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  • Template:MaryLouWilliams

    (her Harlem apartment, New York, N.Y., ca. August 1947)
    (Mirror image detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    Mary Lou Williams /
    Mary Elfrieda Scruggs
    (birth name)
    (1910–1981)
    (active 1920→1981)



    TictacBlueCu10.gif piano Piano1.png
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png soloist
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png combos
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png arranger
    YellowButtonBullet10px.png composer
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Spirituals
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Ragtime
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Stride piano
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Gospel
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Blues
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Ballads
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Swing
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Bebop
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Post-Bop
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Third stream
    BlueButtonBullet9.png Free jazz


    (Detail of portrait of Mary Lou Williams in her apartment, New York, N.Y., August, 1947)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png as can easily be seen by all of the jazz genres Williams performed over her career, she was open and adaptive to new music.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Williams took the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion of Brunswick Record's Jack Kapp as quoted in Max Jones's Jazz Talking: Profiles, Interviews, and Other Riffs on Jazz Musician's, Da Capo Press, 2000, 190. Her last name of Williams came from her husband, saxophonist John Williams, who she married at age 16.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png musical prodigy who could pick out simple tunes at age two, who taught herself to play the piano at three years old, including playing back a tune she heard her mother play on the family organ at that age, and discovered in high school she had perfect pitch.[1][2]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png supported her large family by playing at parties at six years old.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her professional debut with big bands came in 1922, at age 12, when she substituted for a pianist in the Buzzin' "Sparrow" Harris and His Hits and Bits Revue, a traveling show.[3]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png billed as Mary Lou Burley, she toured occasionally for the next few years (early 1920s) passing through New York City several times, playing for such artists as Jelly Roll Morton, Willie (“the Lion”) Smith, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington. Played with Duke Ellington's Washingtonians when only twelve years old, as well as with Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, according to Williams in her interview on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" (1978).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png known as "the first lady of the jazz keyboard."

    FirstLadyOfPianoAlbumCoverDarkHeadsot.jpeg FirstLadyOfPianoExposedShoulder.jpeg FirstLadyOfPianoYellowAlbumCover.jpeg
    A William P. Gottlieb photograph of Mary Lou Williams with a grand piano fretboard in foreground.

    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)



    (New York, NY ca. 1946)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png one of the earlier women recognized as highly successful in jazz. FirstLadyInJazz19271957AlbumCover.jpeg

    (Café Society Downtown, New York, N.Y., ca. June 1947)
    (Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “No woman other than the vocalists Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald had so dominated the swing scene or earned the genuine respect of bandleaders and musicians alike.”[4]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png joined the St. Louis based band the Synco Jazzers in 1925 led by John Overton "Bearcat" Williams (1905-1996), whom she married in 1926.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png played with John Williams's Syncopators (1926–1929).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png served as deputy pianist and arranger for Andy Kirk's

    (Andy Kirk (1898-1992))



    Twelve Clouds of Joy band until April 1930, at which time she became a regular member.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Kirk band in the 1930s success was largely due to her distinctive arrangements, compositions and solo performances on the piano.[5] Listen to Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy with arrangements and compositions by Williams. See Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy discography.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “an important swing pianist, with a lightly rocking, legato manner based on subtly varied stride and boogie-woogie bass patterns.”[6]
     

    (Photo taken around 1947)

    (her apartment, New York, N.Y., ca. August 1947)
    (Detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)

    (Portrait taken between 1938 and 1948)
    (Detail of Photo by William P. Gottlieb)



    GreenButtonBullet9.png wrote and arranged "Camel Hop" written for Benny Goodman's radio show sponsor, Camel cigarettes, followed by another big hit for Goodman in her "Roll 'Em" (a boogie-woogie piece based on the blues) (1937), "What's Your Story, Morning Glory" for Jimmie Lunceford, arrangements for the biggest act at the time of Cab Calloway, rearranged Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" as "Trumpets No End" (1943) a big hit for Duke Ellington that Ellington recorded in 1946[7] and the Dizzy Gillespie smash hit, "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" (1949).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png supplied noteworthy swing-band scores arranging for Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Earl Hines, during the late 1930's.[7]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png became involved with a younger group of New York musicians including Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron, and Dizzy Gillespie (1943), moving from what Encyclopedia Brittanica describes as “an established musician in the swing style, she easily made the transition to bebop. Her apartment became a meeting place, and she wrote several important compositions in the bebop style, including “In the Land of Oo-Blah-Dee,” “Tisherone,” “Knowledge,” “Lonely Moments,” and “Waltz Boogie.” The latter was recorded with Girl-Stars, one of her several women’s bands, in 1946.”
     
