Marylou Williams

S = Jim Standifer
W = Mary Lou Williams
P = Peter O'Brian

S Mary Lou Williams, Durham, North Carolina, at her very lovely home. We are really interviewing her from her living room. Since this isn't in color I think it is good to note that it is decorated in blue and gold. We will let her tell us a little bit more about this decoration as a means of getting us into the interview. This is on a very warm day in April down in North Carolina with the dogwoods blossoming and Ms. Williams perhaps can tell us a little bit more about that. Can you tell us a little bit about this room that we are in, I think it is perfectly lovely.
W I like it. I came here and was looking around for at least two or three months. All of a sudden I found this place and it was exactly what I had wanted. I went to a friend of mine who gave sales in furniture. My personal manager, Father Peter O'Brian, brought me out 10-12 musicals to try to do something about our great heritage, jazz. He is somewhat of an interior decorator. All I did was follow him around town. He really did decorate the front room

S What about these colors. Since we are not in color, describe it to us.
W That is the part of his thing that he did for me. I am still a musician, I'm not too good in the house. Very good at the piano, writing music but I would never make a good housewife.

S Is blue one of your favorite colors?
W Yes blue and the chair over there is surese, I think. The chair in back of you is red.

S Oh, that lovely picture up here.
W Yes, Count Basie, Max Roach, Dizzie Gillespie

S Where did you get that?
W That was in Kansas City when they named a street after me. They had me on with all the big stars. In back of you we have a beige, which is very nice. I was very fortunate, some friends gave me some chairs. My girlfriend from Chicago sent two chairs down. I added covers. This little set is a gift from Dizzie Gillespie. This little table, Dizzie Gillespie's wife Loraine. Also this picture here, it is quite old. You see the frame there in Latin.

S The sheet of musical, medieval period. Whose picture is that up there?
W That is the one I use on Mary records. We ran short of money so we just use on of the old pictures. Did you ever hear of Gene..... a very famous photographer, this picture in the back of us was in the Life Magazine.

S I have seen several copies of that. Who did that?
W Gene, what is his last name, I have known him for years. He died here recently.

S Was he a black photographer?
W No, white. Gene Smith.

S What about the picture on the floor behind you.
W I have a lot of them. I couldn't find any place for them. It is one taken in New York. That is me at the piano.

S Do you have a home in New York'?
W Yes, I have an apartment there.

S Do you visit very often?
W On average, maybe quarterly or every six months or so.

S I know your work here keeps you here during the academic time, but you are able to go there doing your performances or for a brief rest or something of that sort. You and I were talking a few moments ago about the different greats. For example, I had just told you I had interviewed Dizzie Gillespie and you talked about how the young are not involved in jazz as you think they are. Could you tell us a little bit more about that.
W Anybody under 40 doesn't know anything about their great art. I was on the street of New York before Father Peter O'Brian brought me out teaching kids how to dance to the rhythm of jazz. They didn't know the music. I had been doing this quite a while until it got a little too rough for me to be out there. Anybody under 40 isn't playing the music. Cardinal Cook allowed me to do a jazz mass in St. Patricks and everybody picked up on this title of jazz before they refused to use it because they were ashamed of the title of jazz. I wrote Miles Davis a letter. I told him to start talking about the title and play it before we lose it. That is exactly what has happened because we don't have anything new that has come out of bop. There were 4 great eras of jazz. It was created from suffering of the early black slaves when they were brought to America, they all screamed. It began with the spirituals. The next era was ragtime. The blues has always been there. That's the suffering and the healing of the music. That is important and we have always been ashamed of that. After the blues, Kansas City swing and then Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, bop and after that nothing new has been created as far as eras.

S Which one of those eras do you think was the most rich. I know you used to be with Andy Kirk.
W I discovered since I came here to teach that all the phrasing is modern. If you do to much of any other kind of music to specialize and when you come back to jazz you are too corny for jazz, as far as the phrasing.

