SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2015

VOLUME ONE NUMBER TWO

THELONIOUS MONK

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

ESPERANZA SPALDING
January 31-February 6

MARY LOU WILLIAMS
February 7-13

STEVE COLEMAN
February 14-20

JAMES BROWN
February 21-27

CURTIS MAYFIELD
February 28-March 6

ARETHA FRANKLIN
March 7-14

GEORGE CLINTON
March 14-20

JAMES CARTER
March 21-27

TERENCE BLANCHARD
March 28-April 3

BILLIE HOLIDAY

April 4-10

[In glorious tribute and gratitude to this great legendary artist we celebrate her centennial year]

VIJAY IYER
April 11-17

CHARLES MINGUS
April 18-24

http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/marylouwilliams

MARY LOU WILLIAMS

Born: May 8, 1910 | Died: May 28, 1981

Imagine a pianist playing concerts with Benny Goodman and Cecil Taylor in successive years (1977-78). That pianist was Mary Lou Williams. In a career which spanned over fifty years Mary was always on the cutting edge.

She was born Mary Scruggs in 1910 Atlanta. Her mother was a single parent who worked as a domestic and played spirituals and ragtime on piano and organ. At age three Mary shocked her by reaching up from her mother's lap to pick out a tune on the keyboard. Rather than hiring a teacher (for fear the child would lose the ability to improvise) Mary's mother invited professional musicians to their home. By watching, listening and heeding their advice, Mary learned well, especially the importance of a strong left hand. By age six, dubbed “The Little Piano Girl of East Liberty”, she was playing for money around her new home of Pittsburgh, Pa. Her early years included listening to piano rolls of James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith, records of Jelly Roll Morton and seeing Earl Hines play at youth dances. At age twelve she went on the road during school vacations with a vaudeville show. Three years later she quit high school to join the very successful vaudeville team Seymour and Jeanette. Here she met saxophonist John Williams, whom she married at sixteen. When John got the call to join Terrence Holder's band in Oklahoma, Mary took charge of his band, the Synco-Jazzers, in Memphis (Jimmie Lunceford was a member).

By the time Mary joined John out West, Holder was out and Andy Kirk had become the leader of the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Because the band already had a pianist, Mary just filled in. By day, however, she was feeding tunes and arranging ideas to Kirk (at this point she had little knowledge of theory or notation). She soon tired of this process and began writing arrangments herself, influenced by the style of Don Redman. Contrary to Kirk's advice she wrote sixth chords and unlike most arrangers of the time combined instruments from different sections. Ultimately she would become the band's full-time pianist, primary soloist and arranger. During the '30's she also wrote arrangements for Goodman (Roll 'Em, Camel Hop), Lunceford (What's Your Story, Morning Glory?), the Dorseys, Casa Loma, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and others.

Kirk's band was a scuffling territory band in its early days. But the band was based in a place Mary called “a heavenly city”, Kansas City. With fifty clubs and a political machine tied to bootlegging and gambling interests, the city was nearly Depression-proof for jazz musicians. The best musicians from the Southwest and Midwest flocked there and many nationally-known musicians stopped there to jam while on tour (this is depicted in Robert Altman's movie “Kansas City”, with pianist Geri Allen playing the part of Mary Lou). Mary participated in the jams often, including the famous night when Coleman Hawkins tried to cut the local tenor men, including Ben Webster, Lester Young and Herschel Evans.

The Kirk band became nationally prominent after a 1936 Decca recording. Mary stayed another six years, at which point she was tired of touring and pay inequities. David Baker has said “Particularly given those years, 1929-42, it was almost without precedence to have a female in the band who wasn't a singer and secondarily for that female to virtually all the musical decisions in her hands. Mary Lou Williams had the enviable position of being the person who shaped virtually the entire history of a band”. Of her piano prowess in Kansas City, Count Basie said “Anytime she was in the neighborhood I used to find myself another little territory, because Mary Lou was tearin' everybody up”. Saxophonist Buddy Tate seconded this in Joanne Burke's documentary on Mary Lou when he said “She was outplaying all those men. She didn't think so but they thought so”.

Mary returned to Pittsburgh, uncertain whether she'd keep performing. Local drummer Art Blakey, then 18, convinced her to put together a band, including second husband Harold “Shorty” Baker. Six months later she and Baker joined Duke Ellington's orchestra, Mary as staff arranger. Her most prominent arrangement, “Trumpets No End”, based on “Blue Skies”, was recorded in 1946. After six months she left Duke and Baker, moving to New York City. Thus began a rich, productive period as a performer and composer. She played long-standing gigs at Cafe Society, had her own radio show on WNEW, composed “Zodiac Suite”, which was performed by a summer orchestra of the New York Philharmonic, and recorded with a trio. Her tiny apartment in Harlem became a headquarters where the pioneers of modern jazz, among them Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Tadd Dameron, gathered to share ideas, compose, listen to records and get advice from their new mentor, Mary Lou. Unlike most of her peers, Mary loved what the “boppers” were doing. Among her contributions to the modern jazz movement were the tune and arrangement “In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee”, which Dizzy's big band recorded, and a couple of tunes she convinced Benny Goodman to record with his brief bop-oriented small group.

A nine-day job in England in 1952 stretched into two years performing throughout Western Europe. She was an immense hit in Paris. One night, however, she walked off the stage in a state of emotional collapse, spending the following months in the countryside resting and praying. Upon returning to the States her performance activities were limited. Her energies were devoted mainly to the Bel Canto Foundation, an effort she initiated to help addicted musicians return to performing. In support of this effort she ran two thrift stores. She and Dizzy's wife Lorraine converted together to Catholicism. Two priests and Dizzy convinced her to return to playing, which she did at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival with Dizzy's band. Throughout the 1960's her composing focused on sacred music - hymns and masses. One of the masses, “Music for Peace”, was choreographed and performed by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater as “Mary Lou's Mass”. In this period Mary put much effort into working with youth choirs to perform her works, including mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York before a gathering of over three thousand.

Father Peter O'Brien became her close friend and personal manager in the 1960's. Together they found new venues for jazz performance at a time when no more than two clubs in Manhattan had jazz full-time. In addition to club work Mary played colleges, formed her own record label and publishing companies, founded the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival and made television appearances.

Throughout the 1970's her career flourished, including numerous albums. In 1977 she accepted an appointment at Duke University as artist-in-residence, co-teaching the History of Jazz with Fr. O'Brien. With a light teaching schedule, she also did many concert and festival appearances, conducted clinics with youth and performed at the White House concert hosted by President Carter. While she was hospitalized with cancer in 1981, she received Duke's Trinity Award for service to the university. She died in May of that year.

Beyond her numerous recordings, compositions (approx. 350) and arrangements, her legacy lives on in many ways. There's Joanne Burke's 1989 film “Music on My Mind”. She is featured in the 1994 documentary “A Great Day in Harlem”. The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival in May. Linda Dahl, author of the book Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen, has recently completed a biography of Mary Lou to be published this year. The Mary Lou Williams Foundation, to which she bequeathed most of her assets, continues pairing young musicians ages six to twelve with professionals. Her archives are preserved at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark.

Mary Lou proudly proclaimed “No one can put a style on me. I've learned from many people. I change all the time. I experiment to keep up with what is going on, to hear what everybody else is doing. I even keep a little ahead of them, like a mirror that shows what will happen next” Or as Duke Ellington expressed it, “Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary”.

Morning Glory

A Biography of Mary Lou Williams by Linda Dahl. University of California Press, 2001

https://bopandbeyond.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/an-interview-with-mary-lou-williams-1976/

An Interview with Mary Lou Williams (1976)

Posted on October 19, 2009 | 1 Comment

“Jazz is a thing that feeds love and is healing to the soul.” — Mary Lou Williams

http://www.biography.com/people/mary-lou-williams-9532632

Mary Lou Williams

Biography
Pianist, Composer, Songwriter, Educator (1910–1981)

Birth Date
May 8, 1910
Death Date
May 28, 1981

Place of Birth
Atlanta, Georgia

Place of Death
Durham, North Carolina

Maiden Name
Mary Elfrieda Scruggs

Nickname
Little Piano Girl

Synopsis
Early Life and Career
Swing and Bebop Years
Evolving Music and Career
Death and Legacy

Pianist, arranger and composer Mary Lou Williams had a career that started in the 1920s and spanned decades. Her output included swing, bebop and sacred music.

Synopsis

Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams was born on May 8, 1910, in Atlanta, Georgia. A musical prodigy, she began performing as a child. Throughout her career, she adapted to changing musical styles, working in swing, blues and bebop. She also added sacred music to her repertoire after undergoing a spiritual conversion. Williams died on May 28, 1981, at age 71, in Durham, North Carolina.

Early Life and Career

Mary Elfrieda Scruggs was born on May 8, 1910, in Atlanta, Georgia. She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When Scruggs was a small child, she surprised her mother by playing a song she had just heard on the family's pump organ. Trained by her mother, and aided by her gift of perfect pitch, she was playing professionally by the age of seven.

Appearing as Mary Lou Burley (her stepfather's last name), she worked in locations that ranged from gambling dens to the vaudeville stage. As a teenager, she started performing with saxophonist John Williams. The two married in 1927, thus making her Mary Lou Williams. A few years later, Williams followed her husband to Kansas City, where she would become an integral part of the swing scene.

Swing and Bebop Years

Though relegated to menial tasks at first, Mary Lou Williams began performing with the Clouds of Joy, a Kansas City band led by Andy Kirk. In addition to being the group's pianist throughout the 1930s, she also composed and arranged much of its music. Her success with the Clouds of Joy meant Williams was soon sending compositions and arrangements to bandleaders such as Tommy Dorsey, Earl Hines, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

In 1942, Williams left Kirk's band. When her second marriage to trumpeter Shorty Baker ended, she settled in New York City. There, she performed at a Greenwich Village nightclub and on a weekly radio show. Her Harlem apartment became a gathering place for musicians, and was where Williams mentored talents like Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.

During her time in New York, Williams demonstrated her musical adaptability. Not only did she incorporate bebop into her playing, she created longer pieces such as the Zodiac Suite. Three movements of this 12-part composition were performed at Carnegie Hall in 1946. In 1952, Williams relocated to Europe, where she remained until she walked out of a performance in Paris in 1954.
Evolving Music and Career

Even after Williams returned to the United States, she refrained from performing, as she felt that her spiritual needs were incompatible with the world of jazz. However, she eventually found solace in Catholicism. In 1957, she resumed her musical career by appearing with Gillespie at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Williams founded her own label, Mary Records, which was the first to be started by a woman. She also established the Cecilia Music Publishing Company. Given her newfound Catholic faith, Williams began to work on sacred pieces, composing several masses. One of these was Mary Lou's Mass (originally called Music for Peace).

In 1971, Mary Lou's Mass was interpreted by choreographer Alvin Ailey. Four years later, it became the first jazz piece to be performed at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Williams still continued to perform, including at President Jimmy Carter's White House Jazz Party. She also taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at Duke University.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yvonna-russell/mary-lou-williams-the-lad_b_6044626.html

Mary Lou Williams : The Lady Who Swings With the Band

Posted: 10/27/2014

Indiegogo Campaign Video from Paradox Films on Vimeo:

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/107351357" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>

Pianist, composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams once said: "Jazz is love. You have to lay into and let it flow." The love is in flow as filmmaker Carol Bash journeys to complete her full length documentary film "Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band" of the legendary diva's life and work. Mary Lou Williams composed big band hits for Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington among others in the 1930s. Some of her compositions are jazz standards such as "Walkin' and Swingin," "Twinklin,' "Cloudy," "Little Joe from Chicago."