    A compositing of three photographs taken by Robert P. Gottlieb of Mary Lou Williams in late 1940s plus one more source unknown in lower right corner.



    GreenButtonBullet9.png quit the Kirk band to form her own small group in New York with her second husband, trumpeter Shorty Baker, (1942).[7]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png premiered the first of many large compositions including the 12-movement Zodiac Suite ZodiacSuiteAlbumCover.jpeg whose “Capricorn” movement was created especially for dancer Pearl Primus who also performed at Café Society (1945).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png moved to Europe performing in both Paris and London (1952).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png famously halted a 1954 Paris concert beginning her hiatus from the stage before starting again to perform in 1957 with Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport Jazz Festival and later performing with her own trio.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png founded Mary Records, the first recording company begun by a woman.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png three movements from her "Zodiac Suite" were performed in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra—a very early instance of the recognition of jazz by a leading symphony orchestra (1946).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png among the first jazz artists to perform at Carnegie Hall and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, New York City (1946).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png an important figure in Bebop who contributed scores to Dizzy Gillespie’s big band.
     
    MaryLouWilliamsThreeHornsBehindHer.png

    GreenButtonBullet9.png worked with some of music’s greatest legends, including Ben Webster, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. A photograph from Milt Hinton closeup of Mary Lou Williams standing left of Thelonious Monk at the photographic shot by Art Kane for Esquire magazine's "A GreatbDayin Harlem."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png based in Europe between 1952 and 1954.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png retired from music in 1954 to pursue religious and charitable interests. MaryLouWilliamsOlderBlueCO1.png

    GreenButtonBullet9.png resumed her career in 1957 where she remained active throughout the 1960s and 1970s leading her own groups in New York clubs, composing sacred works for jazz orchestra and voices, and devoting much of her time to teaching.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png long regarded as one of the most significant female musicians in jazz, as an instrumentalist, as a composer, and as an arranger.[8]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png retained the status of a modernist for most of her career.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png “easily adapting in the 1940s to the new Bebop idiom and in the 1960s her play attained a level of complexity and dissonance that rivaled avant-garde pianism of the time, but without losing the underlying blues feeling."[9]
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png breadth of her work as a composer and arranger can be seen from her expert swing-band scores for Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy (Listen to Walkin’ and Swingin’, or Mary’s Idea, etc.) to the large-scale sacred works of the 1960s and 70s.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her "Waltz Boogie" (1946) WaltzBoogieRecord.png was one of the earliest attempts to adapt jazz to non-duple meters.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements recorded in 78, 45, and LP formats. See some of her album covers below and click on any of them to go to her discography.

    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.
    A collage of Mary Lou Williams album covers.


    MaryLouWilliamsFriendsAroundPianoGottlieb1947.jpeg GreenButtonBullet9.png friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron (to the right of Mary Lou in photograph), Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie (Dizzy partially hidden by piano player; click on photo for who else is in photograph by William P. Gottlieb).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In the 1960s and ’70s composed a number of her sacred works and liturgical pieces for jazz ensembles, including a cantata, "Black Christ of the Andes" (1962); three masses that included "Black Christ of the Andes" (see track list for "Black Christ of the Andes") (1963)[10], "Mass for the Lenten Season" (1968), "Music for Peace" (1970), popularly known as "Mary Lou’s Mass" MaryLousMassAlbumCover.png which (1970) became well known in a version choreographed by Alvin Ailey.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In 1970 as a solo pianist and providing her own commentary, she recorded a comprehensive performance-lecture entitled "The History of Jazz." (FW2860) MaryLouWilliamsTheHistoryOfJazzAlbumCover.png
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png made an appearance (click on "appearance" to view video) on A screen capture of Mary Lou Williams seated playing piano on left with Mr. Rogers standing in middle and bassist Milton Suggs playing bass on right.

    Mister Roger’s Neighborhood (PBS) with bassist Milton Suggs (1973).



    GreenButtonBullet9.png Guggenheim Fellowships, 1972 and 1977.

