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.