He’s now known on the Web as the man with the golden voice. But before that, he was known as a guy standing on the side of the road with a sign – just like many other homeless people.
The man with the golden voice, Ted Williams, is an internet sensation. And apparently, his fame may have landed him a pretty good gig: CNN affiliate WEWS reported that the Cleveland Cavaliers have offered Williams a job and a house.
Williams’ story is the epitome of how dreams can come true in the internet age. And practically overnight.
His story was first reported in the Columbus Dispatch; a photographer drove up to Williams on the side of the road and videotaped him as he held a sign that said in part, “I have a God given gift of voice.” The photographer wanted him to prove it to earn some cash, and boy, did Williams deliver. He rattled off, in a James Earl Jones-esque voice, what seemed like a perfect radio station tease.
The story exploded from there. From all over the internet, including on the message board Reddit, people began tracking his whereabouts and trying to offer him jobs. That led to radio interviews and even an interview with CBS’s “Early Show” today.
Oh, and did we mention that the video of him speaking for the Dispatch reporter has gotten (as we write this) more than 4.5 million hits in just two days? It’s also the top viral video, according to ViralVideoChart.com, which tracks the rate of shares and clicks on videos.
Call him the radio-voice version of Susan Boyle.
Frumpy British singer Boyle “dreamed a dream” on a TV talent show and sold millions of records, proving that sometimes the most sensational voices come from the places you least expect. And then again, perhaps we jump to conclusions when we form impressions about people.
“Hand on heart, we didn’t know what was coming at all,” CNN’s Piers Morgan, who was a judge on “Britain’s Got Talent,” recently said of Boyle.”We were like ‘Oh, my God, this is going to be a total train wreck.’ We were all laughing and mocking.
“The moment she sang, you see our faces frozen into two kinds of horror,” he added. “One, that we didn’t recognize her talent, and two, that we now know there’s going to be a YouTube clip for the rest of our lives of us mocking this amazing woman. … So whenever I have someone coming on who is not your standard-looking pop star, I sit there resolutely, just in case.”
Indeed, Morgan is applying that lesson with Williams, tweeting earlier, “Greatest unheard radio voice ever: http://bit.ly/hkeanN If you know this guy pls tell him to enter ‘America’s Got Talent’.”
Now, Williams is experiencing a similar whirlwind tour.
Although he didn’t have Boyle’s TV platform, or a similar show that shot a Taiwanese boy to fame for singing like Whitney Houston, he did have the same power of the Web. Who knows how many people drove past Williams as he stood on the street, waiting for someone to recognize his talents, before he was taped and put on YouTube.
“Hopefully somebody from one of these television or radio stations will say, ‘hey, I need a voice-over’ or ‘ I need something,’ ” Williams said on “The Early Show.”
And because of his internet rise to fame, now the dream that Williams has dreamed for so long for himself may also be coming true.
WEWS said that although they are still tightening up a deal, the Cavaliers offered him full-time voiceover work with the team and with Quicken Loans, the mortgage giant founded by Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, along with the mortgage for a house.
They may have lost the power of LeBron James in their building, but perhaps the Cavs have gained the power of a voice that may become a legend.
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