S When you were with Andy Kirk, like in the 1920s he had come from Dallas, were you arranging for his band at the time?
W Andy practically taught me how to write music. He used to come to the house in Kansas City, that was our headquarters, and he'd write from 11 o'clock until 12 at night. One day when he came there I had arranged something myself and he corrected it for me, showed me how to do it and I started to write myself. That was in the late 20s.

S Were you given as a woman and presumably you were the only woman in the band at the time. Were you given the right amount of work to do in your own estimation.
W Yes. Of course, the guys were very sweet to me. I have always been very fortunate because men sought after me, they'd grab me and teach me what I didn't know. They always helped me. I was very fortunate being with Andy Kirk then because I could try all kinds of experiments and the guys would call a rehearsal and try it. Some worked and some didn't, the idea in music. But it gave me a chance to develop myself and to know a great deal about arranging and what not. They were very sweet to me, all the guys.

S When you were arranging the first few years with Andy Kirk, what would you call that style.
W That was the swing era. It was more or less for piano. During that period if a pianist didn't play full piano or swinging a little heavy left hand they were considered not good at all. Nobody would want to play with them.

S Is this with this big strong chordal foundation, and the right hand doing mostly melodic embellishment?
W Yes

S A lot of the big band music, especially with Andy Kirk, was he also had to play music that maybe wasn't so, we don't call it jazz, this was dance music because he played for clubs or country clubs. Did you find that not a very fertile a lace for jazz?
W I didn't care too much for that type of thing. We had arrangements like the Guy Lumbardo band. We played quite a few proms and club dates. Our band could swing, and play a style. We had some of the greatest readers in the Andy Kirk band.

S Who were some of those?
W Big Jim Larsen, Irwin Randolph, Harrington, his first name is Johnnie; John Williams, Ben Thigpen. Half of them I have forgotten their names.

S Were you still with the Andy Kirk band when Lester Young came?
W He came but he didn't stay with us very long. He took Ben Webster's place when Ben Webster left.

S Why did he stay such a short time?
W I don't know. I think he had an assignment during that period with Count Basie and he was just hanging around I guess waiting for Count Basie to come back to Kansas City.

S Did Andy have more than one tenor sax in his.......
W Yes, two. Usually had two altos, two tenor saxes and a baritone. I think one tenor.

S You read occasionally about tenor sax or tenor battles. Lester Young presumably was one of the people who very often had these musical battles if there was a second tenor sax or third or fourth, do you remember any of those? These contests, I am not sure what they are.
W They weren't really contests. They were musicians getting together and just playing. I think a contest is more or less a bad name for it because you can make enemies like that. What we did in Kansas City was like a group of pianists would go into Tiny Brown and sit and wait until maybe Count Basie played and he was tired and somebody would sit down and play. It was always a pleasure to hear even a pianist that wasn't as great as others because he played something, like a style that had never been heard, or chords or something.

S We are back with Mary Lou Williams and she has that beautiful smile and I have asked her to flash it to us a couple of times here. Let's continue with Andy Kirk. When did you meet your husband? Were you with Andy Kirk at the time?
W A show came through Pittsburgh when I was going to school and something happened to the pianist, TOB we called it. They didn't have a pianist and the owner of the show came out to East Liberty because a little boy that delivered a telegram told him that he knew someone that could play the show. When he came to my house he was so surprised because I was playing hopscotch with the kids. He got so mad at this kid and said I don't have time to run all over town and not find what I am looking for. He said she can't play the show, she's just a kid. The guy from Western Union said well take her in the house. That's what he did. He went in the house with me and I played for him and he had a fit. He wanted my mother to allow me to leave and go with him. I couldn't because. I played out of town with him for two weeks and they had have a notary public sign for me.

S How old were you then?
W 12 or 13. The owner of the show hummed the entire show to me and took me downtown and I played it that night. I couldn't read music at all and so you would have to hum everything to me.

