Articles

Women in Jazz, Part 1: Early Innovators

By Karl Ackermann

"Lil Hardin [Armstrong]...often imagined herself standing...at the bottom of a ladder, holding it steady for Louis as he rose to stardom." (Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, 2012). “The all-female band is an anomaly in music, one that must constantly prove itself as a 'band,' and not just 'girls playing music together.'" (Mary Ann Clawson, 1999). Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times." (Björk, 2015). Recent media projects such as Director Judy Chaikin's Girls ...

Mary Lou Williams: A Grand Night for Swinging

By Jack Bowers

It's always a pleasure to welcome a “new" album by pianist Mary Lou Williams, even one recorded more than three decades ago under less than favorable circumstances. Williams' trio (Ronnie Boykins, bass; Roy Haynes, drums) was taped in mid-winter 1976 during a long-running gig in snow-covered Buffalo, New York. As is true of many live recordings, especially those made years ago, the sound varies noticeably from track to track, with fluctuating volume levels and some surface noise, but Williams and ...

Mary Lou Williams: Mary Lou's Mass, My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me, Zodiac Suite Revisited, The Lady Who Swings the Band

By George Kanzler

Mary Lou Williams Mary Lou's Mass Smithsonian Folkways 2006 Mary Lou Williams My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me OJC 2005 Mary Lou Williams Collective Zodiac Suite Revisited Mary Records 2006 Dutch Jazz Orchestra The Lady Who Swings the Band Challenge 2006 ...

The Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

By Michael P. Gladstone

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 ...

Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band

By Bob Jacobson

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 ...

Memories of Mary Lou

By AAJ Staff

By Rev. Peter F. O'Brien, S.J. 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 ...

Mary Lou's Salon

By AAJ Staff

"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 ...