Carol believes:

"Young people, especially young people of color need to know their history, that there actually was a female jazz genius like Mary Lou Williams who composed over 300 works of music. And we need to be able to draw lessons and inspiration from our elders and past events. How else would we know that the gender politics women are facing today haven't really changed that much since Mary Lou Williams was making her way as a solo artist in the 1940s -- without being engaged in her struggle. The past is present and therefore, always relevant."

Her production has attracted the voice over talents of actors Alfre Woodard, Delroy Lindo and Wendell Pierce. Musical talents Wycliffe Gordon, Terri Lyne Carrington, Billy Taylor, Esperanza Spalding and Sumi Tonooka contributed to the documentary film as well. Years in the making Carol's documentary was inspired by the lady herself,

I feel that this documentary is important for several reasons. Because it tells the story of the development of an American art form -- jazz -- through the lens of one of its creators. And the fact that this inventor is an African American woman makes this story even more unique. It's an important story because it tells you to never give up on who you are and what you are chosen to do. And no matter what barriers are placed in front of you, whether they be based on race, gender, sexual preference, religious beliefs, take your pick -- you can't let anything stop you from fulfilling your destiny. And so we follow this amazing artist, Mary Lou Williams, as she experiences life's adventures and challenges but at the end, I feel that we will be completely inspired because she perseveres and finally gets her due respect..

Filmmaker Carol Bash

Upon reaching her Indiegogo campaign goal Carol plans to spread the gospel, "We actually have two versions of the film. Since the project was co-financed by two public television entities -- the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) and the Independent Television Service (ITVS) -- the broadcast version will premier on PBS in 2015. For the feature length version, we will present that to film festivals and public screenings. But most importantly is that we want to develop a dynamic community engagement campaign to bring the film to young adults, particularly young women of color and music students through colleges, arts organizations and churches. We are currently constructing our official website, so updates about the film are done via our Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band facebook page." "If you work on your talent, the plans will fall in automatically." said Mary Lou Williams. And so they shall.

http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=stories&subsect=story_detail&sid=1028

ARCHIVES ★ CLASSIC INTERVIEWS

Mary Lou Williams: Into the Sun
by Marian McPartland — 8/27/1964
An Exclusive Online Extra

“Anything you are shows up in your music…”

Her feelings about the new freedom in jazz cannot quite be concealed, though she tries to be noncommittal.

“I just haven’t got it figured out,” she said. “To each his own, I guess, but if I can’t hear chords…some sort of melody…well, if they think they’re giving out a good sound, that’s their business. Maybe they think we’re squares? Or else it’s some sort of protest? Take a guy like Coltrane: He knows what he’s doing. But these people without a knowledge of music, it’s like—well, it’s a very neurotic world. People are nervous. Seems like everyone I know is nervous. It must be the pressures of the world. Musicians are very sensitive, and they really don’t know what to do about it. I don’t mean they’re nervous about playing, but in their lives. I try to act relaxed because that’s been my training, but I’m more nervous than anyone you ever knew—inside. Oh, I get mad, sometimes, but I expel it, get it out right away.”

When one is discussing Mary Lou with other musicians, her sense of time always prompts admiration.

“I’ve heard her a few times at the Hickory House, and I’m amazed at her rhythmic approach more than anything else,” said fellow pianist Billy Taylor. “She has the most consistent way of swinging; even with a rhythm section that isn’t quite hanging together, she can make it swing, and this is really remarkable. It seems that no matter what’s going on around her, she can get this thing going. When in doubt—swing! As a pianist, I naturally listen a lot to the rhythm section, and sometimes I’ll notice that they’re not together, and I’ll think to myself, ‘Come on!—let’s give her some support,’ but she’ll be making it anyway. Not as many jazz pianists have this ability as do other instrumentalists. I mean this rhythmic propulsion. She’s not like an Erroll Garner or an Oscar Peterson, who overpower the rhythm section. On the contrary, she plays so subtly she seems to be able to isolate herself and swing, though the others may not be. Considering all the psychological things that go into swinging, she’s even more remarkable. You could wake her up out of a dead sleep, and she’d start swinging without even thinking about it.

“Mary Lou is looking for perfection. On the rare occasions when she had this chemical thing going that can happen between three people, she’s been so excited by it that she wants it all the time. Swinging is so natural to her that she can’t understand why it isn’t necessarily natural to everybody all the time. She figures that they can do it, but they won’t; she thinks to herself, ‘Anybody I hire should be able to do this, so why don’t they?’ Most people associate the verb ‘to swing’ with the degree of loudness that they attain, but she refutes it—she’ll take something pianissimo and swing just as hard as if it were double forte. She’s one of the very few people I know that can do this, consistently swing in any context.”

“Anything you are shows up in your music…”

“She lives in a world all her own, a dream world, and she doesn’t want anything to spoil it,” said her longtime friend and admirer, Hickory House press agent Joe Morgan. “She inspires a great devotion in people—she has many followers, but there are just as many people who look at her askance because they cannot understand her high artistic level. She is so dedicated, and the fact that her standards are high makes her very hard to please. In her accompaniment she wants to hear certain changes behind her, certain lines, certain rhythms, and it’s difficult for a strongly individualistic bass player or drummer, with ideas of his own, to conform to her standards. But her motive, her burning desire is for creation. In a way, she’s like a little child with a doll house, setting up house in the piano, like a little girl on her own chair, not even thinking about what is going on around her. Sometimes she doesn’t hear what you’re saying—doesn’t even see you—because her mind is a million miles away. People don’t understand that if she doesn’t speak to them, she doesn’t mean to be rude…”

Mary Lou herself said, “When people tell me that I’m playing good, and I don’t think I am, I want to run away from them, not speak to them.”

Being so intensely self-critical, she has scant regard for musicians who, in her opinion, lack sufficient dedication to their instruments.

“So many musicians nowadays push too hard, spread themselves too thin, doing all kinds of things when they should be home practicing,” she said. “People who push that hard never really get anywhere, but if you know your instrument, well, you can lay back and let someone pick you out. If you’re doing too many things, there’s no chance for your creativeness to come through.

“When the rhythm section starts composing things on the stand, they’ll push me into composing. But if they are not together, you must let them walk, let them play by themselves, to find out where they are. Then when they’re really tight, you come in and play. But if they’re still not making it, then play another tune, play a ballad. When you hear me play chimes, it’s because the rhythm isn’t right, and you’ve got to bring a section together to let them hear themselves. But if, after this, they still don’t make it, then I’ll start cussing!

“Now that I’m out here, I’m beginning to like it. I haven’t been late for the job, and I haven’t wanted to leave, and that’s unusual for me. Sometimes in the past, I’ve got fed up, and I would walk out and say, ‘You better get yourself another piano player.’ But this time it’s fun for me. Sometimes I’m tired, but I haven’t had that feeling of wanting to give up.…I think this time that I’m out here to stay.”
It is almost as if she sees herself emerging from darkness into the sunlight, to bask in the warmth of feeling generated by friends, admirers and family. Gazing out over the piano, her pleasure in playing comes through clearly.

“She has the beauty of being simple without any affectation—simplicity with her is a very deep thing,” Father Woods said. “I have heard her discuss the esthetics of music with great penetration. She seems to have an understanding of what is good, of what is beautiful. She thinks that jazz is becoming superficial, that it’s losing its spiritual feeling. She seems to be aware of a great deal of falsity and affectation, that people are not telling the truth, not saying what they really mean. In her uncomplicated way, she can’t understand how anybody can’t be sincere.

“To me, she is one of the greatest persons I have ever met—really a very great soul. She has exquisite taste, and where there is goodness, she gravitates to it naturally. But she is an emotional thinker, a disorganized thinker, and sometimes she has to sort out her ideas, and that’s where I come in. She’s simple and direct, primitive in a very good sense, and not spoiled by the sophistication around her. I don’t believe that Mary is capable of producing anything except what is good.”

Mary Lou has little business ability and scant knowledge of how to correlate, to direct, her ideas and plans. But her dreams and wishes for the betterment of musicians are logical and sound, and now some of them are just beginning to come true.

Several years ago, she started a thrift shop, the proceeds from which go into her Bel Canto Foundation, which she established to help needy musicians. Now more and more people have begun to hear about it and are giving her gifts of clothing and other donations. Besides these activities, much of Mary Lou’s time is taken up with writing and arranging, plus her daily attendance at mass and care of her sister’s little boy, who usually has the run of her apartment.

Being so busy does not seem to faze her, but it has been a long time since she has “come out” to play in public. She has made a few sporadic appearances in the last few years—twice at New York City’s Wells’ Supper Club and once each at the Embers and the Composer (where I worked opposite her), plus the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. These engagements have been of short duration and have not been too satisfying to her. She seems to feel the pressures of a musician’s life keenly, to become disillusioned, and then, as she expresses it, “goes back in”—back to her other world, to her apartment, to write, teach, and pray.

During her long stays at home, Mary Lou’s talent certainly has not been lying fallow. She has composed a poignant minor blues she calls “Dirge Blues,” which she wrote at the time of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. She is skillful in creating a mood—the feeling of this piece is tragic and gloomy. In its simplicity, it is very touching. She has put out an extended-play record on her own label, Mary records, consisting of three tunes, arranged for 16 voices and her trio: “Summertime,” “The Devil,” and “St. Martin de Porres.” The last tune, with a lyric by Father Woods, achieves an airy, ethereal quality by its voice blending. She has made a single, also on her own label, of “My Blue Heaven.” She makes this warhorse like new again, with a light, witty, Latin-based treatment. Obviously she has lost none of her powers of inventiveness. One has only to listen to her recordings of years ago, “Froggy Bottom,” “Roll ’Em,” and “Cloudy,” to realize how her style has evolved with the years and how she has kept her playing and her thinking contemporary.

She composed one of the first (if not the first) jazz waltzes—“Mary’s Waltz”—many years ago, yet she has never got the proper credit or recognition for this or for any of her several innovations that have been brought to the fore later by other musicians. Her importance, her influence, cannot be denied. She has written many beautiful tunes that are seldom heard, seldom recorded.

It has been said of Mary Lou Williams that she plays in cliches, but she has so much to offer of her own that I feel that her occasional use of cliché is more tongue-in-cheek commentary than lack of inventiveness. She has been labeled by some a fanatic. To others, she is only an extremely dedicated musician. Yet perhaps there is something of the fanatic in her, as seen in her constant search for musicians with whom she can be compatible—in a way, she reminds one of a mother with her children, alternately scolding or praising them, trying to teach them, trying to instill her beliefs in them, expecting great things of them. Yet it is said too that she is a hard taskmistress, demanding and intolerant.

“Anything you are shows up in your music…”

Her feelings about the new freedom in jazz cannot quite be concealed, though she tries to be noncommittal.

“I just haven’t got it figured out,” she said. “To each his own, I guess, but if I can’t hear chords…some sort of melody…well, if they think they’re giving out a good sound, that’s their business. Maybe they think we’re squares? Or else it’s some sort of protest? Take a guy like Coltrane: He knows what he’s doing. But these people without a knowledge of music, it’s like—well, it’s a very neurotic world. People are nervous. Seems like everyone I know is nervous. It must be the pressures of the world. Musicians are very sensitive, and they really don’t know what to do about it. I don’t mean they’re nervous about playing, but in their lives. I try to act relaxed because that’s been my training, but I’m more nervous than anyone you ever knew—inside. Oh, I get mad, sometimes, but I expel it, get it out right away.”

When one is discussing Mary Lou with other musicians, her sense of time always prompts admiration.

