Martin T. Williams was born in Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

. He was a critic, specializing in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and American popular culture. He wrote for major jazz magazines, notably Down Beat

Down Beat

Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...

, cofounded and coedited The Jazz Review

The Jazz Review

The Jazz Review was a magazine which was founded by Nat Hentoff, Martin Williams, and Hsio Wen Shih, in New York City in 1958. It was published until 1961...

, and wrote many books on jazz, summing up his understanding of its history in The Jazz Tradition (1970). From 1971 to 1981 he directed the Jazz and American Culture programs at the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

, where he compiled The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (1973), acquiring rights from all major record labels in order to produce the first truly comprehensive historical anthology.

Animation historian Michael Barrier

Michael Barrier (historian)

Michael Barrier is an American animation historian. Barrier was the founder and editor of Funnyworld, the first magazine exclusively devoted to comics and animation. It began as a contribution to the CAPA-Alpha amateur press association...

 credits Williams as being responsible for Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

publishing his book Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age.. Williams and Barrier also co-edited A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics (1982).