S In other words, even in those early days by listening to music you began to reproduce it by putting the Mary Lou stamp on it. I am trying to get at your husband.
W Later on, Busset Harris was the owner's name. He heard about John Williams and the Syncopators. John had five pieces, including himself. He was the first man to play a baritone sax. They were never heard of before. He was well sought after. What he did, he joined the TOBA show that I was with. We played Cleveland, Toledo and cities near Pittsburgh. I was allowed to go out for 4-6 weeks. That was when I met John Williams. That was how I met him, through him joining the TOBA show.

S Was this love at first sight or did it have to grow for a while?
W No love at all. I never loved anyone but music. I married instruments twice. Guys were playing and I thought I was in love and I wasn't. So I married the instrument.

S How did you happen to discover that the instrument was not the real thing?
W I discovered that immediately. So I disappeared from both scenes. I stayed with John Williams longer than I did Harold Baker. I was divorced from John Williams and married Harold Baker.

S How long were you with John Williams?
W Maybe about 10-12 years.

S That's a good while, especially as marriages go today where people get divorced in 2 or 3. That's a very long time. It took you a while to fall out of love with that instrument. Did he have any influence that you know of you
W Plenty. He was very good for me. If I had a good show and broke it up and people were applauding and screaming, he said to me when I came out you're not playing too good you should play better. In fact, you should get another tune. He did this because he didn't like big, swollen heads. He did this with the entire band to keep their heads down. He told them how badly they sounded until it was time for them to go on again.

S Did they really listen to him?
W Yes, he was a great leader. He is the cause of me doing some great things that I do now.

S So maybe that was a shock value he used, or shock tactic.
W Yes it was. He knew that I was determined. He knew that when I was hungry I played better. He knew quite a few things about me. He was a born psychiatrist, and he used that in order to help musicians and make them better on their instruments.

S During this ten years were you still with the Andy Kirk band?
W I was with them quite a while but I didn't start to play with them until around 1931

S During that ten years too, what was it like being a woman with a band, in jazz and blues was it something that was frowned upon by our black culture? Some of the artists that I have talked to in the black culture, especially the women, said that sometimes parents didn't always like to have their children involved with jazz.
W My parents were all right. When I left Pittsburgh to join the TOBA show any time, a band came to Pittsburgh to play there, they would come out to East Liberty where I lived and a if I could go out and play with them, sit in. During that period I had nothing but compliments and people pushing me and trying to help me. It is odd, too, and I am asked this quite frequently. I never had anyone say anything bad about me being with men and during that period they never thought that a woman would be with an all male band. One thing that happened was in St. Louis. I was sitting on the stand waiting for the band to start up. There was a big crowd in the ballroom they kept saving get the little girl off the stand so the band can play. I was sitting at the piano. The guys didn't say anything, they laughed. They used it as a joke for the audience. So the boy came on the stand when it was time to hit and started playing and I started playing with them and the house went up in an uproar. They didn't think I was with the band. No one knew that a woman and as small as I was, I must have weighed 90 then. Other than that people like Count Basie, the musicians and pianists, I used to hang out with Art Tatum every night when we ran into him in Cleveland and Toledo. He taught me things like how to control the keyboard with my hands and not the pedals. I just had a wonderful time with men.

S We are back with Mary Lou Williams. You were talking about you used to hang out with Art Tatum and some other great names. Would you just think of names of individuals that you've performed with and talked with.
W It is quite difficult now. I have performed with all the musicians like Bud Powell, used to come to the apartment and we'd play piano all day. Earl Gardner and even Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughn. In Kansas City, all great piano players, Lester Young, Kershel Evans.

S What of these have you made records with?
W Not too many. I have done quite a few things with Dizzie. Made one record that was called the Giants with him. He's always got me work. Something about him. He helps me quite a bit, which I appreciate very much. Practically all the great musicians I have worked wit.

S What kinds of clubs did you prefer to work when you were doing the club dates. This was the heyday of the small clubs. Did you like the big clubs or
W I never paid any attention to it. The main thing about working is what am I going play, what am I going to sound like. As far as clubs and concerts, I have never even thought about it.

S Does size do anything to you. Do you prefer large groups or more intimate groups?
W I like intimate club so the audience is close and I can feel them much better.

