Hidden Figures: Mary Lou Williams (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records. Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie. Musical prodigy Mary Lou Williams began her performance career as a child. Without training, Williams played a song by ear on her family's pump organ capturing the attention of her mother. By the age of seven, she was playing professionally and by the time she was a teenager, she was playing alongside saxophonist John Williams. The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A young musical prodigy, at the age of three, she taught herself to play the piano. At the age of six, she supported 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.” She became a professional musician in her teens, citing Lovie Austin as her greatest influence. In 1922, at the age of 12, she went on the Orpheum Circuit. During the following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. She married fellow jazz musician, saxophonist John Williams, in November of 1926 who advocated for her acceptance as a female musician as well as toured with her. With more than 100 recordings to her credit, Williams wrote music for legendary bandleaders including Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and she was a teacher to jazz great Thelonious Monk. Her work was widely respected and honored. She served as an artist-in-residence at Duke University, where the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was created in 1983. Williams was also a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, a Grammy Award nominee, and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts holds an annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. She was known as "the first lady of the jazz keyboard". In 1981, Mary Lou Williams died of bladder cancer in Durham, North Carolina at the age of 71. Music legends Dizzie Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Andy Kirk were all in attendance at her funeral at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. She was buried in the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in Pittsburgh. Looking back at the end of her life, Mary Lou Williams said, "I did it, didn't I? Through muck and mud.” #HiddenFigures #MaryLouWilliams ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: Mary Lou Williams - Solo Blues Piano (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-B9vSFSb4 NMAAHC Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhrvLLlnrA6/?hl=en&taken-by=nmaahc MARY LOU WILLIAMS: https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/mlw/about-us/mary-lou-williams 'Mary Lou Williams - Jazz for the Soul:' https://folkways.si.edu/magazine-fall-2010-mary-lou-williams-jazz-soul/ragtime/music/article/smithsonian MARY LOU WILLIAMS, A JAZZ GREAT, DIES: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/30/obituaries/mary-lou-williams-a-jazz-great-dies.html 'A Hidden Hero of Jazz:' https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/a-hidden-hero-of-jazz Mary Lou Williams (NPR): https://www.npr.org/artists/15394732/mary-lou-williams Mary Lou Williams (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams