Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams.(Book Review)

Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams. By Tammy L. Kernodle. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. [328 p. ISBN 1-55553-609-9. $30.] Illustrations, bibliography, discography, index.

This is the second biographical monograph to appear on Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981), jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. Lately there seems to be a Williams revival, and a reaffirmation in print of her music and writings. Along with the two biographies and several unpublished dissertations, we also have Williams' remarkable 11-article series on her early career that originally appeared in Melody Maker (10 April-12 June 1954, later collected by Max Jones as My Life With the Kings of Jazz, most recently reprinted in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb [New York: Pantheon, 1996]). Her voluminous papers, which include various attempts at autobiographical writing, are now maintained at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark NJ; an online description of those materials may be accessed at http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/ijs/mlw/collectionIJS.html (accessed 23 February 2005).

Williams was born out of wedlock as Mary Lou Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia in 1910, and from 1915 she was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She began playing keyboard at age 3 or 4, in imitation of the harmonium lessons her mother was taking. Developing her own piano technique and learning to play songs by ear became ways for the growing girl to withdraw from her alcoholic mother. By age 8 she was playing piano around various local spots--including a brothel--and before long she became known as "the little piano girl of East Liberty," her Pittsburgh neighborhood. In 1925, she dropped out of high school and joined a black vaudeville troupe in which she met her first husband, saxophonist John Williams, whose last name she would adopt. Three years later John Williams joined The Dark Clouds of Joy, which later renamed itself as Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. Today listeners of jazz and black popular music prize the 1929-41 Clouds of Joy records for Mary Lou Williams's contributions as pianist and arranger. Yet, it should be noted that Kirk was reluctant, even hesitant, to make use of her talents, and that he did so only at the urging of Brunswick Records producer Jack Kapp at the Clouds' first recording session. Through the 1930s Williams was a regular member of the Clouds, especially when they were based in Kansas City, and she proved to be the most valuable and versatile musician of the group, pounding out boogie-woogie blues and negotiating the most chromatic 32-measure ballads.

In 1943 Williams established herself in New York City. Within three years she had written several notable arrangements for Duke Ellington, composed the Zodiac Suite (1945-46), played a regular gig at the Cafe Society Downtown, hosted a radio series on WNEW in New York, and had a small but significant recording contract with Moe Asch. She also responded favorably to the new bebop style, becoming a mentor to Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, and a lifelong friend with Dizzy Gillespie. Personal problems--including a failed second marriage to trumpet player Harold "Shorty" Baker, and her ongoing drama with her mother in Pittsburgh--as well as mounting debts gnawed at her success, and a 1952-54 European stay provided neither escape nor solutions. Instead, while in France in 1954, she experienced an ecstatic vision of the Virgin Mary, whereupon she resolved to leave music, return to New York City, and devote herself to the sick and poor, including jazz musicians addicted to narcotic drugs. On returning to the United States in 1955, she concentrated on finding spiritual peace in Roman Catholicism, assisted many musicians in her Harlem neighborhood, but also passed up ...