S When I have seen you on television you have people even sitting on the stage around the piano. Do you get more vibes when they are close like that?
W Yeh, it is much better?

S Do you find as some performers, and I notice you do, do you like to talk during your performances and let the people
W No, I don't. But I have been doing that for the last 2- 1/2 years. In fact, I have been singing.

S Why have you been talking more.
W I don't know because jazz is so great you don't have time to talk. All this great music is going through your head and you are going to have to try to do something about it with your fingers. I've seen people acting and twisting their bodies and doing things. I don't know. Unless they are natural, I don't see how they get through with anything at all. There is such a great force in the mind that you have to duplicate with the fingers.

S Several times in our interview here you have mentioned the fingers and the mind. You are not as young as you used to be, I am not as young as I used to be, Dizzie said something that as I get older sometimes I think that I am not going to have the strength to make those notes. Does a pianist have the same worry?
W No. He would more or less worry if he wasn't old because you never know what going to happen to his lips. Me, I'll give you an example. I was in California playing and there were some young kids. When I left, after I had finished, they left with me. They said we don't understand those old cats up there playing, they are playing too funny and slow and all that. I said well I'm old, and they said yeh, but your fingers aren't. It's what's coming forth from your fingers.

S That maybe says something else. Do you think having lived has brought something to your playing. The fingers are a physical thing. They will live and they will deteriorate as you get older.
W The mind has to be strong. When you stop thinking then you are really dead.

S That is something because Eubie said almost the same thing. I asked him the question and he's 97. He said, Jim, when I am there my mind is doing the hardest amount of work. If the mind wouldn't work I might as well not even be up there.
W That's right. Sometimes you can get an audience that will kind of throw you off balance. You have to start that mind thinking.

S Have you ever been heckled?
W Not too much. Just little things. Not anything great. Not too often.

S Let's get back to the 30s and 40s, again when you were with Andy. When did you leave the Andy Kirk group, when they broke up?
W Around 1940 or 41. They broke up later.

S What did you do immediately after you left them?
W I went to Pittsburgh. That is my home town. Art Blakey had been coming out asking me to get a band with him. He had a little small band, was about 18 years old and had one of the greatest playing bands around. He was bopping and playing some great drums. He continued to come out to the house asking me to get a band with him, so I finally did and took him out of Pittsburgh with about 5 or 6 kids in the group. They 17, 18 years old and they were really good players, good musicians.

S How long did the band last?
W Not too long. We went into a place in Cleveland for the latter part of the summer We were so good we lasted until Oct., Nov. and the park had to close. We kept it open that long, good crowds and everything.

S Was it very difficult keeping a band together in those days? If so, what were some of the things that contributed to a band's breakup.
W It was terrific to have a band. Later I decided that I didn't want to be bothered with a band. So I went to New York.
Pr of S. : Why
W I had other offers to play as a trio. Sometime if you have more than 2 you are in trouble, you have to baby them. I didn't want to be bothered with that. I would much rather play and write music, be free. I didn't have a personal manager then. I think you need one if you are going to travel with 5 or 6 pieces.

S Do you feel that you have been treated well by managers, dating all the way back from the Andy Kirk days.
W I can't tell you I was treated well. They took what they wanted from me, compositions, money. I felt they underpaid me for the work that I was doing. But it didn't make me bitter like it has many people because I am creative. If you steal something this time I'll create something else. Sometimes I tried to think very badly about some things that happened and it is dismissed because I think at the moment I am a little tired.

S What do you mean by that?
W Sometimes you get tired of people running over you and mistreating you. But it doesn't bother me until that period comes along. Then I'll write something else and get rid of it and forget it and be friends with them again.

S So you don't hold a grudge, you bounce right back.
W Never in my life. I bounce right back.

S That is interesting too. I think that is beautiful also. I have heard so many persons say that the black artist was really mistreated and we didn't get half the money that we should h in reference to the effort we put into it. Is this because you were so much a musician that the businesswoman in you didn't take care of that part of your life?
W I think you are too much into music itself and you don't have a chance to be a businesswoman or take care of business.