    MaryLouWilliamsOlderLookingLeftRCO178.png
    GreenButtonBullet9.png
    “Why have jazz historians generally avoided serious consideration of her music and her contributions to jazz, even as she garnered praise and respect from her peers? One obvious answer is that Mary Lou Williams was a woman performing and writing in the male-dominated field of jazz music whose abilities enabled her to defy the conventional gender roles implicit in the jazz narratives of her day. According to this view, women in jazz were rare, women pianists rarer still, and women who, besides their superiority as players, could also compose and arrange first-class music for big band and combo were simply unheard of. Yet Duke Ellington famously described (in his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress) that Williams was "perpetually contemporary," going on to say that "her writing and performing are and have always been just a little ahead throughout her career."[11]

    GreenButtonBullet9.png nominee Grammy Awards, Best Jazz Performance – Group, for the album "Giants—Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hackett, Mary Lou Williams" (1971); also released under the title "Mary Lou Williams and the Trumpet Giants."

    GreenButtonBullet9.png honorary degree from Fordham University in New York (1973).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png In 1975 was appointed to the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and in 1977 to the faculty at Duke University.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png performed duets in concert with avant-garde player Cecil Taylor (1977).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png founded the Mary Lou Williams Foundation (1980).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png honorary degree from the Jesuit school Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri (1980).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png taught on the staff of Duke University as the first Artist-in-Residence from 1977 until her death in 1981.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png received the Duke University's Trinity Award 🥇 (May 10, 1981)[12] for service to the university, an award voted on by Duke University students.

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Duke University DukeUniversityLogo1.png established the MaryLouWilliamsCenterForBlackCultureLogoWithHead.png Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture (1983). MaryLouWilliamsCenterForBlackCultureLogo1.png
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival (annually since 1996).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her archives are preserved at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark (since 2000).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png her Pennsylvania State Historic Marker MaryLouWilliamsHistoricMarker.jpeg is placed at 328 Lincoln Avenue, Lincoln Elementary School, Pittsburgh, PA, noting her accomplishments and the location of the school she attended.
     
    GreenButtonBullet9.png trumpeter Dave Douglas released the album "Soul on Soul" SoulOnSoulAlbumCover.jpeg as a tribute to her, featuring original arrangements of her music and new pieces inspired by her work (2000).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the album "Impressions of Mary Lou" ImpressionsofMaryLouAlbumCover.jpeg by pianist John Hicks featured eight of her compositions (2000).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png had a small cameo in Ken Burns’s documentary "Jazz" on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) (2001).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the Dutch Jazz Orchestra researched and played rediscovered works of Williams on their album "Lady Who Swings the Band" (2005).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Geri Allen's Mary Lou Williams Collective released their album "Zodiac Suite: Revisited" (2006).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png a YA historical novel based on Mary Lou Williams entitled Jazz Girl, JazzGirlBookCoverSarahBruceKelly.jpeg by Sarah Bruce Kelly, published in 2010.
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png merited a children's book based on Mary Lou William's early life, entitled The Little Piano Girl LittlePianoGirlBookCover2.png by Ann Ingalls and Maryann MacDonald with illustrations by Giselle Potter, (published in 2010).
     
    GreenButtonBullet9.png a poetry book by Yona Harvey entitled Hemming the Water HemmingTheWaterCover.jpeg published in 2013, inspired by Williams and featuring the poem "Communion with Mary Lou Williams" (2011).
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png the American Musicological Society published Mary Lou Williams's Selected Works for Big Band, a compilation of eleven of her big band scores (2013).

    GreenButtonBullet9.png Her New York Times obituary reports that “Miss Williams was an important contributor to every aspect of jazz that developed during a career that began in the late 1920's and lasted for more than half a century.”[13]
     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png an award-winning documentary film entitled, "Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band,"
    MaryLouWilliamsSwingsTheBandMoviePoster.png produced and directed by Carol Bash, premiered on American Public Television and was screened at various domestic and international film festivals (2015).

     

    GreenButtonBullet9.png What'sHerName women's history podcasts 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 (2018).
     

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to an "Interview with Mary Lou Williams" (recorded live in 1976).
    InterviewWithMaryLouWilliams1976.jpeg

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "NPR's 'Jazz Profiles' on Mary Lou Williams, 'Perpetually Contemporary'," July 25, 2007.
     

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to Mary Lou Williams playing, even singing, and being interviewed by Marian McPartland (1918–2013)

    A black and white photograph of Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland sitting on the same piano bench during the first episode of NPR's program "Piano Jazz" in 1978. A color photograph of Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland sitting together on piano bench with big smiles.

    on the very first episode of McPartland's "Piano Jazz" (recorded live in 1978) with bassist Ronnie Boykins (1935–1980).

