Little Joe From Chicago: The real Mary Lou Williams, in the view of a Little Jew From Connecticut

"I know all about 'Kansas City Jazz' but we didn't play the blues. Yes we played them occasionally, but things like the boogie were for late at night....we used to roll some of it off as a gag, but it wasn't our staple...I liked to experiment. But the blues were easiest for people to hear."

- Mary Lou Williams, 1950s interview.

Someone not long ago asked me what I think ofg Mary Lou Williams – I answered:

“I actually have a column in process called ‘The Real Mary Lou Williams.’ Not to mention that I met her once at the Cookery, where she performed in the 1970s. She was a nice lady, though I was much intimidated by her. To this day, I wish I had tried to speak to her more, but I knew about one fifth of what I know now. Oh well.

“But to your question - my opinion, which will likely piss some people off - is as follows:

“As a pianist she did most (but not all) of her best work before 1947, at which time she decided to play bebop, which she never did well. It sounded, to me, too constrained, as though she was thinking too much about adjusting her playing to meet the style. But before then she was a brilliant pianist, playing with an older rhythmic sense but still very modern. I will post some examples in this respect. She always had a wonderful and deep harmonic sense, but rhythmically, though she tried, she was not a bebopper, and could only skim the surface of that style.”

You will hear in this column what I think she lost as a pianist, which was a certain interactive harmonic/line sense, a shifting way of alternating her right-handed ideas with a two-handed chromatic harmonic/diatonic-line sense of solo movement. And I particularly love her solo playing, some of which I will present here.

She was always a great arranger; even Duke Ellington hired her to work for his band. But in her later years she became something of a dull advocate for the blues, the blues the blues - after being somewhat cynical about this earlier (see her quote above from the 1950s). And that tree she did for black music is….well, insufficient, based on musicological mythology.

So….the following are some of my favorite piano recordings of hers. They also reveal a world of musical possibilities both suggested and realized. Her harmonic acumen never failed her, as a matter of fact there are post-1947 performances (like Yesterdays here) that showed what she could do, and how her ears were always leading her in new and exciting directions. But, as I said, her post-1947 piano work tends to leave me wondering why, unlike, say, Earl Hines, she abandoned the rhythmic path at which she was most adept, that might have taken her (as it did Hines) to a part of the music which allowed for what was still an infinite expansion of swing, pre-swing, and modern-era possibilities. And like Hines, she might otherwise have achieved a brilliant hybridity of pianistic harmony and free (in the old sense, that is) improvisation.

So:

this performance of Yesterdays is from, I believe, 1953, and shows, in the intro, of what she was really capable. This does show an older time-sense than other recordings she made in this period. But the kicker is the amazing intro, which reharmonized the tune in fascinating and “modern” ways (she might have been listening to Tristano, but there are very strong hints of Tatum here. And listen to the end which is a gorgeous, chime-like reference, without full re-statement, of the melody.

This is Juan Tizol’s classic, Caravan, which she recorded in 1944, which puts it on the cusp of bebop (though bebop was already a thing, but delayed in public exposure because of the recording ban).It is a harmonic tour-de-force once again, showing the way musicians sometimes liberate themselves when there are no other musical obstructions (like a rhythm section, no offense drummers and bassists out there). But she offers us hints of stride, hints of swing piano, and a vision of those harmonic changes that were in the works. Listen to the beginning; she almost seems to be making some Monk-like harmonic and rhythmic references, which is not impossible, given the fact that she was already hanging out with the early beboppers. Listen to the incredible variety here of self-accompaniment and solo. Once again, the shadow of Art Tatum hangs over this. Her sense of line has the starkness of bebop, but it is an amazing pastiche which gives us a sense of what she was thinking about in those years begore she became an “icon” and helped to propel her own mythology to the front of her public image. This is the real Mary Lou.

Mr. Freddie’s Blues, 1938 or 1939. I find this amazing; her touch and voicing of chords is way in advance of virtually any other swing era pianist I have heard, including Teddy Wilson. The wonderful buoyancy of her swing is irresistible. And I say am happy to redundantly claim that Tatum is all over this. But she is so individual a player, it casts no creative shadow, only shows another layer of her talents and musical interests.

And now St. Louis Blues, from 1944:

What can I add? When I put this on Facebook a while back, someone remarked that it sounded like Jaki Byard. Think about that. Once again, beautiful harmonies, powerful swing, and a sense of the blues that far surpasses her late-years blues proselytizing. You can hate me for saying that, but in these early years I feel like she was straining at the blues leash, and even then was clearly aware of how, for a black musician, such things were restrictive and stereotypical. And hear the end of this recording, and think of the width of this school; Tristano played similar things and used similar chord voicings.

And we end with the blues/boogie woogie, Little Joe From Chicago. Again, an amazing modernity; I don’t know if it influenced the beboppers more than they influenced her. But this is 1939, and the evidence suggests – who knows? As I said recently the pianist Al Haig told me that from his earliest days on the road (late 1930s, early 1940s) he could hear the musical changes all around the country. So my inclination is to assume she was a harmonic genius, but was also acutely aware of Art Tatum, as all jazz pianists of this period were; listen to here phrasing at about 1:07 – just a perfect re-statement of blue harmony, devoid of cliché: