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Mary Lou Williams

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".
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Mary Lou's Salon

by Bill Gottlieb
March 15, 2024

This article was first published at All About Jazz in June 1999.“The all-time greatest woman jazz musician." That typically was the kind of language used in describing Mary Lou Williams.Mary Lou Williams Mary Lou was a fabulous pianist, as well as a noted arranger, and composer. But she also had another role of distinction: she was a sort of mother spirit for innovative musicians. Her spacious Harlem apartment was a salon where, especially in the 1940's, ...

Radio & Podcasts

A Celebration of Music By Mary Lou Williams - A Formidable Jazz Mother On Many Fronts

by Mary Foster Conklin
May 22, 2023

This broadcast celebrates Mothers Day featuring music by Mary Lou Williams in the first hour (a formidable Jazz Mother on so many fronts). In the second hour, more music by jazz mothers Geri Allen, Allison Miller, Chris McNulty and more, with new releases from the Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band plus singles from Ann Hampton Callaway & Amanda McBroom and vocal group Säje featuring Michael Mayo. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by seeing them live ...

Profile

Mary Lou Williams: Into the Zone of Music

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 23, 2023

Few musicians have embraced the entire history of jazz like Mary Lou Williams, and at the same time shaped its development compositionally and instrumentally. She brought jazz into contact with classical music and played spiritual jazz before it became hip, but she was also a treasured teacher and mentor. Mary Lou Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910, as Mary Elfrieda Scruggs. She grew up with an absent mother who drank, and the father was ...

Radio & Podcasts

Happy Birthday to Mary Lou Williams - A Formidable Jazz Mother

by Mary Foster Conklin
May 16, 2022

This broadcast celebrates Mothers Day featuring music by several notable jazz mothers and their children, plus new releases from pianists Yelena Eckemoff, Ariane Racicot, Alberto Pibiri and Jeremy Siskind, vocalists CeCe Gable and Tierney Sutton, with birthday shoutouts to Mary Lou Williams (a formidable Jazz Mother on so many fronts). Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can continue to distract, provoke, comfort and inspire.

Radio & Podcasts

Tribute Mary Lou Williams, PIano Trio Smorgasbord, Guitar Mental Block

by David Brown
February 1, 2022

This week, a birthday wish for a forgotten Philly singer, a super set of piano trios featuring a new tribute to Mary Lou Williams. I work out my issues with jazz guitar with some ear opening duets, and more. Old, new, in, out... wherever the music takes us. Each week, we will explore the elements of jazz and creative music from a historical perspective. Hosted by David Brown. Playlist Terry Morel “I Can't Get Started" from Her Complete ...

Radio & Podcasts

Chenin Blanc Meets Mary Lou Williams

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
July 31, 2021

Kristen explores the nature of healing and transformation through the grape and the groove in this month's episode, featuring the later work of Mary Lou Williams and a chenin blanc from Domaine du Closel. ...

Jazz & Juice

Evolution: Chenin Blanc Meets Mary Lou Williams

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
July 19, 2021

Welcome to July's Jazz & Juice--I thoroughly enjoyed our trip on the wilder side of winemaking and improvisation last month (here's a link to the article, video, and podcast if you missed it.) Now, we'll delve into two examples of great women in jazz and wine who will lead us on an inspiring and trailblazing journey with tuneful and tasteful results. EvolutionThe word evolution seems to imply that there is an ultimate destination, some perfect state of arrival ...

Performance / Tour

May 11: New England Conservatory Youth Jazz Orchestra In Music Of Jimmy Giuffre And Mary Lou Williams

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications
April 30, 2016

The New England Conservatory Youth Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bob Nieske, features the music of Jimmy Giuffre and Mary Lou Williams in a free concert at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11 at NEC’s Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston. The NEC Youth Jazz Orchestra is comprised of extraordinary middle and high school students from across the region. For more information, log on to NEC Youth Jazz or call 617-585-1260. The program for the evening includes Giuffre’s “Four Brothers,” “River ...
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Video / DVD

Mary Lou Williams: 1978

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 25, 2015

Three years before her death in 1981, pianist Mary Lou Williams performed an extraordinary concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Here's nearly an hour of her playing solo, which will give you a full sense of her brilliance and significance. If you can't watch all of it, let it run in the background as you work. Her technique and soul are breathtaking. In my opinion, Williams has never been fully recognized as a musical innovator on par with Earl “Fatha" ...
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TV / Film

