Mary Lou Williams
| Mary Lou Williams | |
|---|---|
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|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Mary Elfrieda Scruggs |
| Born |
May 8, 1910 Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
| Died | May 28, 1981 (aged 71) Durham, North Carolina, United States |
| Genres |
Classical Free jazz Hard bop Swing Third Stream Big band Gospel |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, bandleader |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 1920s–1981 |
| Labels | Atlantic, Asch, Brunswick, Circle, Decca, Inner City, Folkways, King, Pablo, Victor, Vogue |
| Website | Mary Lou Williams at rutgers.edu |
Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an African-American jazz pianist, composer, and vocalist. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for such bandleaders as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others.
Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of eleven children. As a very young child she taught herself to play the piano and at the age of six, Mary Lou was already helping to support her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing at parties. She began performing publicly at the age of seven, when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "the little piano girl of East Liberty." She became a professional musician in her teens and she cited Lovie Austin as her greatest influence.
In 1922, at the age of 12, she was taken on the Orpheum Circuit. The following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. One shining salute to her talent came when she was only 15. One morning at three A.M, she was jamming with McKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club. Louis Armstrong entered the room and paused to listen to her. Mary Lou shyly told what happened: "Louis picked me up and kissed me."
In 1927, Williams married saxophonist John Williams. She met him at a performance in Cleveland where he was leading his group, the Syncopators, and moved with him to Memphis, Tennessee. He assembled a band in Memphis, which included Mary Lou on piano. In 1929, he accepted an invitation to join Andy Kirk's band in Oklahoma City, leaving 19-year-old Mary Lou to head the Memphis band for its remaining tour dates. Williams eventually joined her husband in Oklahoma City but did not play with the band. The group, now known as Andy Kirk's "Twelve Clouds of Joy", relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Williams, when she wasn't working as a musician, was employed transporting bodies for an undertaker. When the Clouds of Joy accepted a longstanding engagement in Kansas City, Missouri, Williams joined her husband there and began sitting in with the band, as well as serving as its arranger and composer. She provided Kirk with such songs as "Walkin' and Swingin'", "Twinklin'", "Cloudy'", "Little Joe from Chicago" and others.
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