In March 1999, an 80-year-old man with severe respiratory problems walked out of a Las Vegas hospital against medical advice and set off on foot into the desert heat, collapsing about two miles later. He was Joe Williams, the Grammy-winning featured singer of the Count Basie Orchestra and, to millions of television viewers, Grandpa Al Hanks on The Cosby Show. This deep dive uses that final act of defiance as a lens on a life lived entirely on his own terms.

We trace his roots from Cordele, Georgia to Chicago's South Side and the Jubilee Boys gospel group, then through a grueling journeyman decade with Jimmie Noone, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and Andy Kirk, a serious illness that sidelined him, and the 1950 night Count Basie heard him at the Club DeLisa. We examine why his polished baritone over Basie's driving rhythm section worked so ...