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.