S Is that good?
W That is very bad. Because you lose everything. When I first came out to New York and recorded every record I wrote for the band became a hit and the publisher took a lot of my compositions without even me signing papers or whatnot in that respect. They just grabbed them.

S Have you been able to get some of those back.
W I got a lot of them back.

S Was this a normal thing, was it used with black artists.
W Who knew what was normal. You have to assign something to a publisher or he comes and asks for it. They were just snatching thing, going and coming. Black Coffee is one that was stolen from "What's the Story Morning Glory" and all "The Blues in the Night", the clarinet thing that I wrote for the Andy Kirk band. Jimmy Dorsey's Boogie Woogie that he did, that I did Lil George from Chicago. And arrangers were so happy to get the Mary Lou Williams score.

S And still are. And these were taken by the publishers and they began to sell them without you getting any royalties or
W No, but I am getting royalties for Black Coffee now.

S What about your manager.
W I didn't have a manager then, I was with the Andy Kirk band during that period.

S What about Andy's manager?
W He was the manager, he was the leader of the band.

S He had someone in New York that was handling him for awhile.
W Joe Glaser, his agent. He wasn't his manager, a personal manager would be like Peter.

S ...protect you against that type of.....
W Yes, that is what a personal manager does.

S When did you meet Barnie Josephson?
W Around 1941. He had the Cafe Society downtown and he offered me a job after I came to New York with Art Blakey and the group. I decided to drop the group that I had and go in the Cafe. It is an odd thing that always happened to me and I wonder why. I can record with the band, the group, and when jobs come in, it is only for the piano, bass and drums. That has been going on for years. I tried to start up a thing with......

S So actually a publisher might be very fascinated and see an opportunity to publish you work, but sometime this happened in the early days without even telling you?
W Yes, they published it anyway. Or one of their staff writers would steal whatever I had done and make another composition.

S How was this done. They would come and listen to you and write
W Sometimes they would get a hold of my score, sometimes like the Jimmy Dorsey band asked me for an arrangement and I sent it to them. Instead of them doing the arrangement that I did they did something else and copied what I did and wrote something else from it.

S Did this ever happen when it was outright pirating where it wasn't written, someone would come and write it down. You know, I would hear you play and I would write the melody down.
W Yes, that has been done also. Everyone by that time knew that I created while I played, so they were always waiting and listening, musicians and arrangers, of something new that I may do.

S You mentioned a few moments ago. It is very funny, you said, that very often you would have a group but no one would want to hire the group, they would very often want just a pianist and a drummer. Does this happen frequently when you have been associated with the group.
W If I try to book a group like myself and three horn men, something like that, they say, no, just the piano.

S Is this because of the expense associated with it perhaps.
W I wish I knew what it was.

S It may be that they want to hear Mary Lou Williams without the encumbrance of other instruments. Who is the true Mary Lou Williams anyway? Where were you born?
W Atlanta, Georgia. I went to Pittsburgh when I was about 3, 4, 5, something like that.

S Do you have any sisters or brothers?
W Many. And cousins in Philadelphia, Chicago. Quite a family, a big one.

S How many children were there?
W At least 9 or 10.

S I came from a family of 10.
W Really. Twins and everything.'

S With such a big family was there anyone else in music besides yourself.
W No, I was the only one. My mother played, but not professionally. She used to play for the church.

S Did you start by playing in church?
W ...that she taught me, and another guy by the name of Jack Hyde, one of the great pianists in Atlanta, Georgia. When my mother discovered that I was talented she would not allow a teacher to touch me and I am very happy about that. She had professional male piano players come to the house and play for me.

S When you said male, did this happen to be that way or did she have a great respect for males?
W It just happened to be that way. They are the ones that she knew.

