Note up front: Discogs lists three different musicians under the name "Leroy Williams," and its own database explicitly separates them. This profile covers the American hard-bop drummer, Barry Harris's longtime drummer of choice (Discogs artist ID 274396). He is not the UK funk percussionist who recorded with Hi-Tension and Level 42, and not the steel drummer Leroy Ali Williams (1943–2012) of Trinidad — both entries on Discogs carry their own explicit notes redirecting to this artist as "the U.S. based jazz drummer."

Leroy Williams was born February 3, 1937, in Chicago. He was mostly self-taught on the drums, picking up the instrument in his teens on the Chicago club scene, where he had the chance to hear Charlie Parker and Lester Young in person and to talk shop with drummers a generation ahead of him, including Papa Jo Jones and Art Blakey. His first significant professional relationship was with pianist and singer Judy Roberts, with whom he worked from around 1959 into the mid-1960s.

Williams relocated to New York City in the mid-1960s and joined tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin's band in 1967. The years that followed moved fast: in 1968 he was working with Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, and Clifford Jordan, and in 1969 he began what would become the defining relationship of his career, joining pianist Barry Harris — whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. Their first record together, Magnificent!, was recorded on November 25, 1969 for Prestige with Ron Carter on bass and released the following year; it opened a working and recording partnership between Williams and Harris that, on discography evidence alone, ran continuously into the 2000s — well past the thirty-year mark generally cited for it. By 1970 Williams was also touring Japan with Thelonious Monk and recording with Hank Mobley and bassist Wilbur Ware.

The 1970s were his busiest decade as an in-demand sideman. Beyond his ongoing work with Harris — Barry Harris Plays Tadd Dameron and Vicissitudes (both recorded and released in 1975, the latter for the German MPS/BASF label, a piano trio with George Duvivier on bass), and Barry Harris Plays Barry Harris (1978) — Williams played and recorded with Yusef Lateef, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, Ray Bryant, Stan Getz, saxophonist Charles McPherson (his self-titled 1971 Mainstream date, Siku Ya Bibi in 1972, Beautiful! in 1975), pianist Andrew Hill (Divine Revelation, recorded 1975 for SteepleChase), tenor saxophonist Junior Cook (Pressure Cooker, 1977), Sonny Stitt, Al Cohn, and the veteran swing-to-bop reedmen Buddy Tate and Bob Wilber (Sherman Shuffle, 1978, Sackville).

Williams and Harris kept recording together through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s — In Spain (1992, with bassist Chuck Israels), I'm Old Fashioned (1998, Alfa Jazz), The Last Time I Saw Paris (2001, Venus Records, with George Mraz), Live In New York (2003, Reservoir), and Live From New York! Vol. One (2006, recorded live at Fat Cat in 2004) among them — a body of work that makes "more than thirty years" a conservative description of the partnership. In the 1990s Williams also joined El Mollenium, a band devoted to the music of the late pianist Elmo Hope, alongside Hope's widow, pianist Bertha Hope, bassist Walter Booker, and guitarist Roni Ben-Hur. His association with Ben-Hur produced a run of recordings across a decade — Backyard (1995) and Sofia's Butterfly (1997), both of which also featured bassist Lisle Atkinson and pianist Barry Harris on the same sessions, plus Anna's Dance (2001) and Signature (2005). Those two mid-1990s dates are the clearest recorded evidence of the three-way Harris/Williams/Atkinson circle described across all three musicians' profiles on this site; Atkinson's own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile.

From the late 1970s into the 1990s, Williams also played in the all-star bands assembled for Jazzmobile's summer concerts and taught at Jazzmobile's weekly Saturday jazz workshops in Harlem, sharing decades of musical knowledge with students there as well as at Barry Harris's own long-running weekly workshops.

Despite dozens of recording dates as a sideman, Williams didn't step out as a leader in his own right until late in his career. Time Is..., recorded March 10, 2003 in New York and released in 2004 on Jazz Child Records, is his sole date as a leader: a quartet session with guitarist Roni Ben-Hur (also co-producer), pianist Richard Wyands, and bassist Walter Booker. All About Jazz's review praised his playing as supple and subtle, with flawless brushwork and a keen appreciation for the dynamics of the kit — a musician, even on his own record, still inclined to give his sidemen ample solo space rather than the spotlight.

Williams continued working into the 2010s, recording with the Warren Vaché–John Allred Quintet, the Kanji Ohta Trio, and Italy's Massimo Faraò Trio, among others. He died June 1, 2022, at age 85, and was remembered that year in the Arts Fuse's annual roundup of jazz musicians lost, a quiet notice for a musician whose own career, much like his playing, tended to stay out of the spotlight in favor of the bandleaders he served.

A smart, unobtrusive stylist in the bebop mode who shunned gratuitous technical display, Williams built his reputation on reliable timekeeping and decisive, well-defined sticking reminiscent of Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Philly Joe Jones — the same drummers he came up listening to and talking shop with on the Chicago scene as a teenager. Reviewing his sole date as a leader, Time Is..., All About Jazz singled out exactly the qualities that defined his four decades as a first-call sideman: playing that is "supple and subtle," brushwork described as flawless, and a "keen appreciation of the drum kit's dynamics" that let him support a band without ever overpowering it with sticks. It's a self-effacing artistry that made him, in the words of one profile, a musician whose contributions to jazz "often go unnoticed" — a journeyman widely respected by his peers across more than three decades in the company of Barry Harris and a rotating cast of the music's most demanding bandleaders.