    Album cover of Mary Lou Williams on the very first episode of  Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" radio program.
     


    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Listen to "Mary Lou Williams Centennial On JazzSet," from radio station WBGO, broadcast May 6, 2010. The first concert is from the University of Michigan (1978) where she plays her history of jazz medley first playing solo piano on spirituals (her own composition), Ragtime playing "Fandangle" a rag her mother had taught her, demonstrates Kansas City Swing (a "Blues,") a swinging left hand untitled number, a boogie-woogie on "Baby Bear Boogie." Adding bassist Ronnie Boykins, they perform "On Green Dolphin Street," "Baby Man" (by John Stubblefield), "Jeep Is Jumpin'" (by Johnny Hodges), and "Let's Do the Froggy Bottom." The University of Wisconsin, Madison concert adds drummer Charlie Persip where the trio plays Dizzy Gillespie's "Olinga," followed by "Medi II," then "Bag's Groove" by Milt Jackson.
    A William P. Gottlieb black and white photograph of Mary Lou Williams smiling sitting on a piano bench closeup of her from the waist up facing right and looking at camera 📸.
    GreenButtonBullet9.png Mary Lou Williams Lane, a street near 10th and Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri, was named after her (2018).

    (Photo by Michelle Pond)

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Tammy L. Kernodle, (B.M., M.A.), "Anything You are Shows Up in Your Music: Mary Lou Williams and the Sanctification of Jazz," Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1997.

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Tammy L. Kernodle, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004).

    CirclesInSquareBullet5.gif Ayana Contreras, "Mary Lou Williams, Writ Large," DownBeat, December 7, 2020.


    1. ↑ Mary Lou Williams Interview, Melody Maker, April to June, 1954.
    2. ↑ Cassandra Jensen, "Top 10 Reasons Mary Lou Williams Should Be Your Favorite Jazz Musician," BlackPublicMedia.org, (March 31, 2015), third paragraph.
    3. ↑ Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, first paragraph. Most recently updated on May 25, 2018.
    4. ↑ Tammy L. Kemodle, "Ch. 5: How Do You Keep the Music Playing?," in Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 81.
    5. ↑ As claimed in the Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, second paragraph:
      “In 1927, when her husband, saxophonist and bandleader John Williams, moved to Oklahoma to join the popular Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy, Mary Lou Williams took over the leadership of his band. She began a successful arranging career in 1929, when she moved to Oklahoma to join her husband with Kirk. During her time with Kirk, the band became well known for her stunning solo piano and highly original arrangements, including “Froggy Bottom,” “Walkin’ and Swingin’,” “Little Joe from Chicago,” “Roll ’Em,” and “Mary’s Idea.” She is widely credited as a major influence for the Kansas City–Southwest Big Band sound that Twelve Clouds of Joy helped to popularize.” (bold not in original)
    6. ↑ Barry Kernfeld (editor), "Mary Lou Williams," The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
    7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Encyclopedia Brittanica: Mary Lou Williams, fourth paragraph.
    8. ↑ Alexa Peters, "10 Women Instrumentalists Who Redefine Jazz," Paste magazine, December 1, 2016.
    9. ↑ "Mary Lou Williams," February 23, 2016, TurtleLearning Blog, 8th paragraph. Accessed September 15, 2019.
    10. ↑ Williams performed the full piece for the first time at Saint Francis Xavier Church (located at 46 West 16th Street near 6th Avenue in New York) November, 1962, and she recorded it in October 1963.
    11. ↑ “Tammy L. Kernodle provides a second reason for William's exclusion from most jazz historical narratives: her piano style, composing style, and arranging style defied categorization. Williams mastered each new style from the 1930s into the 1970s, and her arrangements similarly evolved with the passage of time.” in "Mary's Ideas: Big Band Music by Mary Lou Williams," "A Woman's Place in Narratives of Jazz," Theodore E. Buehner, Mary Lou Williams: Selected Works in Big Band, edited by Theodore E. Buehner, (Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc, 2013), xiii.
    12. ↑ According to John S. Wilson, "Mary Lou Williams, A Jazz Great, Dies," NYTimes Obituary, May 30, 1981, 5th paragraph.
    13. ↑ John S. Wilson, "Mary Lou Williams, A Jazz Great, Dies," NYTimes Obituary, May 30, 1981, Section 1, 21.
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