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About Mary Lou Williams

Radio & Podcasts

Sharon Minemoto, Yvonne Rogers, Jody Redhage Ferber, Eliane Elias, Mark Winkler, Mothers Day & More

by Mary Foster Conklin
May 18, 2026

This broadcast celebrates Mothers' Day with new music from Mark Winkler, Sharon Minemoto, Yvonne Rogers, Jody Redhage Ferber, Eliane Elias and Marcus Goldhaber, with birthday shoutouts to Jazz Foremother Mary Lou Williams, Tania Maria, Gunhild Carling, Jill McCarron, Tawanda, KJ Denhert, Lincoln Briney and Andrea Superstein, among others. Happy listening and please support the artists you hear--see them live, buy their music so they can continue to comfort, distract, provoke and remind the world that A Woman's Place is in ...

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Mary Lou Williams: A Fungus Amungus

by Ian Patterson
December 29, 2025

The title sounds like something from the fertile imagination of Charles Mingus. A blindfold listening test might throw up Sun Ra. “A Fungus Amungus," however, is Mary Lou Williams and nothing but. This solo piano piece clocks in at a swift three minutes, but the Atlanta-born, Pittsburgh-raised pianist packs a lot of notes and a lot of adventure into the time frame. From Black Christ Of The Andes (Mary Records/Folkways Records, 1964), this restless, angular and ...

Radio & Podcasts

Final Recordings of Swing Era Masters: Mary Lou Williams, Artie Shaw, Django Reinhardt and more

by Larry Slater
August 22, 2025

There are many facets to great artists' careers, from their earliest musical adventures to their final recordings. Some lose their remarkable musical facilities as age, illness or drug abuse takes its toll, while others maintain their mastery until their final performance.The swing era was particularly tough on musicians, with the demands of constant travel and rampant racism.In this hour, you will hear the final musical statements of swing era jazz masters on their final recordings . ...

The Golden Age of Jazz

Mary Lou's Salon

by Bill Gottlieb
March 15, 2024

This article was first published at All About Jazz in June 1999.“The all-time greatest woman jazz musician." That typically was the kind of language used in describing Mary Lou Williams.Mary Lou Williams Mary Lou was a fabulous pianist, as well as a noted arranger, and composer. But she also had another role of distinction: she was a sort of mother spirit for innovative musicians. Her spacious Harlem apartment was a salon where, especially in the 1940's, ...

Radio & Podcasts

A Celebration of Music By Mary Lou Williams - A Formidable Jazz Mother On Many Fronts

by Mary Foster Conklin
May 22, 2023

This broadcast celebrates Mothers Day featuring music by Mary Lou Williams in the first hour (a formidable Jazz Mother on so many fronts). In the second hour, more music by jazz mothers Geri Allen, Allison Miller, Chris McNulty and more, with new releases from the Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band plus singles from Ann Hampton Callaway & Amanda McBroom and vocal group Säje featuring Michael Mayo. Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by seeing them live ...

Profile

Mary Lou Williams: Into the Zone of Music

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 23, 2023

Few musicians have embraced the entire history of jazz like Mary Lou Williams, and at the same time shaped its development compositionally and instrumentally. She brought jazz into contact with classical music and played spiritual jazz before it became hip, but she was also a treasured teacher and mentor.Mary Lou Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910, as Mary Elfrieda Scruggs. She grew up with an absent mother who drank, and the father was not ...

Radio & Podcasts

Happy Birthday to Mary Lou Williams - A Formidable Jazz Mother

by Mary Foster Conklin
May 16, 2022

This broadcast celebrates Mothers Day featuring music by several notable jazz mothers and their children, plus new releases from pianists Yelena Eckemoff, Ariane Racicot, Alberto Pibiri and Jeremy Siskind, vocalists CeCe Gable and Tierney Sutton, with birthday shoutouts to Mary Lou Williams (a formidable Jazz Mother on so many fronts). Thanks for listening and please support the artists you hear by purchasing their music during this time of pandemic so they can continue to distract, provoke, comfort and inspire.