Andy Williams, 1927–2012

With his silky voice and easy-going charm, Andy Williams long seemed like a perfect embodiment of clean-cut American decency. But his wholesome image was touched by scandal in 1976, when his ex-wife, former Las Vegas showgirl Claudine Longet, shot and killed her boyfriend, U.S. skiing champion Vladimir “Spider” Sabich. Williams stood by his ex-wife, who claimed the shooting was accidental, escorting her to the courthouse and testifying on her behalf. Longet was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor, and spent just 30 days in jail. “I was there to take care of my kids and make sure they were all right, and because I love my ex-wife,” Williams later said. “I wasn’t worried about my image. That was the last thing I cared about.”

Born in Wall Lake, Iowa, Williams started singing as a boy with his three older brothers in the local Presbyterian Church choir, said The New York Times. When his father, a railroad mail clerk, first heard four of his sons harmonizing, he became “convinced that we had a future as professional singers,” Williams recalled. With their dad as manager, the Williams Brothers became a hot property: Bing Crosby hired them to do backing vocals on his 1944 hit “Swinging on a Star,” and they appeared in half a dozen movies.

The strains of touring led the group to split in 1951, and Williams initially struggled to launch his solo career, ending up so broke “that he resorted to eating food intended for his two dogs,” said Variety. A two-year stint on Steve Allen’s Tonight show turned things around, and in 1962 NBC offered him his own variety program, which ran for nine years. The Andy Williams Show largely spurned rock ’n’ roll bands in favor of well-scrubbed acts like the Osmond Brothers and Bobby Darin, and the show’s popularity “kept the crooning Williams afloat during the tidal wave of pop in the 1960s,” said The Guardian (U.K.). By 1973, he had earned 17 gold records with easy-listening albums that mixed popular ballads and movie themes, such as “Where Do I Begin” from Love Story and “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

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Those hits made Williams a multimillionaire, but he never considered retiring. During a 2007 tour of Britain, he attributed his longevity to the joy of performing. “Perhaps that two hours out onstage,” he said, “is the medicine that everybody should have.”