“I’ve heard her a few times at the Hickory House, and I’m amazed at her rhythmic approach more than anything else,” said fellow pianist Billy Taylor. “She has the most consistent way of swinging; even with a rhythm section that isn’t quite hanging together, she can make it swing, and this is really remarkable. It seems that no matter what’s going on around her, she can get this thing going. When in doubt—swing! As a pianist, I naturally listen a lot to the rhythm section, and sometimes I’ll notice that they’re not together, and I’ll think to myself, ‘Come on!—let’s give her some support,’ but she’ll be making it anyway. Not as many jazz pianists have this ability as do other instrumentalists. I mean this rhythmic propulsion. She’s not like an Erroll Garner or an Oscar Peterson, who overpower the rhythm section. On the contrary, she plays so subtly she seems to be able to isolate herself and swing, though the others may not be. Considering all the psychological things that go into swinging, she’s even more remarkable. You could wake her up out of a dead sleep, and she’d start swinging without even thinking about it.

“Mary Lou is looking for perfection. On the rare occasions when she had this chemical thing going that can happen between three people, she’s been so excited by it that she wants it all the time. Swinging is so natural to her that she can’t understand why it isn’t necessarily natural to everybody all the time. She figures that they can do it, but they won’t; she thinks to herself, ‘Anybody I hire should be able to do this, so why don’t they?’ Most people associate the verb ‘to swing’ with the degree of loudness that they attain, but she refutes it—she’ll take something pianissimo and swing just as hard as if it were double forte. She’s one of the very few people I know that can do this, consistently swing in any context.”

“Anything you are shows up in your music…”

“She lives in a world all her own, a dream world, and she doesn’t want anything to spoil it,” said her longtime friend and admirer, Hickory House press agent Joe Morgan. “She inspires a great devotion in people—she has many followers, but there are just as many people who look at her askance because they cannot understand her high artistic level. She is so dedicated, and the fact that her standards are high makes her very hard to please. In her accompaniment she wants to hear certain changes behind her, certain lines, certain rhythms, and it’s difficult for a strongly individualistic bass player or drummer, with ideas of his own, to conform to her standards. But her motive, her burning desire is for creation. In a way, she’s like a little child with a doll house, setting up house in the piano, like a little girl on her own chair, not even thinking about what is going on around her. Sometimes she doesn’t hear what you’re saying—doesn’t even see you—because her mind is a million miles away. People don’t understand that if she doesn’t speak to them, she doesn’t mean to be rude…”

Mary Lou herself said, “When people tell me that I’m playing good, and I don’t think I am, I want to run away from them, not speak to them.”

Being so intensely self-critical, she has scant regard for musicians who, in her opinion, lack sufficient dedication to their instruments.

“So many musicians nowadays push too hard, spread themselves too thin, doing all kinds of things when they should be home practicing,” she said. “People who push that hard never really get anywhere, but if you know your instrument, well, you can lay back and let someone pick you out. If you’re doing too many things, there’s no chance for your creativeness to come through.

“When the rhythm section starts composing things on the stand, they’ll push me into composing. But if they are not together, you must let them walk, let them play by themselves, to find out where they are. Then when they’re really tight, you come in and play. But if they’re still not making it, then play another tune, play a ballad. When you hear me play chimes, it’s because the rhythm isn’t right, and you’ve got to bring a section together to let them hear themselves. But if, after this, they still don’t make it, then I’ll start cussing!

“Now that I’m out here, I’m beginning to like it. I haven’t been late for the job, and I haven’t wanted to leave, and that’s unusual for me. Sometimes in the past, I’ve got fed up, and I would walk out and say, ‘You better get yourself another piano player.’ But this time it’s fun for me. Sometimes I’m tired, but I haven’t had that feeling of wanting to give up.…I think this time that I’m out here to stay.”
It is almost as if she sees herself emerging from darkness into the sunlight, to bask in the warmth of feeling generated by friends, admirers and family. Gazing out over the piano, her pleasure in playing comes through clearly.

MARY LOU WILLIAMS

(b. May 8, 1910--May 28, 1981)

Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie in Williams' apartment,
June 1946. Fotografie von William P. Gottlieb

http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/jazz/womeninjazz/1stlady.html

Mary Lou Williams:
First Lady of the Jazz Keyboard

by D. Antoinette Handy

When Mary Lou Williams appeared at St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia, in April 1978, I drove down and had my first meeting with someone I had long admired. Following her concert, I approached her about participating in a program in Richmond for which I was Artist-in-Residence, funded through the Special Arts Project of the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA).

Mary Lou Williams with the Andy Kirk Band

The selection of participants was my responsibility as Artist-in-Residence; I wanted to bring to Richmond the very best, and to have them interact with students, faculty, and the community. During Mary Lou’s first visit, on December 4 and 5, 1979, she offered one public concert, two youth concerts, and a master class for teachers in the Richmond public schools. For the December 4 concert, a Baldwin piano was to be sent over to John Marshall High School (the evening’s concert venue) by the local music store. While Mary Lou and Father Peter O’Brien (a Jesuit priest and jazz historian, and her manager) were en route to Richmond, a telephone call alerted me to the fact that the piano had been dropped, and that there was absolutely nothing that could be done about sending over a replacement.

A relatively decent grand piano was located in the high school’s choir room, and we moved this piano into the auditorium. I arrived at Mary Lou’s hotel long before our appointed hour, and when she and Father O’Brien arrived I suggested that she go over to the auditorium ahead of schedule, allowing her sufficient time to test and become familiar with the piano. Mary Lou responded,

"I don’t need to test the piano. During my sixty-plus years of playing, doing all those one-nighters, I’ve had to play on all kinds of pianos. If a few keys aren’t working, you merely make the necessary changes. It makes you a better musician, having to transpose to different keys. [Art] Tatum played his best when keys were missing."

Such was my first formal introduction to "the lady with the amazing talent."

Mary Lou visited again in April 1980, as Resident Eminent Scholar at Virginia State University in Petersburg, and presented one formal concert, two master classes, and several consultations and advising sessions. The next month she led two sessions in improvisation for teachers in the Richmond Public Schools.

Over a period of five months, Mary Lou and I enjoyed many hours of good conversation—while driving from place to place, or between activities— which resulted in a "Conversation" published in The Black Perspective in Music (Fall 1980) as well as a profile of Mary Lou in my book, Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras (Scarecrow Press, 1981). I delivered the book to her personally, three weeks prior to her death in Durham, North Carolina. A bedridden Mary Lou was pretty much out of it, but my vivid remembrances of that visit are a telephone call from Dizzy and Lorraine Gillespie (who Mary Lou said called regularly, as did bassist/vocalist Carline Ray) and a steadily moving right foot, keeping rhythm to whatever tune was running through her head.

http://www.npr.org/programs/jazzprofiles/archive/williams_m.html

Jazz Profiles from NPR
Mary Lou Williams 1910-1981

Produced by Margaret Howze

		Composer, arranger, and pianist Mary Lou Williams achieved and maintained a status that many women in jazz have found elusive: unwavering respect from her male colleagues and treatment as a musical equal. A swinging, percussive player, she was a major force in the development of Kansas City swing and the bebop revolution.

Listen to Mary Lou Williams' former personal manager Peter O'Brien and jazz educator David Baker talk about the greatness of Mary Lou Williams

Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs (later Burley) in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1910, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she began to play piano at age six. By the time she was 16, Williams was already well known on Pittsburgh's lively club scene and she was sitting in with many of the country's most popular big bands as they passed through town.

Listen to Mary Lou Williams recall her times spent with bebop pioneers Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell

In 1927, Mary Lou married saxophonist John Williams and went on the road with his band, ending up in Kansas City. There, her husband joined Andy Kirk (left) and his Twelve Clouds of Joy and soon Williams signed on as well. She became the band's arranger, immortalized in song as "The Lady Who Swings the Band."

Listen to Bandleader and jazz educator David Baker explain why Williams' position in Andy Kirk's band was unprecendented

Williams also arranged for for Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, as well as Jimmy Lunceford, whose band helped make Williams' composition "What's Your Story, Morning Glory" a hit. In 1945, she recorded her first extended work, "The Zodiac Suite."

Listen to Mary Lou Williams talk about the conception of "The Zodiac Suite"

Weaving a newfound spirituality into her music, Williams recorded the 1963 album Black Christ of the Andes, and in the 1970s she recorded Mary Lou's Mass. On that album's title track, she seamlessly blended the vocabulary of jazz with elements of rhythm and blues, spirituals and gospel music. Her willingness to keep her music fresh, and openness to modern approaches led to a a special two-piano collaborative concert at Carnegie Hall in 1977 with avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor called Embraced.

Listen to pianist Hilton Ruiz recall when he attended Mary Lou's Mass

Mary Lou Williams' career spanned over a half-century, and she created music full of everlasting beauty, inspiration and surprise. Her achievements as a composer, arranger, and bandleader earned her respect of the highest level from her peers. Even today she is, simply, one of our greatest treasures.

Mary Lou passed away in 1981 at the age of 71, leaving behind a pioneering legacy of jazz.

SHOW PLAYLIST

View the Mary Lou Williams show playlist

NPR RESOURCES

Browse the NPR Jazz Web site -- NPRJazz.org

Read the review of Linda Dahl's Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams

Read the synopsis of Jazz Profiles: Women In Jazz, Part 1

Read the synopsis of Jazz Profiles: Women In Jazz, Part 2

OTHER RESOURCES

Browse the PBS Ken Burns JAZZ Web page on women in jazz

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126613987

Mary Lou Williams: A Centennial Celebration

May 07, 2010

Lara Pellegrinelli

Listen Now

Weekend Edition Saturday

6 min 54 sec

Not only did Mary Lou Williams write and arrange music for herself and legends like Benny Goodman, but she also taught Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.

Metronome/Archive Photos

It's late on a rainy Monday night, and a quartet is swinging the back room of a Times Square pub. On the surface, it appears to be just another gig. Really, it's a harbinger of things to come.

The jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams would have been 100 years old Saturday. And musicians, like Virginia Mayhew, are paying tribute in concerts from Madison, Wis., to Princeton, N.J. In a few weeks, the saxophonist and dozens of others will take the stage at the Kennedy Center for the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.

"I think she is probably the greatest female jazz player who has ever lived," Mayhew says. "Really, I do think that. But I look forward to when the female part of it is irrelevant."

Hear Mary Lou In Performance

Mary Lou Williams Centennial On JazzSet

Mary Lou Williams On Piano Jazz

Fearless Role Model

In jazz, where the ranks of instrumentalists are still dominated by men, Williams' status as an early female pioneer has turned her into a symbol embodying women in jazz. While female performers tend to be on guard against tokenism and the separate but so often unequal acknowledgment of their contributions, they're clear in their approbation of Williams' talents and her value as a role model.

More About Mary Lou

It's A Woman's World: Six Jazz Trailblazers

Mary Lou Williams, 'Perpetually Contemporary'

"Her fearlessness and self-determination, I think that is an inspiration, when you see a person so clearly confident in their voice," says pianist Geri Allen, who played the role of Mary Lou Williams in the Robert Altman film Kansas City. "Because of her and her excellence, and because of her commitment to this very pristine level of artistry, my generation of players who are women don't have to go through that kind of resistance. I can't imagine it, to tell you the truth."

Williams was so exceptional, and carried herself with such dignity, it's difficult to imagine that she could face any resistance. Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs, she grew up in Pittsburgh and was playing practically from the time she could walk. Her mother would practice on an old-fashioned pump organ and kept the toddler in her lap to keep her out of mischief.

"One day, when she was pumping the organ, my fingers beat her to the keyboard and began playing," Williams said. "And it must have been great, because she ran out and got the neighbors to listen to it."

Williams began working professionally at 7 and was touring on the Orpheum circuit by 14. She married the saxophonist John Williams, and the couple became members of Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy.

Working as not only the band's pianist, but also its arranger and composer, Williams soon attracted attention. Earl Hines, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman all wanted her to write for them.

"She was one of the swingin'-est people I've ever played with," pianist Billy Taylor says. "I mean, she would swing you into bad health."

Teaching Bud And Monk

Taylor founded the festival at the Kennedy Center in Williams' honor. He says that, unlike others of her generation, she continued to be on the cutting edge. Her Harlem apartment, around the corner from Minton's Playhouse, became a kind of salon for the progenitors of bebop in the early 1940s. Taylor was there.

