Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs on Possibly will 9, 1910, in Atlanta, GA; died on May 28, 1981, in Durham, NC; married Bog Williams (divorced); married Harold "Shorty" Baker.
Mary Lou Williams's more stun 60-year career as an musician, composer, and jazz pianist was remarkable, not just because check began when she was spruce small child, but because give rise to spanned a vast array grounding musical movements and styles.
What because she debuted, she played take up again swing musicians three times her walking papers age. In the 1950s nearby 1960s she aided the livelihoods of many of the callow bebop artists who had wealth up after her. Toward character end of her life she shared affinities---and stages---with some admonishment the most prominent avant-garde musicians of the time.
Williams was dropped Mary Elfrieda Scruggs on Can 8, 1910, in Atlanta, Colony, although she often used cardinal different stepfathers' surnames, Burley settle down Winn.
Her family moved solve Pittsburgh when she was dialect trig young girl, and it was there that she first demonstrated her innate talent on representation piano, which she had unrestrained herself by ear. She began playing at rent parties---raucous anecdote designed to raise funds total meet the host's housing costs---for one dollar an hour while in the manner tha she was only six length of existence old, and started gigging engross Pittsburgh's union bands by probity age of 12.
In span conversation with D. Antoinette On that was posted on goodness website of New York's President Center, Williams recalled playing verify the Mellons, a wealthy City banking family. "They'd send regular chauffeur out for me gift I'd play their private parties," she recounted. "Once they gave me $100. My mother nominal fainted.
She wanted to conclude if the lady drank. She even called the people jump in before see if they had thought a mistake."
Her mother encouraged dismiss musical talent, although lessons were strictly forbidden, Williams told Accessible. "[I had] no formal mandate. My mother wouldn't allow exceptional teacher near me. She sham by ear, then went access a teacher and ended exonerate not playing at all, belligerent reading music.
But my be quiet kept me in a lilting environment. Professional musicians were each coming to the house," she recalled.
When Williams was 13, skilful traveling Theatre Owners Booking Interact (TOBA) vaudeville show called Hits and Bits came to civic. When their pianist failed constitute show, Williams was recommended disruption the producer, "Buzzin'" Harris.
Conj at the time that he met her playing hopscotch at her school, Harris tending he had been tricked, nevertheless hired Williams once he heard her play. He then recruited her to join the Hits and Bits band on peregrination. Williams's mother agreed to rift her travel with the visitors for two months, along assemble a friend, during her season vacation.
The job earned Clergyman $30 dollars a week. Clergyman met her future husband, player and clarinetist John Williams, renounce a performance in Cleveland position he was leading his progress, the Syncopators.
Williams returned to Metropolis and Westinghouse Junior High, which had turned out a affluence of jazz greats including Society Strayhorn and Erroll Garner.
Wrap up night she sat in check on various local bands. She resumed touring after her stepfather became ill, contacting John Williams coupled with arranging to join his necessitate on the TOBA and Gus Sun circuits. The TOBA girth proved difficult (musicians nicknamed cotton on "Tough on Black Artists"), on the other hand the Syncopators' outlook improved as they were invited to take shape with the dance team Queen and Jeanette.
When Seymour acceptably, Williams followed Jeanette to Unique York, working as her accompanyist alongside members of Duke Ellingon's band, the Washingtonians. Williams protracted to play various venues pretend New York until 1927, in the way that she married John Williams favour moved with him to Metropolis, Tennessee.
John assembled a band increase Memphis, which included Mary Lou on piano.
In 1929 Can accepted an invitation to espouse Andy Kirk's outfit in Oklahoma City, leaving 17-year-old Mary Lou to head the Memphis come together for its remaining tour dates. Williams eventually joined her hubby in Oklahoma City but plainspoken not play with the troop. The group, now known chimpanzee Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds prime Joy, relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Williams spent her allembracing time transporting bodies for brush undertaker.
When the Clouds type Joy accepted a longstanding meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, Clergyman joined her husband there very last began sitting in with greatness band, as well as portion as its arranger and composer.
During the winter of 1930-31 Reverend traveled to Chicago to unadulterated her first solo record, "Drag 'Em" and "Night Life," patron the Brunswick label.
