![]() ![]() Her funeral was attended by Goodman, Gillespie, and more jazz royalty. Mary Lou Williams passed away from cancer on May 28, 1981, at the age of 71 in Durham. Near the end of her life, she founded the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, which became the guardian of her musical legacy and for decades was run by Father O'Brien, with an emphasis on jazz education for the young. She remained busy playing and recording, continued to run her own record label and publishing company, was instrumental in founding the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, and intensified her efforts to help provide for the needy of the music world, with her thrift stores raising money while she contributed part of her earnings directly as well.Īlways deeply involved in education, she moved to Durham, North Carolina to take a teaching position at Duke University in 1977, teaching jazz history and leading ensembles, while still conducting clinics and performing as well. Peter O'Brien, a Jesuit preparing for the priesthood, introduced himself to her and became her close friend and manager. While her music in the 1960s focused on the spiritual, she remained very active. She began composing sacred works, leading to Alvin Ailey choreographing a work to her music, which became the widely-known Mary Lou's Mass, which was eventually the first jazz piece performed at New York City's St. This personal evolution led her to begin serious charitable endeavors, and she built a organization that also included her very own record label and thrift stores. Her conversion and awakening led her to retire from music for a few years, and she was eventually coaxed back by Gillespie, with whom she performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. Upon returning to the States, her deepening spirituality led her to convert to Roman Catholicism, which was to be a very central part of the remainder of her life as the blues and depth of feeling were always central to her very being, this was a seemingly very natural progression. Always restless for new horizons, in the early 1950s she traveled to Europe, where she recorded and toured for a couple of years. Zodiac was revolutionary, as it was composed for jazz chamber group including woodwinds and strings, and was one of the earliest-if not the first-examples of this type of composition. This led to one of her landmark works, The Zodiac Suite, which showed off her continuing development and is comprised of a piece devoted to each of the twelve signs. ![]() Through her commanding and magnetic musical personality, tremendous experience, and endless curiosity and desire to keep moving the music forward, she became a mentor to the younger musicians, holding informal jamming and brainstorming sessions in her apartment.Īt this time she was also hosting a radio show and had a regular gig at the Café Society, and she decided to stretch out with something ambitious. New York City at the time was going through an incredible period, spearheaded by the evolving bebop movement, led by young players like Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud and Richie Powell, Tadd Dameron, and others. Having already come to the attention of Goodman, Ellington, and others and having become in demand as a writer and a beacon of forward-looking jazz ideology, by the mid 1940s she found herself in the epicenter of jazz, New York City. She was a very impressive and formidable stride piano player, with an amazingly fertile and creative mind, and her arrangements helped give the band its distinctive sound.īy the early 1940s she was back in Pittsburgh, continuing to deepen her already impressive reservoir of experience, and she was soon playing in a combo with Art Blakey. She eventually began performing with saxophonist John Williams, and they wound up in Kansas City, where Mary Lou would become a huge part of the sound and success of Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy. Moving to Pittsburgh with her family at an early age, she quickly showed serious musical aptitude, and soon became known around the city as a precocious child prodigy. She arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman among others, left a huge catalog of recordings, compositions, and arrangements, performed relentlessly, was a pioneering instrumentalist, a deeply religious person and a dedicated educator, and it's fair to say that she was basically a mentor to the entire bebop era. ![]() Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta in 1910, she was a hugely influential composer, arranger, and pianist. ![]() Mary Lou Williams was one of the most important and pioneering women in jazz history. ![]()
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