Jazz Articles about Mary Lou Williams

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The Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

by Michael P. Gladstone
May 26, 2006

The Zodiac Suite was composed by pianist Mary Lou Williams in 1944-45 and recorded shortly thereafter. It was also performed on Williams' weekly radio program in 1944. The suite consists of twelve segments, each musically describing one sign of the Zodiac, and is regarded as Mary Lou Williams' most important work. Each of the compositions was dedicated by Williams to personalities as diverse as Ben Webster, Leonard Feather and then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It has been sixty years ...

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Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band

by Bob Jacobson
May 4, 2006

Imagine a pianist playing concerts with Benny Goodman and Cecil Taylor in successive years (1977-78). That pianist was Mary Lou Williams. In a career which spanned over fifty years Mary was always on the cutting edge. She was born Mary Scruggs in 1910 Atlanta. Her mother was a single parent who worked as a domestic and played spirituals and ragtime on piano and organ. At age three Mary shocked her by reaching up from her mother's lap to ...

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Memories of Mary Lou

by Peter O'Brien
May 4, 2006

I met Mary Lou Williams in the pages of Time Magazine. It was early 1964. She was 53 years old and I was 23. The article, under MUSIC, was in two parts--each about a different woman. The first concerned itself with Sarah Caldwell. Ms. Caldwell directed and produced operas and was the inventor of The Boston Opera Company. The sub-heading over her section of the story read: “The Persistent One . The second half dealt with Mary Lou Williams, the ...

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Mary Lou's Salon

by AAJ Staff
May 4, 2006

"The all-time greatest woman jazz musician." That typically was the kind of language used in describing 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, many of the best jazz people hung out. I was a ...

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Mary Lou Williams: Jazz Healing

by Teri Harllee King
May 4, 2006

"Jazz has healing in it, and a lot of love."--Mary Lou Williams The prospect of writing a column on Mary Lou Williams is just a little bit daunting--reflecting on her considerable body of work and enormous talent, but to write about women jazz artists and not cover her would be as close to a jazz sin as I can think of. So, here goes... As I was reviewing Williams' prolific career, I logged on to see ...

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Mary Lou Williams: Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes

by Bob Jacobson
September 12, 2004

Calling this album mainstream is a bit misleading, since it includes four pieces of choral/sacred music and one avant-garde cut. In a way, it's the perfect mirror of where Mary Lou Williams was in the early 1960's, coming out of a nearly ten year absence from performance. At the beginning of that period she had devoted herself solely to religion and charitable work. Jazz-loving priests within the Catholic church convinced her to convey her religious feelings through what she did ...

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Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

by AAJ Staff
May 14, 2004

In March, Geri Allen performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Stanley Kaplan Penthouse with Daryl Hall (bass) and Billy Hart (drums), a coincidental CD release for this very musical Mary Lou Williams' Collective release that features Allen with an alternating trio featuring Buster Williams (bass) and Hart as well as Andrew Cyrille (drums). As Williams disproved many a fallacy in her time--in particular that women could not be successful let alone influential in the jazz world--so too has ...