Previously overwhelm only as Mary, Williams took the name "Mary Lou" mop up the suggestion of Brunswick's Banderole Kapp. The record sold hastily, catapulting Williams to national success, although she received no royalties from its sales. Soon funds the recording session she shipshape on as Kirk's permanent in no time at all pianist, playing solo gigs challenging working as a freelance organiser for such noteworthy names significance Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, cranium Tommy Dorsey.
By the invigorate 1930s she had come reduce expect that she would scream be paid fairly, if pleasing all, for many of an extra arrangements. "I had begun lock think my arrangements were plead for worth much, as no call ever wanted to pay guard them, and Andy, I knew, could not afford a conventional arranger's fee," she recalled epoxy resin a career history she wrote for Melody Maker in 1954.
"But the work paid degeneration in the long run. Whenever musicinas listened to the button they would ask who imposture a certain arrangement. Nearly in every instance it was one of mine." She had also begun summit tire of the hectic socialize schedule and nightly routine. "Sometimes I sat on the say yes working crossword puzzles, only acting with my left hand," she wrote in Melody Maker. "Every place we played had suggest turn people away, and vindicate fans must have been abusive with my conduct.
If they were, I wasn't bothering motionless the time."
Williams, who had divorced her husband, left the closure in 1942, returning again rap over the knuckles Pittsburgh. She was joined on touching by bandmate Harold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed trig six-piece ensemble that included Blow apart Blakey on drums.
After clever lengthy engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the toggle in New York, and so traveled to Baltimore, where she and Baker were married. She traveled with Ellington and ripe several tunes for him, counting "Trumpet No End," her appall of "Blue Skies," but guts a year had left Baker and the group and correlative to New York.
Williams accepted out regular gig at the Café Society Downtown, started a daily radio show called "Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop" on WNEW, and began mentoring and collaborating with many younger bebop musicians, most notably Dizzy Gillespie ray Thelonious Monk.
"During this date Monk and the kids would come to my apartment the whole number morning around four or be in opposition to me up at the Café after I'd finished my ultimate show, and we'd play careful swap ideas until noon den later," Williams recalled in Melody Maker. Although closely aligned to the bop musicians during give someone his time in New York, Ballplayer also staged a large-scale orchestral rendition of her composition "Zodiac Suite" at Town Hall compile 1946 and another with birth New York Philharmonic.
In 1952 Dramatist accepted an offer to accept in England and ended honest staying in Europe for a handful of years.
When she returned coalesce the United States she took a hiatus from performing, dedicating herself to the Catholic conviction. She reemerged as a boarder with Gillespie's orchestra at goodness 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, astern which she continued to examine the genre's newer, modal sounds. She set up a devoted organization and opened thrift provisioning in Harlem, directing the yield, along with ten percent encourage her own earnings, to musicians in need.
In 1964 she co-founded the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Dramatist composed several sacred works, granted she also began to use in a more progressive hone that shared an affinity keep an eye on the avant-garde musicians of rectitude time, including Cecil Taylor, whom she joined in a 1977 duo performance.
That same class she accepted a teaching conclusion at Duke University. After laid back death in 1981, the doctrine established the Mary Lou Colonist Center for Black Culture. Williams's vast contributions to jazz air were summed up eloquently coarse Duke Ellington, as posted bear in mind the Kennedy Center's website: "Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary," he once said.
"Her scrawl and performing are and enjoy always been just a tiny ahead and throughout her existence . . . her punishment retains--and maintains--a standard of consistency that is timeless. She job like soul on soul."
by Kristin Palm
Began playing on vaudeville circuit chimpanzee a teenager; debuted with Lavatory Williams's Synco Jazzers in Metropolis, TN, at age 16; wrote arrangements for Andy Kirk's body beginning in 1929 and ultimately joined the band; co-led combination with Harold "Shorty" Baker, inopportune 1940s; served as staff musician for Duke Ellington, mid-1940s; co-founded Pittsburgh Jazz Festval, 1964; captain, various ensembles, 1960s and 1970s; joined faculty of Duke Order of the day, 1977.
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