"I remember one time, she said to me, 'Billy, can you come on over to the house tomorrow? I'm having [Thelonious] Monk and Bud [Powell] over because I've got to do something about the way they touch the piano,' " Taylor says. "I said, 'What you talking about?' "

With their percussive approaches to the instrument, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell weren't exactly known for having a light touch.

"She was saying the piano responds in a certain way," Taylor says. "You can't just bang away and say I'm getting the sound I want. There is no question, but if you go back and listen to certain records that were played back in that period, you hear a difference. There's a difference in Monk's sound, and there's a difference in Bud's sound."

Looking For God

Williams nurtured the beboppers, but suddenly, in the 1950s, she stopped playing and experienced a profound religious conversion. She was baptized as a Catholic at the Church of Saint Francis Xavier in the West Village.
"Mary was a creative artist. She would not be looking for anything in the church. She was looking for God. God," Father Peter O'Brien says. "This was how she established that more formally."

O'Brien, Williams' longtime friend and manager, says her spiritual convictions and her music were part of the same deep interior life. She did charitable work, rehabilitating musicians who had fallen prey to drugs. She had already begun to write large-scale compositions; the New York Philharmonic performed her Zodiac Suite as early as the 1940s. But even when she was coaxed back to the piano, she turned her attention to sacred works. She dedicated Black Christ of the Andes to Saint Martin De Porres, the first black Catholic saint.

A Festival In Her Name

Before she succumbed to cancer in 1981, Williams started a foundation in her name, with the idea that it would help save jazz; O'Brien continues to direct the organization. While Taylor says Williams would have liked the festival that bears her name and other recognition for the accolades she didn't get during her lifetime, O'Brien says he's not so sure. Her reaction to her inclusion in the first women's jazz festivals that coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1970s was not altogether positive.

"When all this started, she said, 'Why are they putting me in with all the women? I don't want to be in with all the women,' " O'Brien says. "She was preeminent to start with. You don't line up four women piano players and make Mary Lou one of them. You line up James P. Johnson, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk. That's how you do that."

But O'Brien has an idea that seems more in keeping with Williams' spirit. He says it would do her proud, and might even quell the concerns of those attempting to follow in her footsteps.

"There was some question this year at the festival's 15th anniversary and Mary Lou's 100th birthday that it would simply be called The Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival," O'Brien says. "They don't say the Duke Ellington Men in Jazz Festival."

An idea whose time has come? Maybe next year.

http://jazzarts.org/blog/2014/06/14/top-jazz-composers-and-arrangers-part-2-bebop/

14 June 2014

Category:
Jazz History

Comments: 0

MARY LOU WILLIAMS, DIZZY GILLESPIE, TADD DAMERON, HANK JONES, JACK TEARGARDEN RIGHT

Throughout the history of jazz, composers and arrangers have played an important role in providing context and structure for soloists to express themselves. This is the second of a series of articles highlighting the most influential figures in jazz composition and arranging, listed in rough chronological order. For Part 1, click here.

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)

Primary instrument: Piano
Why she’s so important: Williams was highly regarded by her peers but is surprisingly not given her due by many contemporary jazz history books. She began by arranging for influential swing band leaders, including Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Later, Williams was instrumental in the formation of bebop through her mentoring and collaboration with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. Williams performed and composed prolifically throughout her entire career, easily transitioning between any jazz style to fit her mood.
Important compositions: Trumpet No End, Zodiac Suite, What’s Your Story, Morning Glory
Trivia: Williams converted to Roman Catholicism at the midpoint of her career. Her faith heavily influenced her music for the rest of her life. Her birth name was Mary Elfrieda Scruggs.
Famous Quote: “I’m the only living musician that has played all the eras.”

- See more at: http://jazzarts.org/blog/2014/06/14/top-jazz-composers-and-arrangers-part-2-bebop/#sthash.Bdz20g9L.dpuf

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mary-lou-williams-the-lady-who-swings-the-band

http://vimeo.com/107351357

Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band

A documentary about one of the most innovative unknown jazz artists—until now.

Larchmont, New York, United States Film

Who was MARY LOU WILLIAMS?

In a time when women were expected to stay at home and raise children, Mary Lou Williams forged her own path as an unparalleled jazz pianist, composer and arranger.

“TRAILBLAZER” “PIONEER” “UNSUNG” are some of the adjectives that jazz musicians today like Geri Allen, Carmen Lundy and Terri Lyne Carrington use to describe Mary Lou Williams. She was truly the lady who swings the band!

Mary Lou Williams created some of the most sophisticated big band hits for Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and many other popular orchestras in the 1930s

Jazz icons like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell regularly visited Mary Lou Williams at her Harlem apartment to gain knowledge and inspiration in the 1950s

After her conversion—Mary Lou Williams took jazz in whole new direction inside the Catholic church in the 1970s

But she paid a price battling the gender and racial barriers in her way.

Our film brings to life Mary Lou Williams’ story—in her own words—about what it took to succeed in a world where society had already defined your role for you.

At its heart, this is an inspirational story about how true genius can never be suppressed.

WHY DO WE NEED YOUR HELP?

We have a fine cut of the film. In November, our major funder, the Independent Television Service (ITVS), will present our documentary at the American Public Television (APT) Marketplace for local PBS stations to consider broadcasting in 2015.

Your contributions will pay for the work that must get done so that we can finish the film before our November deadline. Every dollar helps, so please donate whatever you can!

The $15,000 from this campaign will go towards:

$3500 for editing costs

$2500 for a Post Production Supervisor to facilitate the technical post-production process

$6000 for archival footage rights and clearances

$3000 for the website design and creation of promotional materials (poster and postcards)

WHO IS FEATURED IN THE FILM?

Mary Lou Williams once said: Jazz is love. You have to lay into and let it flow.

Because of Mary Lou Williams’ legacy, many incredible artists have shown us their love by graciously participating in this project. They include:

Alfre Woodard, Academy Award nominated actress; Alfre is the narrated voice of Mary Lou Williams in the film; Wendell Pierce, Satellite and Independent Spirit Award winning actor; Wendell is the narrated voice of bandleader Andy Kirk; Delroy Lindo, Satellite Award winner, Tony and Screen Actors Guild nominated actor; Delroy is the narrated voice of John Williams, Mary Lou Williams’ husband; Geri Allen, internationally known composer and pianist; Creative Director of the Mary Lou Williams Collective; Carmen Lundy, multi-talented jazz singer, composer, songwriter and visual artist; Hank Jones, NEA Jazz Master, pianist, composer and arranger; Billy Taylor, NEA Jazz Master, composer, broadcaster and educator; Founder of The Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival; Wycliffe Gordon, renowned jazz trombonist, conductor, composer, and arranger; Terri Lyne Carrington, multi-faceted drummer, composer, and producer; Esperanza Spalding, Grammy award winning jazz instrumentalist and vocalist; and Sumi Tonooka, acclaimed jazz pianist and composer; Sumi is the film’s composer and was one of Mary Lou Williams’ students.

Behind the scenes filming jazz artists Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding performing Mary Lou Williams' Lonely Moments

HOW DID THIS STORY BEGIN?

Eleven years ago, I walked into my in-laws home and heard this really fresh piano music playing. I reasoned it must be a new artist. I asked my father-in-law who it was and he replied, “That’s Mary Lou Williams, she’s the greatest female jazz musician ever!” I said to myself, “One of the greats? Why don’t I know her?” Then, I looked at the date of the CD and was shocked to discover that it was around 25 years old! Her sound was hip, even for today’s standards. Very soon after, I went out and bought Zoning and several of her other CDs. I was fascinated by how her playing evolved with each decade. I was intrigued and bothered about why Mary Lou Williams isn’t in the public consciousness like Dizzy, Miles, Bird and Monk. Was it because she was a woman? I filed her in my mind and the spark of curiosity was struck.

Later that year, Linda Dahl’s biography, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams was released. After reading it, I believed that, as great an artist as Mary Lou Williams was, it was her life that was fully captivating. More precisely, the obstacles that she faced and, in many ways, triumphed over is the reason why I feel her story will appeal to everyone and must be told.

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Please help make me make my deadline in bringing this amazing story about an American legend to the screen. Give what you can and share widely! Let it flow!

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303795904579431462493012926

NY Culture

Pianist Gets Her Due

Remembering Mary Lou Williams, Musician Who 'Moved Through Every Era'

By Larry Blumenfeld

March 12, 2014

Wall Street Journal

In the 1940s, pianists would gather at Mary Lou Williams's Harlem home, where she would demonstrate, as the pianist Billy Taylor once said, "how to touch the piano."

That home served as a salon, where he, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Dizzy Gillespie, among other jazz icons, soaked up ideas about artistic purpose.

Nine blocks south of that spot, "A Conversation With Mary Lou," a new production running Thursday to Saturday at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse, aims to revisit that moment and to evoke Williams' voice.

Geri Allen Redferns via Getty Images

Geri Allen, who is among jazz's most distinguished pianists, and who portrayed Williams in Robert Altman's 1996 film "Kansas City," will weave Williams's and her own compositions through this theatrical presentation. Carmen Lundy portrays Williams through song and monologue scripted by Farah Jasmine Griffin, whose recent book, "Harlem Nocturne," focuses in part on Williams. S. Epatha Merkerson, an actress best known from the TV series "Law & Order," will direct.

The career of Williams, who was born in 1910 and died in 1981, ran through and helped fuel much of jazz's development. She rose to prominence with Andy Kirk's Kansas City-based Twelve Clouds of Joy in the '30s, composed and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman during swing's heyday, and played duo-piano with the avant-garde hero Cecil Taylor. (In his memoir, Ellington dubbed her "perpetually contemporary.") Her compositions range from jazz tunes to Catholic Masses.

"Mary Lou looked Jelly Roll Morton in the eye," said Ms. Allen. "She championed Thelonious Monk at a time when her peers did not. Her creative vision was the logical bridge from the swing era into bebop. The things she played and said made a rich bed for that transition."

S. Epatha Merkerson Getty Images

Williams is an essential thread through Ms. Allen's life. She first explored Williams' legacy during graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh, where she now directs the jazz studies program.

Back then Ms. Allen lived in the neighborhood where Williams was raised. A decade after portraying the pianist in "Kansas City," Ms. Allen recorded Williams's demanding, 12-part "Zodiac Suite."

Sturdy and distinctive as Williams' compositions are, they invite personalized interpretation, said Ms. Allen. Such was the case last week, during " Mary Lou Williams : The Next Generation," the first concert in Harlem Stage's two-week Williams celebration.

Four players took turns—solo, and in duet—on dovetailed pianos, each with a distinctive approach to Williams's music. Helen Sung applied formidable technique to the contrasting rhythms of Williams's "Waltz Boogie." Gerald Clayton heightened the drama between playful bass figure and shifting harmonies in "Taurus," from Williams's "Zodiac Suite." Dense rumbles and glistening high notes within Courtney Bryan's original piece, "A Tribute to Mary Lou," signified the spiritual awakening in the 1950s that transformed Williams' life and career. Kris Bowers toyed with the form of Williams's ballad, "Ghost of Love," as she herself often had, and suggested her famous sound, which he described in a post-concert discussion as "huge and full, never harsh."

Were Williams alive today, she might interact with fellow musicians online. She did, in a way, through a cyber-symposium on Wednesday that linked six universities and arts institutions; it was streamed and archived online. Participants included Ms. Allen, pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer, and Rev. Peter F. O'Brien, who was both Williams's pastor and her personal manager.

"A Conversation With Mary Lou" will express things best experienced in person. Ms. Merkerson, a jazz fan, had long admired Williams's music. "But I didn't know her story," she said. "We want people to leave the theater feeling the force of this woman who at a very young age became an incredible artist and who, throughout her life, gave with a large heart."