S The church thing again. In interviewing so many of the performers they seem to have begun, gotten their foundation in the church. Did you play as a child. Where did you really get your big experience. Just by listening and trying out
W Just by listening to other pianists and they would teach me several things. Buck was a terrific pianist and he would teach me things like he said I don't hear for Count Basie. Don't let Count Basie hear, or Art Tatum. They'll copy it. Whenever you are in their presence you play it like this. I slipped up once and Art Tatum heard it and began playing this run. It was really funny, and then Buck wouldn't teach me anything else after that.
P How old were you when you were exposed to Jack Howard.
W In the beginning I was maybe 2-1/2 or 3 years old.

S Peter, why don't you come and join us.
P He's interested in your beginnings, Mary, your very beginnings. Most of these people said they started in a gospel choir, that is not true with you.

S She made that very clear that with pianists especially this is quite different. What, are you a religious person? This is a little personal but I want to get.....
W I don't know what you call a religious person.

S What do you think, a religious person
W I believe in God, if that is what you mean.

S Do you believe that performing in bistros in the old days especially where you came in contact with a variety of individuals, did you get any flack from family or friends. Were you criticized. Here you were this one woman,
W In the beginning one aunt said I was playing the devil's music, had me baptized Baptist, that was when I was 12. I was in Pittsburgh then. That is the only time.

S Did this bother you?
W No, it didn't bother me because I felt she was the devil. Even as a kid I couldn't understand anybody putting someone down that God had given a talent to. I thought maybe the devil was speaking through her, or she was just uptight corny. My gift was unusual I think and I worked at it, cleared it up.

S Who did you listen to as a child? Pianists? Singers?
W Jelly Roll Morten, I used to copy his records. Fats Waller, Earl Hines. That was about it. 3rd or 4th grade.

S Who, if any of these, were most influential in the early days.
W I don't think any of them. I was moving. I was trying to move into my own thing To do that I discovered later that you almost have to copy somebody to get started. Earl Gardner used to play fast piano like Art Tatum until the musicians stopped him. Said he would never be considered great if you continue like that, you have to play your own style to be great. What I was doing was just copying the tunes and records that I liked of theirs.

S When do you feel that you began to put the Mary Lou Williams stamp on it instead of the copy?
W I never did feel anything.

S You change. I call you kind of a creative evolution in terms of pianist. You said you were copying people in earlier days. What did you do to the copy after you got it. You obviously have a good ear.
W I made it speak in my own way. If I took a piano solo and played it exactly the w it was recorded by some other pianist, I would have to change it. I would have to do something about changing it automatically.
P What happened when Jelly Roll Morten heard the way you played the Pearls.
W He said he showed me how I should play it, it was more or less the way he played it.
P Meaning that you had done something with it already.
W Already I had added to it.

S What are some of the things that you recall that you added to it?
W I don't know. We would get too deeply into music.

S Did you add more arpeggios, more block chords, or more left hand
W The reason I said we may get too deeply into the subject is the public may not know what I am talking about. Whenever you speak of adding or doing something, you know about the mind and you hear sounds and you play whatever, it is as fast as lightening. The mind, hear fingertips. What I did was to listen to a melody or something that was coming a little different than what he had recorded and I did it like that. I improvised, improvisation meaning to play a chord and to play many notes on that one chord. I probably did something like that.
P I think what is interesting is what you just said. You heard something not explainable in that. It is an irrelevant question.

S This is Peter O'Brian speaking in the background, Professor at Duke University.
W What I was trying to tell you in the beginning. Music, for instance if I am writing and same way playing, whatever I am going to write comes to the mind, just like a thought would come to your mind. I write it. If I go to the piano it will hold me back. It will slow me up.

S So you don't write at the piano, you write away from the piano.
W Yeh, away from the piano. Right when I hear it in the mind. Same thing happen for instance, when I took that tune off the record the way he played it, I heard something else different. And it was good. But he didn't want to hear it like that. He wanted to hear note for note the way he recorded it. He said to me you don't play it like that, you play it like this.

S Who are some other people. I hesitate to move away from this, but who are some other people like Jelly Roll Morton that you played for and said things to you. Just name a few.
W Nobody else was like him. Fats Waller

S How would you classify Fats style when you first heard him.
W Tremendous, really terrific. I was the type of person that anything I heard I could imitate it or play it, even as a little baby. If I heard it I'd play it. Someone took me to New York to meet Fats Waller, they wanted Fats to hear me. Fats Waller really, its a shame that his play and everything, he was a great musician. He was just as great as Duke Ellington or anybody else and nobody has ever discovered the greatness of his talent.

