Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.

She has been noted for her 1954 conversion to Catholicism, which led to a musical hiatus and a later transformation in the nature of her music. She continued to perform and work as a philanthropist, educator, and youth mentor until her death from bladder cancer in 1981.

Early years

The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A child 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. 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. At the age of six, she supported her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing at parties. She began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl". She became a professional musician at the age of 15, citing Lovie Austin as her greatest influence.

In 1927, Williams married saxophonist John Overton 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 Williams on piano. In 1929, 19-year-old Williams assumed leadership of the Memphis band when her husband accepted an invitation to join Andy 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,

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 of Jack Kapp at Brunswick Records. 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 for Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. In 1937, she produced In the Groove (Brunswick), a collaboration with Dick Wilson, and Benny Goodman asked her to write a blues song for his band. The result was "Roll 'Em", a boogie-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.

In 1942, Williams, who had divorced her husband, left the Twelve Clouds of Joy and returned 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 an engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band in New 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" by Irving Berlin. She also sold Ellington on performing "Walkin' and Swingin'". Within a year she had left Baker and the group and returned to New York.

thumb|right|250px|Williams in her apartment with [[Jack Teagarden, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones and Dizzy Gillespie]]

Williams accepted a job at the Café Society Downtown, started a weekly radio show called Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop "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.

In 1945, Williams composed the classically-influenced Zodiac Suite, in which each of the twelve parts corresponded to a sign of the zodiac, and were accordingly dedicated to several of her musical colleagues, including Billie Holiday, and Art Tatum. She recorded the suite with Jack Parker and Al Lucas and performed it December 31, 1945, at The Town Hall in New York City with an orchestra and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.

In 1952, Williams accepted an offer to perform in England and ended up staying in Europe for two years. She returned to the United States, converting to Catholicism in 1954 alongside Dizzy Gillespie's wife Lorraine. In addition to spending several hours at Mass, her energies were then devoted mainly to the Bel Canto Foundation, an effort she initiated using her savings as well as help from friends to turn her apartment in Hamilton 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 student Charlie Parker in 1955 who also struggled with addiction for the majority of his life. 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.</blockquote>

Return to music

Following her hiatus, Williams' wrote and performed Black Christ of the Andes, based around a hymn in honor of the Peruvian saint Martin de Porres, and two other short works, Anima Christi and Praise the Lord. It was first performed in November 1962 at St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan. She recorded it in October of the next year. About the work, Ailey commented, "If there can be a Bernstein Mass, a Mozart Mass, a Bach Mass, why can't there be Mary Lou's Mass?" Williams performed the revision of Mary Lou's Mass, her most acclaimed work, on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. She also made a guest appearance on Sesame Street in 1975.

Williams put much effort into working with youth choirs to perform her works, including "Mary Lou's Mass" at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in April 1975 before a gathering of over three thousand. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1965, with a jazz festival group. Despite onstage tensions between Williams and Taylor, their performance was released on a live album titled Embraced.

Williams instructed school children on jazz. teaching the History of Jazz with Father O'Brien and directing the Duke Jazz Ensemble. With a light teaching schedule, she also made many concert and festival appearances, conducted clinics with youth, and in 1978 performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and his guests.

In 1981, Mary Lou Williams died of bladder cancer in Durham, North Carolina at the age of 71. Looking back at the end of her life, Mary Lou Williams said: "I did it, didn't I? Through muck and mud." She was known as "the first lady of the jazz keyboard". Williams was one of the first women to be successful in jazz.

Her final work for wind symphony, History..., reconstructed and recomposed by Duke faculty member Anthony Kelley, was premiered in 2024.

Awards and honors

Guggenheim Fellowships, 1972 and 1977.
Nominee 1971 Grammy Awards, Best Jazz Performance – Group, for the album Giants, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hackett, Mary Lou Williams
Honorary degree from Fordham University in New York in 1973
Received the 1981 Duke University's Trinity Award for service to the university, an award voted on by Duke University students.
Since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.
Since 2000, her archives are preserved at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark.
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.
In 2000, trumpeter Dave Douglas released the album Soul on Soul as a tribute to her, featuring original arrangements of her music and new pieces inspired by her work.
The 2000 album Impressions of Mary Lou by pianist John Hicks featured eight of her compositions.
The Dutch Jazz Orchestra researched and played rediscovered works of Williams on their 2005 album Lady Who Swings the Band.
In 2006, Geri Allen's Mary Lou Williams Collective released their album Zodiac Suite: Revisited.
A YA historical novel based on Mary Lou Williams and her early life, entitled Jazz Girl, by Sarah Bruce Kelly, was published in 2010.
A children's book based on Mary Lou Williams, entitled The Little Piano Girl, by Ann Ingalls and Maryann MacDonald with illustrations by Giselle Potter, was published in 2010.
In 2013, the American Musicological Society published Mary Lou Williams' Selected Works for Big Band, a compilation of 11 of her big band scores.
In 2018 What'sHerName women's history podcast aired the episode "THE MUSICIAN Mary Lou Williams", with guest expert 'Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band,' producer and director Carol Bash.
In 2021, the Umlaut Big Band released Mary's Ideas (Umlaut Records), a double-cd featuring rare and newly discovered works by Mary Lou Williams, based on research from her manuscripts. It includes arrangements and compositions for Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, excerpts from the Zodiac Suite in its 1945 orchestral arrangement, and excerpts from History of Jazz for Wind Symphony, Mary Lou Williams' ultimate and unfinished composition.
Mary Lou Williams Lane, a street near 10th and Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri, was named after the renowned jazz artist.

Discography

As leader

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!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 with Cecil 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

As featured artist

; With Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (Verve, 1957)
Giants (Perception, 1971) with Bobby Hackett

; With Buddy Tate

Buddy Tate and His Buddies (Chiaroscuro, 1973)

References

External links

Mary Lou Williams Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.
Mary Lou Williams concert for children, Vancouver 1977 (includes 60-minute audio recording)
Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band (2015 film).
The Legacy of Mary Lou Williams (2010 video presentation by Tammy Kernodle, Associate Professor of Musicology, Miami University, Ohio)
Jazz at Lincoln Center: Family Concert: Who is Mary Lou Williams?
"Nice & Rough": Unapologetically Black, Beautiful, and Bold: A Conversation with Sheila Jackson on Black Women's Participation in Cultural Production in the 1970s" Jstor
Mary Lou Williams recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
KC Black History Website