Ms. Griffin drew her script from interviews, oral histories and Williams's handwritten autobiography. "We want to show how Williams really was front-and-center in all these different stages of musical development—the only musician to move through every era," she said. "But her story is also about much more than music. We want to relate her vision of her music as a spiritual force to do good in the world.

Mary Lou Williams: Musical and social change agent

By NMAH, March 22, 2011

Mary_lou_williams at CBS studio, New York 1947

Portrait of Mary Lou Williams, CBS studio, New York, N.Y., ca. April 1947. Courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress

Mary Lou Williams was a jazz artist who articulated the history, culture, and heritage of a people and a nation through the music she composed and performed. An All About Jazz article by writer Teri Harllee highlights Ms. Williams as the only major jazz artist whose career spanned every musical era in jazz history. As shown by our collections, we have examples of her boogie woogie music as well as later compositions that were arranged for big bands, including “Scorpio,” which she arranged for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1946.

Listen to the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra perform this piece on Public Radio International’s “Jazz Smithsonian” program, which originally aired on May 23, 2000.

PLAY: Scorpio

Her vision and jazz experience is succinctly captured in the Jazz Tree that Ms. Williams created with artist David Stone Martin in 1977. At the root of the tree is “Suffering” born of the slave trade and resulting legacies of slavery. The Blues frames the outer trunk. Spirituals, Ragtime, Kansas City Swing and Bop rise inside the tree trunk, and jazz luminaries sprout from the leaves like a bushy afro. The tree creates a jazz timeline that illuminates a musical genealogy of the African American experience in America.

This experience is also reflected in The Kinsey Collection, on view at the museum through May 1, and the slave shackles from the popular culture film Roots. Sheet music, contemporary to Ms. William’s early career, contained examples of stereotypical views of African Americans in popular culture, sometimes degraded by themselves: “Mammie’s Pickaninny Boy” and “All Coons Look a Alike to Me”.

Fr. Peter O’Brien, Society of Jesus, was Ms. Williams’ last business manager and continues to direct the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, where her musical and cultural legacy is extended through education programs. Recently Fr. O’Brien’s reflections on Mary Lou Williams appeared in a Smithsonian Folkways article, and in 1994, he participated in the Smithsonian’s Jazz Oral History Program where he discussed Ms. Williams and her impact on his life.

A catalyst for cultural understanding and transformation

According to Dr. Billy Taylor, the late jazz educator, composer, and musician, Mary Lou Williams remarked that “If we are to make progress in modern music, we must be willing and able to open our minds to new ideas and developments." In 1996, Dr. Taylor presented a bold, new idea to the Kennedy Center: let’s launch a Women in Jazz festival honoring Mary Lou Williams. The response was, “Will there be enough women to perform at the event?” No problem, Dr. Taylor assured skeptics.

Held every May at the Kennedy Center, the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival is an annual, seminal event presenting workshops and performances by veteran and emerging jazz women. These vocalists and instrumentalists pay tribute to an artist that most believe to be the greatest jazz woman who ever lived, and many, past and present, view her gender as irrelevant to her accomplishments. In the Joan Burke documentary on Mary Lou Williams, saxophonist Buddy Tate noted: “She was outplaying all those men. She didn’t think so but they thought so.”

In Ms. Williams’ later years, she became a teacher at Duke University, which also saw her legacy and creativity as emblematic of its social and educational changes. On March 8, 1961, Duke’s board of trustees announced that students would be admitted to its graduate and professional schools without regard to race, creed or national origin. Three African American students enrolled that September in the law and divinity schools.

The policy was extended to the undergraduate school about a year later and in September of 1963 the first black undergraduates were admitted. Civil rights advocacy lead to admission changes but Mary Lou Williams and jazz were selected to brand Duke’s new center for black history and intercultural engagement that emerged later.

The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was established in 1983, six years after Ms. Williams became the university’s first-ever “artist-in residence,” a position she held until her death in 1981. The Center promotes racial understanding, community building, and appreciation of the black experience in America by increasing and presenting knowledge about African American people, history, culture, and contributions of the African diaspora. Programs developed by the Center include regular jazz performances featuring local and guest jazz artists and students from the Duke University Jazz Studies Program; exhibitions such as “Women of the Blues”; and recognition of black achievement such as contemporary black inventors.

Through the Center, jazz and Mary Lou Williams are instruments of domestic cultural diplomacy and inclusion.

Have a listen

Check out a a podcast and teacher guide from the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra’s Executive Producer, Ken Kimery.

Mary Lou Williams recorded extensively for Folkways Records, and Smithsonian Folkways re-issued many of those recordings in recent years. In addition, a rare big-band rendition of “Virgo” from her “Zodiac Suite” is one of several Williams contributions included on Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology. Hear a rehearsal of “Little Joe” by Mary Lou Williams and the Chosen Five, from the 1950 Folkways album Footnotes to Jazz, Vol. 3, Rehearsal, I.

Listen Here to "Little Joe"

Joann Stevens is Program Director for Jazz Appreciation Month at the National Museum of American History.

Editor's Note: This year's Jazz Appreciation Month poster features Mary Lou Williams. The graceful portrait of Ms. Williams was developed for JAM by Keith Henry Brown, a young African American artist with a passion for jazz and a legacy as the former Creative Art Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center. To request a copy of the poster, write jazz@si.edu. Or, you can download it here it in PDF format.

THE MUSIC OF MARY LOU WILLIAMS: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MS. WILLIAMS:

Mary Lou Williams Live At Montreux 1978

Mary Lou Williams-- "Hesitation Boogie" (1948)

AFRS 276 48-07-21 9:29 - 12:35 minutes Mary Lou Williams Hesitation Boogie Mary Lou Williams on piano, possibly Dallas Bartley on string bass and Henry Tucker on drums from Benny Carter and His Orchestra.

"Zodiac Suite"-- by Mary Lou Williams 1945):

Mary Lou Williams (piano); Al Lucas (bass); Jack "The Bear" Parker (drums).

Mary Lou Williams--"Roll Em":

AFRS 276 48-07-21 22:50 - 25:38 minutes Mary Lou Williams Roll Em with select members of the Benny Carter Orchestra on an original composition .

May Lou Williams style changed with the times. If you enjoyed this you might also like her albums: Queen of Jazz Piano (selections from 1930 to 1940), Live at the Keystone (1977) and At Ricks Cafe Americain (1979).

Mediaoutlet has many AFRS Jubilee, Command Performance and other WWII era broadcasts in MP3 audio format:
http://www.mediaoutlet.com/the-old-ti...
on DVD $20 (regularly $26).

http://home.swipnet.se/dooji/jubilee2... has an EXCELLENT Discography of Jubilee Transcriptions pdfs.

A Great Day In Harlem 1958
http://www.a-great-day-in-harlem.com/
Front row, right of center, standing next to Marian McPartland

Mary Lou Williams - "The Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X4r5ZioIBw

Mary Lou Williams -"What's your story, morning glory"

Mary Lou Williams--Solo Piano 1944:

1. Blue Skies
2. Caravan
3. Yesterdays
4. Mary's Boogie
5. Drag 'Em
6. St. Louis Blues
Mary Lou Williams - piano

Mary Lou Williams - "It Ain't Necessarily So"

Mary Lou Williams - Piano
Ben Tucker - Bass
Percy Brice - Drums

Track 2 from the album 'Black Christ Of The Andes'

"Gloria" by Mary Lou Williams

Jazz with some Afro Cuban licks by jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. In terms of injecting spirtuality into music without words, she was second only to Coltrane. This one is off her 1974 Zoning album. Enjoy.

Mary Lou Williams & Cecil Taylor - 'Ayizan'

From 'Embraced': A Concert of New Music for Two Pianos exploring the History of Jazz with Love' (Pablo Live, 1978)

Recorded live at Carnegie Hall, 17th April, 1977

Playing live in 'Mr. Rogers Neighborhood' - Mary Lou Williams (piano) and Milton Suggs (bass) 1973--PBS:

Mary Lou Williams On Piano Jazz

March 07, 2014

Grant Jackson

Listen Now

57 min 43 sec

Playlist
Download

Mary Lou Williams at the CBS studios in 1947.

William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress

Set List

"Unnamed Piano Blues" (M. L. Williams)
"Baby Man" (J. Stubblefield)
"Watch Your Morning Star" (M. L. Williams)
"Scratchin' in the Gravel" (M. L. Williams)
"Medi" (M.L. Williams)
"Rosa Mae" (M.L. Williams)
"Caravan" (E.K. Ellington, I. Mills, J. Tizol)
"Untitled I" (M. L. Williams)
"Jeep Is Jumpin'" (E.K. Ellington, J. Hodge)
"Untitled II" (M.L. Williams)

Mary Lou Williams was the guest on the the very first Piano Jazz session ever, recorded in 1978 with Williams and bassist Ronnie Boykins. Host Marian McPartland is initially nervous interviewing her longtime friend and idol, and the cagey Williams still stands as a tough nut to crack. But once the giddiness subsides, McPartland exhibits signs of the masterful interviewer she would become, weaving in-depth discussion of the pianist's craft with a respectful sketch of Williams' personal history.

Williams died in 1981, but her spirit lives on with Piano Jazz. She and McPartland were both great fans of Duke Ellington — his tunes are still favorites on the program — so it's no surprise that Williams performs her take on "Caravan." A prolific composer, she also performs her own tunes, and at McPartland's request, she improvises an intense composition without batting an eye. Williams even warms up enough to sing a chorus of "Rosa Mae." Even more than 30 years later, it's a marvel to hear a seasoned musician like McPartland improvise the successful formula for Piano Jazz during the the program's first session.

Featured Artist

Ronnie Boykins

Mary Lou Williams Centennial On JazzSet

Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams Interview (1976):

Interview with Mary Lou Williams at the Statler Hotel, Buffalo, NY Winter 1976. Still photographs are from the Jazz documentary film 'A Great Day In Harlem'

http://jazztimes.com/articles/20519-mary-lou-williams-cecil-taylor-embraceable-you

Mary Lou Williams & Cecil Taylor: Embraceable You?

Mary Lou Williams

By James Kriegsmann

Mary Lou Williams

By Katsuji Abe

JazzTimes

March 2000

by Linda Dahl

When pianist Mary Lou Williams decided she wanted to perform with legendary iconoclast Cecil Taylor, she figured it would be a love fest. But as the concert and resulting album Embraced attest, it was anything but amore. This excerpt from Linda Dahl’s book, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Pantheon Books), tells the story.

Many people wondered why Mary chose to perform in a dual-piano concert at Carnegie Hall with Cecil Taylor, perhaps the ultimate avant garde pianist. She had repeatedly made her negative feelings clear about the avant garde in jazz, with its rejection of established harmonic and tonal patterns. In an essay that became part of her liner notes for Embraced, the album resulting from her concert with Taylor, she described the avant garde as being filled with “hate, bitterness, hysteria, black magic, confusion, discontent, empty studies, musical exercises by various European composers, sounds of the earth, no ears, not even relative pitch and Afro galore (although”—she hastened to add—”I’m crazy about African styles in dress”).
Yet something in Taylor’s music appealed to her, as did John Coltrane’s late playing; or, rather, she accepted both musicians’ work because they could still, if they wanted to, play “within the tradition.” And although tradition—the heritage of suffering embodied in spirituals and the blues—was sacred to her, Mary had always pushed herself to experiment and master new styles of black music. And by the mid-’70s, she was eager to reposition herself on the cutting edge. She was not, she wrote in her diary, “corny” (her word for passé and hidebound); no, she had “changed with the times.” Still, by then she had felt at least a twinge at being passed over. So much had happened since her reemergence in the ’60s—rock, soul, long hair, Afros.

