In 1925, Terence Holder left Trent’s outfit to form his Dark Clouds of Joy. In January of 1929, Holder left to start a new band and the Dark Clouds were taken over by Andy Kirk. Raised in Denver, Kirk came out of the music program there under the tutelage of the Paul Whiteman’s father. The band became Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds of Joy. Kirk recruited a saxophonist named John Williams who headed a band called the Synco Jazzers.
Williams came over to Oklahoma City from Memphis leaving his wife, Mary, a 19-year-old pianist, in charge of the band to fulfill contractual obligations. She joined him eventually in Oklahoma City but the band then relocated to Tulsa. Mary did not play with the band at this time but instead drove a hearse. Kirk’s band then landed a gig in Kansas City and so they all went. By now, Mary began writing arrangements and occasionally sitting in with the band.
The band recorded in Kansas City, Chicago and New York. Between 1929 and 1930. While in Chicago, Mary recorded two solo sides on piano for the Brunswick label. The label was so wowed by the performances that the decided to distribute them and Jack Kapp of Brunswick (and founder of Decca and whose brother, Dave, founded Kapp Records formerly “American Decca”) suggested to Mary that she use the stage name of Mary Lou and so the single (“Drag ‘Em / Nightlife”) was issued by Brunswick under the name Mary Lou Williams in 1930. It sold very well and Mary Lou Williams became famous almost overnight. People often came to see the band because Mary Lou was in it and so Kirk gave her most of the piano duties so that she was sitting up front on the stage where everyone could see her. Through the forties, she had her own piano workshop radio program.
Mary Lou Williams - Night Life - YouTube
Mary Lou Williams “Nightlife” (1930)
Born in Atlanta in 1910, Mary Lou grew up in Pittsburg. She showed a very unusual talent for music from a very young age and taught herself to play piano so well that she was performing publicly by age six. In 1924 at the age of 14, Mary Lou was already playing for Ellington’s early combo, the Washingtonians. By 15, she was playing for McKinney’s Cotton Pickers at Harlem’s Rhythm Club. Louis Armstrong came in and watched her play for a while and was so pleased that she picked her up from the piano stool and kissed her. And now, six years later, she was the toast of the jazz world.
Mary Lou Williams was beautiful besides being extremely talented and intelligent. Trombonist Jack Teagarden was in love with her and they supposedly had an on-again off-again affair. He proposed to her several times but she always turned him down, not interested in dealing with the fallout of being a black woman married to a white man back in those days.
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Mary Lou plays cards in her apartment with Tadd Dameron (left) and Dizzy Gillespie (right).
A couple of Andy Kirk numbers arranged (and the latter one also written) by Mary:
Andy Kirk and his twelve clouds of joy - Little Joe from Chicago - YouTube
Andy Kirk - Mary's idea - YouTube
We would be incorrect to call Mary Lou Williams a swing jazz musician and arranger. She was far too complex to be pigeonholed that easily. Williams was a virtual blank canvas that could be painted on in any style. She would jump from one emerging style to the next never to return to an earlier style. Swing was only one of the stepping-stones of jazz styles that she experimented with. She moved from swing to bop without the slightest hiccup and never looked back. Indeed, she had no reason to look back. Once she exhausted a certain style, she had no reason to continue dickering with it and simply left it behind to find new modes of expression. She is often remembered for her 1945 work, Zodiac Suite, which was a mixture of styles as bop, classical and swing performed usually with no more than a trio of piano, bass and drums. Like a restless butterfly, Williams could not settle on any flower for very long. Even late in her career, when artists of the Swing Era were rehashing their old material for a new audience, Williams was still pushing the envelope of her creativity as with her stunning 1963 release Black Christ of the Andes which bears the stamp of her conversion to Catholicism. What we hear is the evolution of her own spirit in her music not just a repertoire. Indeed, Mary Lou Williams was the very spirit of jazz. Two selections from Black Christ of the Andes:
Mary Lou Williams - It Ain't Necessarily So - YouTube
It Ain’t Necessarily So
Mary Lou Williams - St Martin De Porres - YouTube
St. Martin de Porres