Mary Lou Williams | |
|---|---|
_-_Crop.jpg) Williamsc. 1946 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Mary Elfrieda Scruggs (1910-05-08)May 8, 1910 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | May 28, 1981(1981-05-28) (aged 71) Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz,gospel,swing,third stream,bebop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, arranger, bandleader |
| Instrument | Piano |
| Years active | 1920–1981 |
| Labels | Brunswick,Decca, Columbia, Savoy,Asch,Folkways,Victor,King,Atlantic,Circle,Vogue, Prestige, Chiaroscuro, SteepleChase,Pablo |
Mary Lou Williams (bornMary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981[1]) was an Americanjazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions andarrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions).[2] Williams wrote and arranged forDuke Ellington andBenny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher toThelonious Monk,Charlie Parker,Miles Davis,Tadd Dameron,Bud Powell, andDizzy Gillespie.
She has been noted for her 1954 conversion toCatholicism, which led to a musical hiatus and a later transformation in the nature of her music. She continued to perform and work as aphilanthropist, educator, and youth mentor until her death frombladder cancer in 1981.
The second of eleven children, Williams was born inAtlanta, Georgia, and grew up in theEast Liberty neighborhood ofPittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[3] Achild prodigy, at the age of two she was able to pick out simple tunes and by the age of three, she was taught piano by her mother.[4][5] Mary Lou Williams played piano out of necessity at a very young age; her white neighbors were throwing bricks into her house until Williams began playing the piano in their homes.[6] At the age of six, she supported her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing at parties.[7] She began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl".[8] She became a professional musician at the age of 15, citingLovie Austin as her greatest influence.[9][6] She married jazz saxophonistJohn Overton Williams in November 1926.[3]
In 1922, at the age of 12, Williams went on theOrpheum Circuit of theaters. During the following year she played withDuke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. One morning at three o'clock, she was playing withMcKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club.Louis Armstrong entered the room and paused to listen to her.[10]
In 1927, Williams married saxophonistJohn Overton Williams.[11] 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 Williams on piano. In 1929, 19-year-old Williams assumed leadership of the Memphis band when her husband accepted an invitation to joinAndy Kirk's band in Oklahoma City. Williams joined her husband in Oklahoma City but did not play with the band. The group, Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy,[11] moved toTulsa, Oklahoma, where Williams, when she wasn't working as a musician, was employed transporting bodies for anundertaker. When the Clouds of Joy accepted a longstanding engagement inKansas City, Missouri, Williams joined her husband and began sitting in with the band, as well as serving as its arranger and composer. She provided Kirk with such songs as "Froggy Bottom", "Walkin' and Swingin'", "Little Joe from Chicago", "Roll 'Em", and "Mary's Idea".[12]
Williams was the arranger and pianist for recordings in Kansas City (1929) Chicago (1930), and New York City (1930). During a trip to Chicago, she recorded "Drag 'Em" and "Night Life" as piano solos. She used the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion ofJack Kapp atBrunswick Records.[13] The records sold quickly, raising Williams to national prominence. Soon after the recording session she became Kirk's permanent second pianist, playing solo gigs and working as a freelance arranger forEarl Hines,Benny Goodman, andTommy Dorsey. In 1937, she producedIn the Groove (Brunswick), a collaboration withDick Wilson, and Benny Goodman asked her to write ablues song for his band. The result was "Roll 'Em", aboogie-woogie piece based on the blues, which followed her successful "Camel Hop", named for Goodman's radio show sponsor,Camel cigarettes. Goodman tried to put Williams under contract to write for him exclusively, but she refused, preferring to freelance instead.[14]
In 1942, Williams, who had divorced her husband, left the Twelve Clouds of Joy, returning again to Pittsburgh.[15] She was joined there by bandmateHarold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed a six-piece ensemble that includedArt Blakey on drums. After an engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to joinDuke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band inNew York City, 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 "Blue Skies" byIrving Berlin.[16] She also sold Ellington on performing "Walkin' and Swingin'". Within a year she had left Baker and the group and returned to New York.
.jpg)
Williams accepted a job at theCafé Society Downtown, started a weekly radio show calledMary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop[15] onWNEW and began mentoring and collaborating with youngerbebop musicians such asDizzy Gillespie andThelonious Monk. In 1945, she composed the bebop hit "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" for Gillespie.[17] "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 inMelody Maker.
In 1945, Williams composed the classically-influencedZodiac Suite, in which each of the twelve parts corresponded to asign of the zodiac, and were accordingly dedicated to several of her musical colleagues, includingBillie Holiday, andArt Tatum.[18] She recorded the suite withJack Parker andAl Lucas and performed it December 31, 1945, atThe Town Hall in New York City with an orchestra and tenor saxophonistBen Webster.[19]
In 1952, Williams accepted an offer to perform in England and ended up staying in Europe for two years.[12] By this time, her musical career had left Williams mentally and physically drained.
A three-year hiatus from performing began when she suddenly backed away from the piano during a performance in Paris in 1954.[20] She returned to the United States, converting toCatholicism in 1954 alongsideDizzy Gillespie's wife Lorraine. In addition to spending several hours atMass, her energies were then devoted mainly to theBel Canto Foundation, an effort she initiated using her savings as well as help from friends to turn her apartment inHamilton Heights into a halfway house for the poor as well as musicians who were grappling with addiction; she also made money over a longer period of time for the halfway house by way of a thrift store in Harlem.