It was, then, in the spirit of reconciliation between the two “camps” of jazz (avant garde versus everything that came before) that Mary conceived the idea of doing a concert with that lion of “out” players, Cecil Taylor. He had won her over with his admiration for her playing. Actually, he’d been listening and appreciating Mary’s music for a long time, since 1951, when he first caught her at the Savoy Club in Boston while a conservatory student in that city. “She was playing like Erroll Garner, but her music had a lot of range,” Taylor said in a rare interview. Almost two decades passed before Mary, in turn, listened to Taylor—during his engagement at Ronnie Scott’s in 1969. Then, in 1975, Taylor really began listening to Mary, dropping by the Cookery often. And each time he came into the club, as Mary remembered it, he’d move closer to the piano, until, she said, “He sat down one night at the end of the gig and played, but a little too long,” clearing out the club. But when Taylor told her, “No one’s playing anything but you,” Mary’s reaction was, at first, “Here’s somebody else putting me on.” But he kept showing up to listen, and eventually Mary broached the idea of doing a concert together. (It was Taylor who came up with the title, Embraced. In response, Mary drew a picture of three concentric circles, symbolizing, as she saw it, her music, his and the music of their interplay.)

Organizing the April 17, 1977, event fell to Mary, who followed her usual game plan. Friends received photocopied requests: “Help save this precious music and keep me out of Bellevue! Smile! Send checks for your tickets or donations.” Despite such efforts, made at her own expense, and Peter O’Brien’s publicity, the house at Carnegie Hall was no more than half-filled and Mary just broke even on the concert.

But it would be a hall filled with partisans of the two pianists, and speculation ran high about what sort of jazz would emerge from the meeting of two such strong musicians—for if Taylor was a lion at the piano, Mary was a lioness. To Village Voice jazz writer Gary Giddins, the concert promised to be “doubly innovative for bringing together two great keyboard artists in a program of duets, and for dramatizing the enduring values in the jazz-piano tradition.” But hints of a possible musical fiasco were also in the air. Rehearsals revealed frayed nerves and disparate purposes. Cecil Taylor had never shown any desire to play predetermined music from a written score, although Mary claimed that for the first half of the concert he’d agreed to play the new dual-piano arrangements of spirituals she’d written, using her “history of jazz” approach. Then, after the intermission, they would use “rhythm patterns as a shell,” in Mary’s words. “When Cecil is doing his things, I’ll start moving in his direction. I’ll play free and then I’ll jump back to swinging.” But in the hours before the concert began Taylor fumed. Not only had she written a part for him—a “free” player of the first rank—but she had not consulted him about the rhythm section—her own—that was to accompany them for the first half. To Mary, of course, this seemed fair: she got the first half, and he got the second half of the concert. But as Taylor told a journalist, Mary “wanted him to play her music but [she] refused to perform his music the way he wanted it heard. We are not certain exactly how the concert will be structured,” Taylor warned.

Clashed would be a more accurate title than Embraced for the music that ensued; the concert confirmed gloomier predictions. Reviewers tended to write about it more as a contest than a collaboration: “The result was at best a tug of war in which Mr. Taylor managed to remain dominant,” wrote the New York Times. On “Back to the Blues,” to take one example, Taylor plunges deep into his favorite nether musical regions. It takes Mary’s strongest playing, the signature crash and crush of her left hand at full throttle, to tug the piece back from outer space. When, as Gary Giddins described Taylor, “the predatory avant gardist” overreached Mary’s “spare, bluesy ministrations,” she called in the rhythm section quite as if she were calling in the troops.

Listeners—at least those in Mary’s camp—saw little of the “love” she had urged Taylor to play after the difficult first half. Backstage, fur flew. “I slammed the door on him hard,” says Peter O’Brien, “and saxophonist Paul Jeffrey, who was listening backstage, had to be physically restrained from punching him. Mary came off the stage and said to me, ‘Oh man, I played my ass off.’ And she did, but I made her go back out there.” Her adrenaline was up and Mary played brilliant encores—”Night in Tunisia,” “Bag’s Groove,” and “I Can’t Get Started,” the last a frequent source of inspiration for Mary.

Perhaps the best review, though never published, came from Nica de Koenigswarter, in a letter she shot off to Mary after the concert, written in the jazz baroness’s beautiful hand and careful multicolored underlinings:

Rather than an ‘embrace,’ it seemed to one like a confrontation between heaven and hell, with you (heaven) emerging gloriously triumphant!!! I know it wasn’t meant to be that way, but this is the way it seemed. I also know what a sweet cat C.T. is and what beautiful things he writes, in words, that is, but the funny part is that he looks just like the Devil when he plays as well as sounding like it, as far as I am concerned, sheets of nothingness, apparently seductive to some.

Rather than an ‘embrace,’ it seemed to one like a confrontation between heaven and hell, with you (heaven) emerging gloriously triumphant!!! I know it wasn’t meant to be that way, but this is the way it seemed. I also know what a sweet cat C.T. is and what beautiful things he writes, in words, that is, but the funny part is that he looks just like the Devil when he plays as well as sounding like it, as far as I am concerned, sheets of nothingness, apparently seductive to some. Anyway I loved Mickey Roker and Bob Cranshaw for seeming like guardian angels, coming to your defense and it was worth it all to hear you bring it back to music.

Love you, Nica

Two years later, Mary could joke a little about the concert. “When I was coming along, it wasn’t enough just to play. You had to have some tricks—I used to play with a sheet over the piano keys. So when Cecil started playing like that and kept on going, I started to get up from the stool, turn around and hit the piano with my butt—chung, choonk! That woulda got them!” She revealed her hurt only to her fellow artist in a letter two years after the fiasco:

Cecil! Please listen if you can. Why did you come to me so often when I was at the Cookery? Why did you consent to do a concert? You felt I was a sincere friend. In the battlefield, the enemy (Satan) does not want artists to create or be together as friends.

Cecil, the spirituals were the most important factor of the concert (strength), to achieve success playing from the heart, inspiring new concepts for the second half. I wrote you concerning the first half. You will have a chance to listen to the original tapes and will agree that being angry you created monotony, corruption, and noise. Please forgive me for saying so. Why destroy your great talent clowning, etc.? Applause is false. I do not believe in compliments or glory, my inspiration comes from sincere love. I was not seeking glory for myself when I asked you to do the concert. I am hoping you will reimburse me for 30 tickets—would you like to see the receipts?

I still love you, Mary

Within six months of her concert with Taylor, Mary was back at Carnegie Hall for another concert with another difficult musician, as a “special guest” in January of 1978 in a 40-year “reunion” concert at Carnegie Hall. Billed as “An Evening with Benny Goodman,” the concert attempted to recreate the spirit of the famous 1938 concert where Goodman had been dubbed “King of Swing.” But the 1978 event was a disappointment, underrehearsed, ragged, with Goodman off balance. Mary played gamely and took a sparkling solo on “Lady Be Good,” but the gig was just a gig to her, a way to pay bills. (When Goodman approached her afterwards about doing a record together of Fats Waller tunes, she declined.)

After going from playing with way-out Cecil Taylor to comping for Benny Goodman—a breathtaking musical leap few pianists would attempt—Mary could declare with satisfaction, “Now I can really say I played all of it.”

Playing “with” Cecil: The Rhythm Section Reflects

On Embraced, the album that documents the meetingbetween Mary Lou Williams and Cecil Taylor, the former closes the concert with a solo version of “I Can’t Get Started.” The way the concert’sbassist, Bob Cranshaw, tells it,Taylor’s performance should be titled “You Just Can’t Stop Me.”

“Cecil was gone. There was nothing going to stop him from playing once he got started,” Cranshaw remembers. “Cecil went on a piano back stage and just kept playing during the intermission!”

Williams got angry, according to Cranshaw, because he and drummer Mickey Roker, not knowing what to do, just kept playing along with Taylor when she wanted the concert to stop. Williams thought they were egging Taylor on.

“He stormed over both of us. She was pissed and we were dying laughing because we didn’t know what to do,” he recalls. “Mickey said, ‘Look, what do you want us to do? Grab him by the arms and carry him off stage?’” Cranshaw laughs.

But Roker willfully remembers little of the event. “I tried to do all I could to forget that [concert]! It was confusing. And music shouldn’t be confusing. Music should be festive,” he says. “The record speaks for itself. I don’t enjoy that kinda thing.”

Cranshaw admits he never heard the recording and he, too, says it was all very confounding. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it,” he says. “I never thought I played well on it to begin with.”

—Christopher Porter

Originally published in March 2000

http://www.ratical.org/MaryLouWilliams/MLWbio.html

( ASCII text )

Mary Lou Williams - Pianist, Composer

Arranger And Innovator Extraordinaire

by dave ratcliffe

Includes sections compiled from liner notes of the albums: My Mama Pinned A Rose On Me, The History of Jazz, and The Asch Recordings, 1944-47.

Mary Elfrieda Winn was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910. To keep order in the house, her mother used to hold Mary Lou on her lap while she practiced an old-fashioned pump organ. One day, Mary Lou's hands beat her mother's to the keys and she picked out a melody. When her mother discovered this (Mary Lou believes she was 22 or 23 at the time), she had professional men come to the house to play for Mary Lou. Thus, very early, Mary Lou was exposed to Ragtime, Boogie-woogie and the Blues.

Later (Mary Lou puts her age between 4 to 6 years old), the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Mary Lou was exposed to all kinds of music. She studied for a time under the then-prominent Sturzio, a classical pianist. An uncle, Joe Epster, paid Mary Lou 50 cents a week to play Irish songs for him. (An all-time favorite was "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling".) Grandfather Andrew Riser would pay her 50 cents a week to play from The Classics (Il Trovatore) which she learned from watching and pressing down the keys on a player piano. But her stepfather, Fletcher Burley, who hummed the Boogie and Blues for her was her main inspiration along with brother-in-law Hugh Floyd. They encouraged her in her music. Fletcher would hide young Mary Lou underneath a big overcoat that he would wear and sneak her into all kinds of places (including gambling joints) where his buddies gathered. Mary Lou describes it:

He'd take off his hat, put it on the table, put a dollar into it, and say: "Stop! Everybody -- my little girl is gonna play for you." He'd pass the hat around. Often, when I'd leave, I'd have twenty-five or thirty dollars. When we got back outside, he'd say: "Give me back my dollar," and then we'd go home. My mother would ask, "Where were you?", and he would reply, "Oh, we went over to Rochelle's". Years later, when she found out where Fletcher had been taking me, she almost went into shock.

Known throughout Pittsburgh as "the little piano girl," Mary Lou was often heard at private parties including those of the Mellons and the Olivers, well before she was ten years old. Brother-in-law Hugh Floyd would take Mary Lou to the theater to hear and see musicians at work. One day while at the theater Mary Lou heard a great woman pianist and musician, Lovie Austin:

I remember her in the pit of the theater, legs crossed, cigarette in her mouth, playing with her left hand, conducting at least four other male musicians with her head, and writing music with her right hand for the next act that would appear on the stage. As a little girl, I said to myself, "I'll do this one day." Later on when I was traveling and doing one-nighters with Andy Kirk, I'd play all night with my left hand and write new arrangements with my right -- sometimes I'd work crossword puzzles on the stand. The memory of Lovie Austin is so vivid to me. Seeing her, challenged me into doing difficult things.

At fifteen she took to the road with Seymour & Jeanette, a vaudeville act popular in the 1920's, which required that she play purely pop style. When in Kansas City, she quit the vaude circus and joined the dance band of John Williams, a skilled saxophonist-clarinetist from Memphis. It was during the mid-twenties that she made her first recordings with John Williams' Jazz Syncopators. They were soon married, but, lacking expert management, Williams abandoned his own group and, along with Mary Lou, joined Andy Kirk's orchestra in 1928. Initially, Kirk already had a pianist so Mary Lou forsook the keyboard to write compositions and arrangements and tour with the group as a sort of child bride of Williams. That situation changed when Andy gave her the piano chair with his Clouds of Joy and began a series of record sessions for Brunswick. Tunes like "Cloudy", "Messa Stomp", "Loose Ankles", "Casey Jones Special", and "Froggy Bottom" proved classics of the late twenties.

During the thirties -- the Swing Era -- Mary Lou's strong playing -- especially in the left hand -- coupled with her many original compositions and unusual arrangements did much to spread the style known as Kansas City Swing: the strong blues-based and joyful music most widely known through Count Basie. This was the time when Jam sessions tended to increase the musicians solo inventiveness. During this same period, Mary Lou wrote and arranged for all the Big Bands of the era including those of Louis Armstrong, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman ("Roll Em" and "Camel Hop"), Jimmie Lunceford ("What's Your Story Morning Glory") -- during the twenties Mary Lou had a small band in Memphis, Tennessee - she was the leader of this combo when she was all of seventeen -- one of the sidemen was Jimmie Lunceford -- and Glen Gray and the Casa Lomas among others.

For Kirk she wrote "Little Joe From Chicago" (the first Big Band boogie-woogie thus arranged), "Cloudy","Walkin' and Swingin'" (much loved by musicians for the unusual voicing in the arrangement and bought and played by all the Bands of the period), "Steppin' Pretty," "Scratchin' In The Gravel," "Bearcat Shuffle," and many more. All together Mary Lou wrote more than three hundred and fifty compositions.

In spite of the hard times of the 1930's, Kirk managed to hold the band together working out of Kansas City on gigs that might only pay $50 a night for the whole band. Finally in 1936 a Kirk Decca platter (during the thirties she recorded extensively with Kirk for Decca) of "Until The Real Thing Comes Along" (with Pha Terrell, Kirk's pastry vocalist and front man) established the Clouds of Joy atop the charts.

Annotator Dave Dexter, Jr. remembers well the Kirk band of the thirties with the unique little girl at the piano. She wore a long skirt, invariably, and her hair was in bangs. No other orchestra sported a female pianist. Her style was light, bouncy, somewhat in the Earl Hines fashion but always, always, hard swinging. Musicians throughout the Middlewest -- and Southwest -- adored Mary Lou.

But time changed all this. The end of the thirties brought an end to the Kirk-Williams affiliation and a divorce to the Williamses. In 1941 Mary Lou traveled with and wrote for the Duke Ellington Band for about six months producing some fifteen to twenty arrangements. The most durable of these was a brilliant version of "Blue Skies" (melody completely hidden) called "Trumpet No End", which was a showcase for the fabulous Ellington trumpet section which by that time included Harold Baker. The arrangement was recorded in 1946 by the Ellington Band. Mary Lou also traveled for a while as a leader of a small group that included Baker and an 18-year-old drummer also from Pittsburgh named Art Blakey. Regretfully this group was never recorded.

In the early forties Miss Williams began a long and happy engagement at Cafe Society Downtown in New York City. She had moved to New York permanently in 1941. She played off and on (mostly on) for a good five years beginning in 1943. The years from 1941 through 1948 were a period of intense creativity in Jazz. And the place of creation was New York City. Mary Lou arrived on the scene at the right time. Varied influences were brought to bear on the music of Mary Lou Williams during those years. One was her already mentioned more or less constant gig at Cafe Society. If Cafe Society encouraged a look back over the shoulder toward what was best in the music of Kansas City and the Swing Era in general, that was no loss. By the forties Swing was mature and many of the most brilliant players from the era found employment at Cafe Society: Teddy Wilson, Eddie Heywood, Billie Holiday, and Josh White who, in another category, was one of Cafe Society's biggest stars.

The second influence was a group of musicians together with three locations. The musicians and two of the locations are widely known -- even famous -- the third place only moderately known. Many of the musicians might be referred to as "the original boppers." Among them figured Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Dorham, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, and most especially vis-a-vis Mary Lou Williams, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk who were in her company almost daily. All these musicians were intensely and creatively busy in bringing to birth a new form of Jazz that would later be labelled Bop or Modern. The two widely known locations were Minton's Playhouse in upper Manhattan (the house that built Bop) and New York's 52nd Street. The third not so widely publicized meeting place was Mary Lou Williams' apartment.

Before, in between, and after work at Cafe Society Downtown, Mary Lou Williams was to be found at Minton's. Here Dizzy, Monk and Bird were at work late at night playing and creating new sounds in music. Mary Lou Williams was an early appreciator of their work and an encourager of the new music -- so much so that she was at times `put down' by musicians of the previous era. She was also often found in the clubs along 52nd Street listening -- sitting in -- after her regular performances at Cafe Society. In the middle late forties Mary Lou left Cafe Society in favor of the clubs along `the Street' where the new music was beginning to have a hearing and where her playing began to advance rapidly along modern lines. Of course she herself had always been `modern.' In Kansas City during the thirties after regular Jam Sessions musicians would often gather around the piano and ask Mary Lou to play "Zombie" for them. The `outre' chords Mary Lou employed on such occasions were new and `out' harmonies -- based off `sounds' in Mary Lou's words -- chords she says were `modern' even `avant-garde' as these terms are used concerning Jazz today. They were merely, even at that time, the product of an experimental and advancing musical intelligence at work.

In the meantime her apartment had become almost immediately upon her arrival in New York in 1941 a haven for many of the younger musicians. All the experimenters, the inchoate boppers, were there from time to time -- many most of the time (Dizzy Gillespie and Tadd Dameron especially) and two all the time: Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. They brought their compositions to her to listen to and the musical sessions which extended through the night and into the next day on Hamilton Terrace were long and constant and might involve Eroll Garner or Mel Torme or Sarah Vaughan or Miles Davis or Oscar Pettiford, etc.

In 1945 her recording activities produced The Zodiac Suite. At this time Mary Lou had her own weekly radio show on WNEW in NYC called "The Mary Lou Williams Piano Workshop". She composed and played an interpretation of each of the astrological signs -- one weekly -- for twelve weeks. "I read a book about astrology", Mary Lou recalled,"and though I didn't know much about it, I decided to do the suite as based on musicians I knew born under the various signs. I had no time to write, or go in the studio and record, so after those first three (signs), I'd just sit there and play, and the music was created as we were playing. You might call that real jazz composing." Then she scored the suite for an 18 piece orchestra (with Ben Webster included) and that version was presented in concert at Town Hall. Barney Josephson, the owner of Cafe Society, produced it. The concert was recorded but the tapes were stolen and are lost. In the following year three of the sections of the suite were rewritten and scored by Mary Lou for the New York Philharmonic. These three sections were played by that orchestra with Miss Williams as guest artist in a concert at Carnegie Hall and the occasion marked the first meeting of Jazz and the Symphony.

Mary Lou toured much in clubs and on the concert stage throughout the United States and Europe. In 1955, after returning from Europe where she had spent two years, Mary Lou Williams became a Roman Catholic, and devoted her time to religious activities and charitable work. She thus remained in semi-retirement until 1962 when she broke new ground composing and recording her "Hymn in Honor of Saint Martin de Porres." She was the first Jazz Composer to write for sacred purposes. Since that time she composed three complete Masses, one of which,"Mary Lou's Mass", was performed by her at an actual liturgy in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in 1975. (She again performed this Mass at Saint Patrick's on April 22, 1979 which i had the pleasure and privilege to hear and see.)

Up to the end of her life on May 28, 1981, Mary Lou Williams was thoroughly involved in her music, and in the fight to expose Jazz and see that it survives and developes further. As well as teaching as Artist in Residence at Duke University, she frequently found herself involved in Concerts, Workshops, Residencies, Lecture-Demonstrations, Discussions, Radio and TV. A three or five day residency on a Campus found her on stage in concert with her trio, in a music or black history class, in lecture-demonstrations in large halls detailing, on the piano and in question-and-answer periods, the roots and history of Black American Music and Jazz, with the college archivist taping oral history for the future.

Mary Lou also appeared in clubs, on the concert stage, in the recording studio, on radio and TV, in churches large and small in performances of her Mass, in grade and high schools playing and lecturing at assemblies -- in short: she continued to be directly in the forefront of music which is exactly where she has always belonged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams

Mary Lou Williams

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mary Lou Williams

Background information

Birth name Mary Elfrieda Scruggs

Born May 8, 1910 Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Died May 28, 1981 (aged 71) Durham, North Carolina, United States

Genres Classical Free jazz Hard bop Swing Third Stream Big band Gospel

Occupation(s) Stride pianist, composer, bandleader

Instruments Piano

Years active 1920s–1981

Labels Atlantic, Asch, Brunswick, Circle, Decca, Inner City, Folkways, King, Pablo, Victor, Vogue

Website Mary Lou Williams at rutgers.edu

Mary Lou Williams (May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions).^[1] Williams wrote and arranged for such bandleaders as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others.

Contents

1 Early years

2 Career

3 Later years

4 Awards and honors

5 Discography

5.1 As leader

5.2 As sideman

6 References

7 Further reading

8 External links

Early years

Born as Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, she grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of eleven children. As a very young child she taught herself to play the piano (her first public performance was when she was six years old). She became a professional musician in her teens. She cited Lovie Austin as her greatest influence.^[2] At the age of six, Williams was already helping to support her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing for parties. She began performing publicly at the age of seven, when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "the little piano girl of East Liberty".

Career

In 1922, at the age of 14, she was taken on the Orpheum Circuit. The following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. One high and learned salute to her talent came when she was only 15. One morning at three, she was jamming with McKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club. Louis Armstrong entered the room and paused to listen to her. Mary Lou shyly tells what presently happened: "Louis picked me up and kissed me."^[3]

In 1927, Williams married saxophonist John Williams. She met him at a performance in Cleveland where he was leading his group, the Syncopators, and moved with him to Memphis, Tennessee. He assembled a band in Memphis, which included Mary Lou on piano. In 1929, he accepted an invitation to join Andy Kirk's band in Oklahoma City, leaving 19-year-old Mary Lou to head the Memphis band for its remaining tour dates. Williams eventually joined her husband in Oklahoma City but did not play with the band. The group, now known as Andy Kirk's "Twelve Clouds of Joy", relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Williams, when she wasn't working as a musician, was employed transporting bodies for an undertaker. When the Clouds of Joy accepted a longstanding engagement in Kansas City, Missouri, Williams joined her husband there and began sitting in with the band, as well as serving as its arranger and composer. She provided Kirk with such songs as "Walkin' and Swingin'", "Twinklin'", "Cloudy'", "Little Joe from Chicago" and others.

From the first sides Kirk made in Kansas City, Williams was on board as pianist and arranger. (Six sides were recorded in Kansas City during 1929 and remaining 17 sides were recorded in Chicago in 1930, and a further two were recorded in New York in 1930.) During one of those trips to Chicago in 1930, Williams recorded "Drag 'Em" and "Night Life" as piano solos. Williams took the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion of Brunswick's Jack Kapp.^[4] The record sold briskly, raising Williams to national prominence. Soon after the recording session she signed on as Kirk's permanent second pianist, playing solo gigs and working as a freelance arranger for such noteworthy names as Earl Hines, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. In 1937, she produced In the Groove (Brunswick), a collaboration with Dick Wilson, and Benny Goodman asked Mary to write a blues for his band. The result was "Roll 'Em", a boogie-woogie piece based on the blues, which followed her successful "Camel Hop", Goodman's theme song for his radio show sponsored by Camel cigarettes. Goodman tried to put Williams under contract to write for him exclusively, but she refused, preferring to freelance instead.^[5]

In 1942, Williams, who had divorced her husband, left the "Twelve Clouds of Joy" band, returning again to Pittsburgh. She was joined there by bandmate Harold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed a six-piece ensemble that included Art Blakey on drums. After a lengthy engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band in New York, and then traveled to Baltimore, where she and Baker were married. She traveled with Ellington and arranged several tunes for him, including "Trumpet No End" (1946), her version of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies".^[6] She also sold Ellington on performing "Walkin' and Swingin'". Within a year she had left Baker and the group and returned to New York.

Mary Lou Williams in her apartment with Jack Teagarden, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones and Dizzy Gillespie



Background information
Birth name	Mary Elfrieda Scruggs
Born	May 8, 1910 Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Died	May 28, 1981 (aged 71) Durham, North Carolina, United States
Genres	Classical Free jazz Hard bop Swing Third Stream Big band Gospel
Occupation(s)	Stride pianist, composer, bandleader
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1920s–1981
Labels	Atlantic, Asch, Brunswick, Circle, Decca, Inner City, Folkways, King, Pablo, Victor, Vogue
Website	Mary Lou Williams at rutgers.edu

Williams accepted a regular gig at the Café Society Downtown, started a weekly radio show called Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop on WNEW, and began mentoring and collaborating with many younger bebop musicians, most notably Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. In 1945, Williams composed the bebop hit "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" for Gillespie. "During this period Monk and the kids would come to my apartment every morning around four or pick me up at the Café after I'd finished my last show, and we'd play and swap ideas until noon or later", Williams recalled in Melody Maker. Although closely aligned with the bop musicians during her time in New York, Williams also staged a large-scale orchestral rendition of her composition Zodiac Suite at New York's Town Hall in 1945, with bassist Al Lucas and drummer Jack "The Bear" Parker, and the New York Philharmonic.^{[citation needed]} She recorded Zodiac with Lucas and Parker on the Asch label: the recording is available today on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

In 1952, Williams accepted an offer to perform in England and ended up staying in Europe for two years. When she returned to the United States she took a hiatus from performing, converting in 1956 to Roman Catholicism. Her energies were devoted mainly to the Bel Canto Foundation, an effort she initiated to help addicted musicians return to performing. Two priests and Dizzy Gillespie convinced her to return to playing, which she did at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival with Dizzy's band. Father Peter O'Brien became her close friend and personal manager in the 1960s. Together they found new venues for jazz performance at a time when no more than two clubs in Manhattan had jazz full-time. In addition to club work, Mary played colleges, formed her own record label and publishing companies, founded the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival and made television appearances. Throughout the 1960s, her composing focused on sacred music - hymns and masses. One of the masses, Music for Peace, was choreographed and performed by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater as "Mary Lou's Mass". She performed the revision of "Mary Lou's Mass" on television, on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.^{[citation needed]}

She wrote and performed religious jazz music such as Black Christ of the Andes (1963), a hymn in honor of the St. Martin de Porres; two short works, Anima Christi and Praise the Lord. In this period, Williams put much effort into working with youth choirs to perform her works, including mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York before a gathering of over three thousand. She set up a charitable organization and opened thrift stores in Harlem, directing the proceeds, along with ten percent of her own earnings, to musicians in need. As a 1964 Time article explains, "Mary Lou thinks of herself as a 'soul' player — a way of saying that she never strays far from melody and the blues, but deals sparingly in gospel harmony and rhythm. 'I am praying through my fingers when I play,' she says.'I get that good "soul sound", and I try to touch people's spirits.'"^[7] She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1965, with a jazz festival group.

Throughout the 1970s, her career flourished, including numerous albums, including as solo pianist and commentator recorded The History of Jazz. She returned to the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1971. She had a two-piano performance with avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor at Carnegie Hall in 1977. She accepted an appointment at Duke University as artist-in-residence (from 1977 to 1981), co-teaching the History of Jazz with Father Peter O'Brien and directing the Duke Jazz Ensemble. With a light teaching schedule, she also did many concert and festival appearances, conducted clinics with youth, and in 1978, performed at the White House. She participated in Benny Goodman's 40th-anniversary Carnegie Hall concert in 1978.

Later years

Her final recording, Solo Recital (Montreux Jazz Festival, 1978), three years before her death, had a medley encompassing spirituals, ragtime, blues and swing. Other highlights include Williams's reworkings of "Tea for Two", "Honeysuckle Rose", and her two compositions "Little Joe from Chicago" and "What's Your Story Morning Glory". Other tracks include "Medley: The Lord Is Heavy", "Old Fashion Blues", "Over the Rainbow", "Offertory Meditation", "Concerto Alone at Montreux", and "The Man I Love".

In 1981, Mary Lou Williams died of bladder cancer in Durham, North Carolina, aged 71. She was buried in the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in Pittsburgh.^[8] As Mary Lou Williams said, looking back at the end of her life, "I did it, didn't I? Through muck and mud."^[9]

Awards and honors

Guggenheim Fellowships, 1972 and 1977

Nominatee 1971 Grammy Awards, Best Jazz Performance - Group, for the album Giants, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hackett, Mary Lou Williams^[10]

Honorary degree, from Fordham University in New York in 1973

In 1980 Williams founded the Mary Lou Williams Foundation

Received the 1981 Duke University's Duke's Trinity Award for service to the university. In 1983, Duke University established the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture^[11]

Since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.^[12]

Since 2000, her archives are preserved at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark.^[13]

A Pennsylvania State Historic Marker is placed at 328 Lincoln Avenue, Lincoln Elementary School, Pittsburgh, PA, noting her accomplishments and the location of the school she attended.^[14]

Discography

As leader

Year Title Genre Label

2007 The Circle Recordings Bop, swing, stride Progressive

1999 1944-1945 Bop, swing, stride Classics

1978 Solo Recital (Montreux Jazz Festival 1978 - Live) Bop, swing, stride Pablo

1977 My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me Bop, swing, stride Pablo

1975 Free Spirits Bop, swing, stride Steeplechase

1974 Zoning Bop, swing, stride Folkways

1972 "Nite Life" Bop, swing Chiaroscuro

1970 From the Heart Blues, rock, jazz, gospel Chiaroscuro

1964 Mary Lou's Mass Blues, gospel Mary

1963 Black Christ of the Andes Blues, gospel Folkways

1953 The First Lady of the Piano Bop, swing, stride Inner City

1945 The Zodiac Suite Classical, bop, swing, stride Folkways

1944 Roll 'Em Bop, swing, stride Audiophile

As sideman

With Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (Verve, 1957)

Giants (Perception, 1971) - with Bobby Hackett

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mary Lou Williams.

Kernodle, Tammy L. Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams, (2004); ISBN 1-55553-606-9

Dahl, Linda. Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams, Pantheon Books, p. 29 (2000); ISBN 0-375-40899-1

"No Kitten on the Keys", Time magazine, July 26, 1943.

Max Jones Jazz Talking: Profiles, Interviews, and Other Riffs on Jazz Musicians, Da Capo Press, 2000, p. 190; ISBN 0-306-80948-6

Karin Pendle, American Women Composers, Routledge, 1997, p. 117; ISBN 90-5702-145-5

Duke Ellington Music Is My Mistress, Da Capo Press, 1976, p. 169; ISBN 0-306-80033-0

"The Prayerful One". Time. 1964-02-21. Retrieved 2008-11-13.

Mary Lou Williams at Find a Grave

Dahl, Linda. Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (2001), p. 379.

Grammy Awards Database

Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, Duke University.

Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival, The Kennedy Center.

Mary Lou Williams at rutgers.edu

"Mary Lou Williams - Pennsylvania Historical Markers on". Waymarking.com. 2006-12-03. Retrieved 2013-07-02.

Further reading

Buehrer, Theodore E., ed. (2013). Mary's Ideas: Mary Lou Williams's Development as a Big Band Leader. Music of the United States of America (MUSA) vol. 25. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions.

Kernodle, Tammy L. "Williams, Mary Lou". Grove Art Online.

External links

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (July 2013)

Mary Lou Williams Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ

Jazz Girl: A Novel of Mary Lou Williams' Early Life by Sarah Bruce Kelly, 2010 Bel Canto Press ISBN 978-0-615-35376-0

Jazz Archive at Duke University

JazzPolice.com review of "Zodiac Suite Revisited" by the Mary Lou Williams Collective

Linda Dahl Collection on Mary Lou Williams, Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University

Mary Lou Williams at Music of the United States of America (MUSA)

Mary Lou Williams Biography

Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke University

Mary Lou Williams (huge selection)

PBS biography on Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams concert for children, Vancouver 1977 (includes 60-minute audio recording)

Mary Lou Williams on Piano Jazz

Mary Lou Williams Published Arrangements

Zodiac Suite Complete Published Score

MIDI sequences of 24 piano compositions and arrangements by Mary Lou Williams

Year	Title	Genre	Label
2007	The Circle Recordings	Bop, swing, stride	Progressive
1999	1944-1945	Bop, swing, stride	Classics
1978	Solo Recital (Montreux Jazz Festival 1978 - Live)	Bop, swing, stride	Pablo
1977	My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me	Bop, swing, stride	Pablo
1975	Free Spirits	Bop, swing, stride	Steeplechase
1974	Zoning	Bop, swing, stride	Folkways
1972	"Nite Life"	Bop, swing	Chiaroscuro
1970	From the Heart	Blues, rock, jazz, gospel	Chiaroscuro
1964	Mary Lou's Mass	Blues, gospel	Mary
1963	Black Christ of the Andes	Blues, gospel	Folkways
1953	The First Lady of the Piano	Bop, swing, stride	Inner City
1945	The Zodiac Suite	Classical, bop, swing, stride	Folkways
1944	Roll 'Em	Bop, swing, stride	Audiophile

Sound Projections

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musican, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, songwriter, producer, music theorist, and teacher,

Born: May 8, 1910 | Died: May 28, 1981

An Interview with Mary Lou Williams (1976)

Mary Lou Williams: A Centennial Celebration

Listen Now

Hear Mary Lou In Performance

More About Mary Lou

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)

Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band

Pianist Gets Her Due

Remembering Mary Lou Williams, Musician Who 'Moved Through Every Era'

Mary Lou Williams: Musical and social change agent

By NMAH, March 22, 2011

Mary Lou Williams Live At Montreux 1978

Mary Lou Williams-- "Hesitation Boogie" (1948)

AFRS 276 48-07-21 9:29 - 12:35 minutes Mary Lou Williams Hesitation Boogie Mary Lou Williams on piano, possibly Dallas Bartley on string bass and Henry Tucker on drums from Benny Carter and His Orchestra.

"Zodiac Suite"-- by Mary Lou Williams 1945):

Mary Lou Williams (piano); Al Lucas (bass); Jack "The Bear" Parker (drums).

Mary Lou Williams--"Roll Em":

Mary Lou Williams - "The Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X4r5ZioIBw

Mary Lou Williams -"What's your story, morning glory"

Mary Lou Williams--Solo Piano 1944:

Mary Lou Williams - "It Ain't Necessarily So"

Mary Lou Williams - PianoBen Tucker - BassPercy Brice - Drums

Track 2 from the album 'Black Christ Of The Andes'

"Gloria" by Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams & Cecil Taylor - 'Ayizan'

Playing live in 'Mr. Rogers Neighborhood' - Mary Lou Williams (piano) and Milton Suggs (bass) 1973--PBS:

Mary Lou Williams On Piano Jazz

Listen Now

Set List

Featured Artist

Ronnie Boykins

Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams Interview (1976):

Interview with Mary Lou Williams at the Statler Hotel, Buffalo, NY Winter 1976. Still photographs are from the Jazz documentary film 'A Great Day In Harlem'

Mary Lou Williams & Cecil Taylor: Embraceable You?

Contents

Early years

Career

Later years

Awards and honors

Discography

As leader

As sideman

References

Further reading

External links

Editor's Bio

Blog Archive

Labels

Mary Lou Williams - Piano
Ben Tucker - Bass
Percy Brice - Drums