Musicians You Should Know: Mary Lou Williams

Basic Facts

Born: May 18, 1910, Atlanta, Georgia
Died: May 28, 1981, Durham, North Carolina
Type of Performer: Pianist, composer
Genre: Jazz

About Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Georgia in 1910. Her mother was a classically trained pianist and gave her lessons after she started picking out simple tunes by the age of two. At age six, she started giving concerts in her white neighbors' homes to stop them from throwing bricks at her family's home, and by age 10, she was known as "the Little Piano Girl" in her neighborhood. She got her professional debut at age 12 when she subbed with a traveling big band. Over the next several years, she toured around the country playing for big names like Fats Waller and Duke Ellington. 

In the late 1920s, she married saxophonist and band leader John Williams, and in 1929 she joined him in Andy Kirk's group in Oklahoma and began a successful career as a composer and arranger. She is widely credited as a major influence on the Kansas City-Southwest big band sound that became popular at the time.  By the late 1930s, she was arranging for the likes of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Cab Calloway, and in 1942 she moved to New York City. By 1943, she was organizing and leading bands at nightclubs throughout the city. She began associating with a younger generation of musicians, including Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie, and she made the transition easily from swing to bebop.  Important compositions from this time include "In The Land of Oo-Blah-Dee" and "Waltz Boogie". 

In 1952, Williams moved to Europe and performed in Paris and London. In 1954, she quit in the middle of a performance; she took a hiatus from performing until 1957, when she began touring again with Dizzy Gillespie and then her own trio. She went on to start her own record label, Mary Records, the first such company founded by a woman.  Her music became more political and spiritual, and in the 1960s and 70s, she wrote several liturgical works for jazz ensemble. In 1975, she performed the first jazz mass to a big crowd in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral. That same year, she began teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and in 1977, she moved to North Carolina to teach at Duke University. She died in North Carolina in 1981. 

Listen

Oo-Blah-Dee


Black Christ of the Andes



Further Reading

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Lou-Williams 
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/758076879/mary-lou-williams-missionary-of-jazz
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/30/obituaries/mary-lou-williams-a-jazz-great-dies.html

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