S Do you think Ain't Misbehavin doing any justice to Fats Waller.
W I don't think so. I haven't seen it. He should be as great a musician as any muscian living, like Duke Ellington or anyone else, in that category because I've seen the man g( me onto some things like he used to write tunes for the shows, dancing girls and all that, and the way he wrote those tunes I haven't seen anybody write like that. He would allow a producer to set the routine, give the girls their dance routine, and after he, the producer, had finished, he would say to him, hey Fats we're ready, write it. And he would write it while the girls were dancing. Isn't that wonderful. I sat there and I looked at it. I said I'll do that. A lot of things that I have written I saw. Pearl Premis was rehearsing one day and I wrote the Zodiac thing from watching her dance. She taught me an awful lot of things like.....

S So you have worked with Pearl Premis then?
W Yes.

S What are some of the things you did with her?
W Well I didn't work with her, I worked on the same program with her.

S How would you describe, what do you think of Pearl Premis? That is a terrible question to ask. I was trying to avoid asking that but I don't know any other way to....
W I like her. She had a leap that really was the end. I don't know if she is still doing it. What she was doing was really unique. I had never seen anything like it. It must have been very good. I must have liked it because I used to go down and watch her rehearse.

S Did it compliment black music of the day, of its time.
W She was doing Afro. I wish she was doing black American.

S I ask that question because obviously the big thing between African, us neo Africans, the blacks who are trying to be African.
W I want to be a little bit of everything.

S Pearl Premis is in that little line of lineage.
W I think Africa laid a bomb on us,. After all we are black Americans.

S Artistically?
W Artistically they had nothing to do with our music. What happened in America is more artistic than that. I don't want to put people down. I love it all. I like Africans, the dances and what not. But why should I kill off a great talent that has been produced in America and leave it and go to another country. Even if it is Ireland or something, and leave a great, beautiful talent....

S Do you know Ollie Wilson. He was Oliver Nelson, Quincy Jones'. I believe he is at Berkeley, he was at Oberlin.
W Oliver Nelson I knew. He died.

S Ollie went to Africa to improve his musicianship presumably because he wanted to get more of the roots.
W Roots of what? Roots of Africa and not America. Do you have any idea what was created out of the suffering of the early black slaves? Something that will never be heard anywhere in the world. You have never heard the spirituals anywhere, you've never heard the blues. Some people say about certain things in jazz that sounds Latin American and all that. Any part jazz, if I had a machine here right now and played all of it, you never heard this music anywhere in the world. It came out of suffering of the early black slaves, and don't forget it.

S Do you have that in jazz Are you able to capture that in what you do.
W It is captured by anyone that played it. It was captured by the first boogie woogie pianist. It was captured by Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, that's your classical style of jazz.

S Did Hazel Scott capture it in what she does?
W I imagine.

S Ms. Williams you have given me spiritual roots, the tree of black music in America I might call it, and it mentions quite a few names such as Duke Ellington, Bennie Carter, Roy Eldridge. I would like to get just your opinion about some of these greats. Anything you would like to say about, Louie Amstrong for example.
W He's on the tree. Miles Davis was from the bop era.

S All these people you performed with?
W These people helped to create the bop era. The ones I just spoke about. Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, There were between 6 and 10 original boppers, including Dizzie Gillespie I was there when this happened. In Kansas City you will find on the tree Count Basie, who is important, and even Duke Ellington started back then. Art Tatum and then later on Earl Gardner and Fats Waller, J. P. Johnson.

S What made these people special. They seem to cluster together like you mention the bop group. Lester Young I remember you were with him when Andy Kirk.
W They were producing something that was great. That made them special. You've never heard any music like what Duke Ellington produced no where. Everybody has tried to capture the sound and they haven't yet.

