Knight is a writer in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was diagnosed with MS in 2013.