Her hiatus may have been triggered by the death of her long-time friend and studentCharlie Parker in 1955 who also struggled with addiction for the majority of his life.[21] Father John Crowley and Father Anthony aided in persuading Williams to return to playing music. They told her that she could continue to serve God and the Catholic Church by utilizing her exceptional gift of creating music.[6] Moreover, Gillespie convinced her to return to playing, which she did at the 1957Newport Jazz Festival with Gillespie's band.[12][1]
In 1958, she appeared as one of only three women in the famous photograph of jazz greats,A Great Day in Harlem.
Father Peter O'Brien, aCatholic priest, became her close friend and manager in the 1960s.[1] Gillespie also introduced her to Pittsburgh's BishopJohn Wright. O'Brien helped her establish new venues for jazz performance at a time when no more than two clubs in Manhattan offered jazz full-time. In addition to club work, she played at colleges, formed her own record label and publishing companies, founded thePittsburgh Jazz Festival (with the bishop's help), and made television appearances.
Bishop Wright let her teach atSeton High School on the city's North Side. It was there that she wrote her first Mass, calledThe Pittsburgh Mass. Williams eventually became the first jazz composer commissioned by the church to compose liturgical music in the jazz idiom.[22]
Following her hiatus, Williams' wrote and performedBlack Christ of the Andes, based around ahymn in honor of the Peruvian saintMartin de Porres, and two other short works,Anima Christi andPraise the Lord.[23] It was first performed in November 1962 atSt. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan. She recorded it in October of the next year.[23]
Throughout the 1960s, Williams' composing concentrated on sacred music, hymns, and Masses. One of the Masses,Music for Peace, was choreographed byAlvin Ailey and performed by theAlvin Ailey Dance Theater asMary Lou's Mass in 1971.[24] About the work, Ailey commented, "If there can be aBernstein Mass, aMozart Mass, aBach Mass, why can't there beMary Lou's Mass?"[25] Williams performed the revision ofMary Lou's Mass, her most acclaimed work, onThe Dick Cavett Show in 1971.[26] She also made a guest appearance onSesame Street in 1975.
Williams put much effort into working with youth choirs to perform her works, including "Mary Lou's Mass" atSt. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in April 1975 before a gathering of over three thousand.[6] It marked the first time a jazz musician had played at the church.[5] She opened a charitable organization and opened thrift stores inHarlem, directing the proceeds, along with ten percent of her own earnings, to musicians in need. As a 1964Time article explained, "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.'"[27] She performed at theMonterey Jazz Festival in 1965, with a jazz festival group.[15]
Throughout the 1970s, Williams' career flourished. She released numerous albums, including as solo pianist and commentator on the recordedThe History of Jazz. She returned to the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1971. She could also be seen playing nightly inGreenwich Village at The Cookery, a new club run by her former boss from the Café Society,Barney Josephson. That engagement too, was recorded.
Williams had a two-piano performance withavant-garde pianistCecil Taylor at Carnegie Hall on April 17, 1977.[28] Despite onstage tensions between Williams and Taylor, their performance was released on a live album titledEmbraced.[29]
Williams instructed school children on jazz.[6] She then accepted an appointment atDuke University as artist-in-residence (from 1977 to 1981),[30] teaching the History of Jazz with Father O'Brien and directing theDuke Jazz Ensemble. With a light teaching schedule, she also made many concert and festival appearances, conducted clinics with youth, and in 1978 performed at theWhite House for PresidentJimmy Carter and his guests.[15] She participated in Benny Goodman's 40th-anniversaryCarnegie Hall concert in 1978.[15]
Williams' final recording,Solo Recital (Montreux Jazz Festival, 1978), three years before her death, had amedley encompassingspirituals,ragtime, blues andswing. 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 1980, she founded the Mary Lou Williams Foundation.[31]
In 1981, Mary Lou Williams died ofbladder cancer inDurham, North Carolina at the age of 71.[15] Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Andy Kirk attended her funeral at theChurch of St. Ignatius Loyola.[8] She was buried in theCalvary Catholic Cemetery in Pittsburgh.[32] Looking back at the end of her life, Mary Lou Williams said: "I did it, didn't I? Through muck and mud."[33] She was known as "the first lady of the jazz keyboard".[34] Williams was one of the first women to be successful in jazz.[35]
Her final work for wind symphony,History..., reconstructed and recomposed by Duke faculty member Anthony Kelley, was premiered in 2024.[36]
| Year | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1945 | The Zodiac Suite | Asch Records |
| 1945 | Town Hall '45: The Zodiac Suite | Vintage Jazz Classics 1993) |
| 1951 | Mary Lou Williams | Atlantic |
| 1953 | The First Lady of the Piano | Vogue |
| 1953 | A Keyboard History | Jazztone |
| 1954 | Mary Lou | EmArcy |
| 1959 | Messin' 'Round in Montmartre | Storyville |
| 1964 | Mary Lou Williams / Black Christ of the Andes | Mary/Folkways |
| 1970 | Music for Peace | Mary |
| 1975 | Mary Lou's Mass | Mary |
| 1970 | From the Heart | Chiaroscuro |
| 1974 | Zoning | Mary /Folkways |
| 1975 | Free Spirits | Steeplechase |
| 1976 | Live at the Cookery | Chiaroscuro 1994 |
| 1977 | Embraced withCecil Taylor | Pablo Live |
| 1977 | My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me | Pablo 1978 |
| 1977 | Live at the Keystone Korner | HighNote 2002 |
| 1977 | A Grand Night For Swinging | High Note, 2008 |
| 1978 | Solo Recital | Pablo |
| 1978 | Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Guest Mary Lou Williams | Jazz Alliance 2004 |
| 1978 | Nice Jazz 1978 | Black And Blue 2016 |
| 1979 | At Rick's Café Americain | Storyville 1999 |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
