Shout: Mary Lou Williams

A Soul Sister Shines On

by Victoria Looseleaf Talk about your alpha female, your fascinator, your unsung hero. Hello, Mary Lou Williams! Although the little girl born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs on May 8, 1919, has been physically gone from this world since May 28, 1981, she remains with us in numerous ways, with an indomitable spirit and a soul that, well, just won’t quit. That soul, simply put, is her music: from swing to bop, gospel, spirituals and blues to avant-garde jazz, this is one blazingly original gal. Indeed, a black woman whose enormous talents included that of composer and arranger, she was also possessed of a voice so sumptuously unique that Duke Ellington deemed her “perpetually contemporary.”  The piano prodigy with perfect pitch — she began playing publicly at age six, having taught herself to vamp those ivories by ear, no less — began her days in Pittsburgh but would find international fame, as well as heartbreak, discrimination and an unswerving devotion to God by the time she died at age 71. Her place in the jazz pantheon should be a given, ranking with other great jazz pianists such as Fats Waller, Erroll Garner, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, while her arrangements for Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman were nothing short of ground-breaking. But because her personal and musical life, despite an increasingly formidable reputation, was troubled by setbacks and frustrations, Williams, in 1954, quit the business altogether, surrendering to religion and random acts of kindness. That she has not been given her total due is rectified here tonight, as the Los Angeles Master Chorale, who first began its journey into the treasure trove that is Williams’ music nearly two years ago when she was paired with Ellington, continues. In this one-woman tribute, LAMC music director Grant Gershon gets down with, in addition to his celebrated chorus, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers and soloists Carmen Lundy and Cedric Berry. With Williams’ Mass as a framework, the free-form celebration explodes with her signature rhythm and blues, and also includes an array of rocking spirituals as interpreted by the fly Jubilee crew. How, though, did the erstwhile “little piano girl” arrive at her messenger-of-God status? History tells us that she split Pittsburgh for Oklahoma, marrying saxophonist John Williams in 1925, and hooked up with Andy Kirk’s band, where she was principle arranger for 11 years. By the late 1930s, deep into arranging for jazz titans, including Goodman, for whom she penned the boogie-woogie smash, Roll ‘Em, Williams headed to the Big Apple, where, in 1942, she formed a group with second spouse, trumpeter Shorty Baker. Two years later, Ellington recorded her Trumpet No End, while her own embrace of bebop bore fruit with Waltz Boogie, which she laid down on vinyl with her woman’s band, Girl-Stars, its nonduple meters ear candy for a hungry public. Seemingly on top of the world, Williams wrote Zodiac Suite in 1945, the first of many large-scale compositions, but after the pioneering work received a less than stellar reception, Williams became depressed. Her bass player had broken her nose; her Pittsburgh family had become burdensome; and, a victim of gender bias, she resented being chronically underpaid. Longing to be taken more seriously and transcend the “boogiewoogie queen” moniker, Williams moved to Europe, where, in the spring of 1954, she walked off the stage of a Paris nightclub, Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Diving into religion, she became obsessed in the rituals and liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, which not only signaled a reborn spirituality, but would also help bestow her with a fresh musical identity when jazz, embedded in her DNA, inevitably beckoned some three years later. Jazz was beginning to change, as well, with the 1960s spawning a cultural shift, born out of resistance from the black community and the civil rights movement. Returning full-time to jazz composition and performance, Williams soon unleashed a wealth of sacred compositions, including her six-minute 1964 work, St. Martin de Porres (Black Christ of the Andes), also on the program tonight. Feting the Peruvian holy man of interracial justice, Williams blasts the lid off jazz harmonies, her seductive rhythms made more potent by a brief beautiful piano interlude. It is, however, the Papally-commissioned Music for Peace (named by the late great choreographer Alvin Ailey, who set a ballet to the work), or Mary Lou’s Mass, that stands alone. Recorded in 1970 on her label, Mary Records, the 15-part magnum opus, which Newsweek called “an encyclopedia of black music,” was recently reissued and produced by Father Peter O’Brien, who met Williams in 1964 and later became her manager and executor of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation. The profundity of this hybrid work, a spiritual stew with blues-based funk, swing, gospel and even rock influences, is a perfect storm reflecting the tumult of the era. Its musical message of brotherhood still blows minds today (think rapper Kanye West’s Grammy Award-winning song, Jesus Walks), and was a major turning point for Williams. A decidedly odd fusion that merges standard Mass components — Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei — with supplemental material, the Mass may have been modeled after Ellington’s Sacred Service music of 1965, and no doubt, was initially difficult for jazz aficionados to grasp. Not so today, however, its inexorable power to uplift and inspire gaining new listeners at every hearing. Opening with O.W., a rhythmic series of scattings, the chorus and band then plunge into neo-Coltranesque modalities in Praise the Lord, a swinging call-to-arms enhanced by the bling of an African drum. The composer’s deep sociological concerns are musicalized in I Have A Dream, based on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 landmark speech, the deceptively simple pronouncements boosted by the major key wailings of the soprano soloist. A short, bluesy instrumental interlude, Old Time Spiritual, precedes The Lord Says, a phat, rowdy call-and-response setting evocative of the Renaissance, but with a silky, Alicia Keys-like solo. Williams lets rip with a high F in the mighty, Act of Contrition, a solo bass clarinet accompanying the words, “O, my God, I detest all the sins of my life.” Both the Kyrie Eleison and In His Day are also cause for the soprano to shine, while surprise dominates the Sanctus, as a rubato introduction is prelude to a saucy bossa nova beat, its dotted rhythms thrumming with the aural heat of early James Brown. Our Father features a running bass line that underscores the choir, while the first of two a cappella renderings, Tell Him Not To Talk Too Long (the other, Lamb of God), is a musical rejoinder to Reverend King’s assassination. Resolutely melancholic, this jazz spiritual offers a humming section that morphs into a plea for closure — instructions on death — hauntingly delivered, while the stirring finale, Praise the Lord, is a raucous exaltation that sticks to the listener like spiritual glue. Williams remained prolific and engaged during the last decade of her life, recording, concertizing and holding a teaching post at Duke University, until her death from cancer. A rare gift to the world, Williams lives on in the music that continues to spread joy to all who perform, hear and share what might best be summed up as notes from God. 

Archival Recording