Mary Lou Williams- A Woman of Jazz

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I found a great many things to disagree with my father about, as sons often do. One thing about which we never had a quarrel was music. He liked classical music, and so did I. He especially liked jazz, and so did I. I suppose because this was one small area of harmony (in both senses of the word), he never chose to make waves by grousing about this rock and roll stuff the young people were listening to, though I don't think he was anything like an enthusiast.

When I was a small child, my favorites among his records were the ones by this guy with the strange name of "Fat Swallow." When I got a little bit older, I realized I was referring to Thomas W. "Fats" Waller. It was only after I was grown and out of the house that I discovered Mary Lou Williams among my dad's record collection. I'm glad I did.

Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Alfrieda Scruggs in 1910. Though she was born in Atlanta, she spent most of her childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She learned how to play the piano very early and had a real knack for the popular music of the day. Mary soon developed a reputation throughout the neighborhood as "the little piano girl of East Liberty."

So impressive was her early development as a pianist that Duke Ellington invited her to join his band when she was only fifteen. Later, she would marry a bandleader/saxophonist named John Williams and join his band. She would divorce her husband in 1942 and, after a short while, return to Ellington's ensemble. Another brief marriage would follow, after which she again left the Ellington band for what she hoped were greener pastures.

In those earlier years, Mary Lou (she had taken that on as her stage name) showed her skill, not only as a piano-player, but an arranger, providing the likes of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Earl "Fatha" Hines with a number of creative arrangements, as she did for less-well known musicians.

After the Second World War, she would embrace the new "bebop" style, arranging music for Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Charlie "Bird" Parker, among others. During that time, she hosted a radio jazz workshop on radio station WNEW out of New York. She may well have been the first black woman to have her own show. Not Oprah, to be sure, but it was a start.

After performing in England and Europe for two years, Mary Lou returned to America and promptly retired from the world of jazz. She had determined to devote herself to charity and the Catholic Church. She stayed on that course for three years, until finally, Dizzy Gillespie, aided by two music-appreciative priests, successfully begged her to return to her life as a musician. Even so, a great deal of her later work had strong religious overtones. Among the best of these were "Black Christ of the Andes," "Praise the Lord" and "Anima Christi."

Her last recordings and performances came in 1978. Her final album, Solo Recital, contained a generous mix of the many different skills from her past she brought to the world of jazz. It featured spiritual numbers such as "Offertory Meditation" and "The Lord is Heavy," along with some of her best-known compositions, "What's the Story, Morning Glory" and "Little Joe from Chicago." Fortunately, the album also provided a generous portion of what I thought Mary Lou Williams did best: her own wonderful renditions of popular standards, such as "Over the Rainbow," "Tea for Two" and "Honeysuckle Rose."

When Mary Lou Williams started out, the only ways women had to get any kind of recognition in the emerging world of jazz were as singers or, in the case of Josephine Baker, for instance, dancers. Mary Lou broke into the predominantly male domain of playing an instrument and, more significantly, composing and arranging, which she did with the best of them.

Ms. Williams died of cancer in 1981 and is buried in her childhood hometown of Pittsburgh. Her parting thought was, "I did it, didn't I? Through all the muck and mud."

NOTE: The lady's legacy still lives on in the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, whose website can be located here. It will doubtless provide you a great deal more insight than your narrator has been able to manage in this brief biographical sketch as a humble contribution to Women's History Month.

Sources

The Mary Lou Williams Foundation Official Website

Wikipedia

Own listening experience