Bing Crosby first learned of the Charioteers when he attended a touring stage play, Hellzapoppin, in which the Charioteers performed. He invited them to perform on his NBC weekly radio show, the Kraft Music Hall, in October of 1942. They were signed as regulars on the show that month and remained with Bing on his radio show for the next 5 years. During the war the Charioteers often accompanied Bing to entertain troops and sell war bonds. Billy Williams was drafted during the war and left the group for 6 months until he received a medical release in 1944 with the help of Bing. Although the Charioteers did not commercially record with Bing (they were under contract to different record companies), they did record with other top vocalists, and produced two top 30 hits with Frank Sinatra ("Don't Forget Tomorrow Night") and Buddy Clark ("Now is the Hour"). Their seven solo hits include "So Long" (1940), "On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City" (1946), "Open the Door Richard" (1947), "Chi-Baba" (1947), "What Did He Say?" (1948), "Look-A-There Ain't She Pretty" (1948), and "A Kiss and a Rose" (1949). During this same period the Ink Spots produced more than 3 dozen top 30 hits.
The Charioteers left the Crosby radio show in 1947 to perform at the London Paladium and Paramount Theater in New York.
In 1950 Billy Williams was asked to form a group to perform regularly on TV in Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. The TV producers thought his fellow Charioteers were too old. So Williams left the Charioteers and formed The Billy Williams Quartet. The Charioteers with a Williams replacement continued to perform throughout most of the 1950s but without their previous chart success. The group disbanded in 1957. Williams eventually became a solo artist and was the first in-person guest on American Bandstand on its debut August 5, 1957. Diabetes claimed Williams voice in the 1960s and he died destitute in Chicago of a heart attack at age 61 on Oct. 17, 1972.