New Biopic Documentary On Mary Lou Williams Features Carmen Lundy

Source: Muse Media
February 11, 2015

Critically-acclaimed vocalist, songwriter, producer and musician Carmen Lundy will be featured in the upcoming biopic documentary about Jazz Great Mary Lou Williams, The Lady Who Swings The Band, directed by filmmaker Carol Bash which premiered at The Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles February 6th. In addition to speaking on film, Carmen also performs the title track live in the film. Carmen herself has a long history with the music of Mary Lou Williams. In the early eighties, shortly ...
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Performance / Tour

Chihiro Yamanaka Trio At Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival, May 10 In Washington, DC

Source: Scott Foster
May 5, 2012

The Chihiro Yamanaka Trio will perform May 10, 2012 at the 17th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Chihiro, a Universal Music recording artist and a jazz pianist/composer, kicks off the festival, performing the opening set on the festival's opening night concert, followed by Jane Bunnett & Hilario Duran with Special Guest Candido and the Carmen Lundy Quartet. The festival is hosted by the great ...
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Recording

Trio 3 Plus Geri Allen - Celebrating Mary Lou Williams Live at Birdland New York (Intakt, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
September 6, 2011

When the pianist Geri Allen joined the well established Trio 3 (Oliver Lake on alto saxophone, Reggie Workman on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums) it proved to be an auspicious occasion, captured on this album live in concert at Birdland in New York City. While the participants have serious avant-garde cred, they have no problem adapting to Williams' compositions as she was a life-long musical explorer herself. “Blues for Peter" establishes the medium-up groove tempo with some wonderfully ripe ...
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Performance / Tour

Corky Hale to Make Kennedy Center Debut in 16th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival

Source: Chris M. Slawecki
May 16, 2011

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts 16th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival will present “Corky Hale And Friends," featuring Corky Hale, the critically acclaimed and renowned jazz harpist, pianist and vocalist on Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. in the Terrace Theater of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; 2700 F Street, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20566.

Corky Hale will be accompanied by Boots Maleson on bass and Brian Brake on ...
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Performance / Tour

Jamie Baum Septet at Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival May 19

Source: Scott Foster
May 16, 2011

The Jamie Baum Septet will perform May 19, 2011 as part of the 16th annual Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The concert, which begins at 7:00 PM, will be at the Terrace Theater in the Kennedy Center complex, and will also feature the Tia Fuller Quartet and JaLaLa. Tickets may be purchased on the festival's website or by phone (800-444-1324 or 202-467-4600.) Orchestra seats are ...
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Radio

A Brief History of Mary Lou Williams

Source: David Brent Johnson
November 27, 2010

Does anybody embody the history of 20th-century jazz as much as Mary Lou Williams? The arc of her career extends from the territory bands and Kansas City swing of the 1930s to the heights of the big-band era, the bebop movement of the 1940s, the American expatriate jazz of the post-World War II era, the sacred-jazz trend of the 1960s, and the emergence of jazz education in the 1970s. Only Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Benny Carter can compare to ...
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102

Performance / Tour

Celebrate Mary Lou Williams Centennial with Aardvark Jazz Orchestra

Source: Mary Curtin Productions
May 2, 2010

Mary Lou Williams Centennial Celebration: From Swing to Sacred Music, a Journey of Faith

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra with special guests Geri Allen, pianist and narrator Father Peter F. O'Brien.

Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Boston College, Robsham Theatre, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA. MBTA: Green Line, B-Branch, Boston College Station. Parking nearby.

Admission: $20, $15 Advance Purchase (by April 30, 2010) Box Office: 617-552-4002 Information: 617-776-8778

“Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary. Her music retains a standard ...
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Festival

Dee Dee Bridgewater Hosts the 14th Annual Women in Jazz Festival

Source: All About Jazz
April 19, 2009

The Smithsonian may have designated April as Jazz Appreciation Month, but one of the season's most intriguing programs hits in May. All performances sold out the past two years, so consider this a hot ticket.

Hosted by Dee Dee Bridgewater, the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival marks its 14th thrilling year with three evenings of star- studded performances featuring the world's top female jazz artists.

Anat Cohen, Maria Schneider and saxophonist Hailey Mae Niswanger are among this year's ...
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