S Why is it that the stars fell on the blacks on that time. All these people seem to have come in a cluster. We don't have this now.
W There was many, many musicians all playing together, but they all played different styles and different things of each era. I may be here in Durham and the kids are playing a certain style in the bop idiom and go to New York and still play in the bop idiom that would fit but the style would be a little different.

S How would you describe the bop idiom?
W Nobody much could play jazz until that came along. Those that had been studying and going back to school for technique, thought they were playing but they weren't because it was something like phrasing of every other note. They still weren't playing it. They gave everybody a chance to play a lot of notes like a typewriter wherein before no one knew what to do with technique in jazz because jazz is a music that speaks from the heart. Some were born with a lot of technique and others were not.

S Dizzie says he talks about beats falling in a particular place, when you are playing what you call bop, the bop idiom, where do you put the heavy beats?
W If I were playing bop I would put it in the bop idiom. It would be impossible for them to play with me if I didn't do that.
P Every other beat in the bop phrase
W A lot of it falls like that. Some of it falls a little different. Every other' beat. But that would be getting close to it.

S I am really trying to differentiate between bop and what came before. What it made it bop?
W What came before was a beat, a swinging beat, like Count Basie, that type of thing. Then bop, there were more notes. I can hear it, but I'm giving you an idea. 16th and 32nd notes. It was more notes but still had love and the feeling of the spirituals and the blues.

S Could one expect to dance to bop?
W Of course they danced to it.

S So that is not one thing that set it apart in your mind.
W It did become more of a music to listen to, more of a concert. The era before that was more or less for dances. It wasn't as fantastic. But when bop came along it was expressing more like a concert or symphony would play.

S Andy pointed out to me that he had, they were jamming and some Jewish kid came up and he wanted to play with the group. One by one the musicians began to leave the stage until the kid was up there by himself. The kid wanted to play some bop with this group of people. I said why were they leaving. He said well it was very obvious that this kid didn't know what bop was because he wasn't playing in the right way.
W I was in Minton's when that happened. He could have messed them up. They wouldn't have been able to play it. It could have been like, another trumpet player. Every time Charlie Parker and the rest, they'd run him off when he got up on the stand; they would chase him off. Because if he were really blowing anything they would keep him there, they wouldn't do that. I know that.
P What about Al Hague?
W Al Hague always did blow with them. He had the feeling. Also Barbara Carroll, a girl. She played with them. And George Wellington.

S Were there other big name women such as you.
W Al Hague was a man. He was one of the first whites to play bop.

S Were there any other big name women stars that you can recall during your period.
W No. Not because I played piano. There has been nothing much happening with women, in any of the eras.

S Except maybe some of the singing?
W Except some of the eras before that, Valatta Snow. That is musically really blowing. There have only been two great women that I can, Lubbie Austin in the early 20s, she was terrific. She did things that men can't do now. Writing music, playing with the left hand, smoking a cigarette, ...writing with the right hand. I can do it. I used to go out on one nights with Andy Kirks' band. The mosquitos were eating us up in Texas and I would get so mad I would start playing with my left and and writing or doing a crossword puzzle of writing arrangements.

S Andy mentions Dallas. I just can't find Dallas mentioned very much in my readings on jazz. He said he came to Kansas City from Dallas, Texas. Did you join him after or before?
W I joined him in Oklahoma City.

S Maybe he said he came from Dallas to Oklahoma. He was in Denver.
W We went to Dallas several times, but I don't which town we left to go there.

S Jazz was very big...
W That is where we met Illinois Jacquet. That is where Dick Wilson got drunk and when he woke up the next day he was sitting on a tombstone. That was Houston, Texas. Dallas was terrific too.

S So Texas was a big swing, jazz.
W Oh, yeh, very big swing era.
P Texas Tenor players are important a little later. Illinois Jacquet, David Newman, Fathead Newman now.

S Did you perform with many of these individuals?
W Everybody. I am a lady who has really performed with everybody, practically.

S Roy Eldridge.
W Yes, I did work with him.

S Dizzie, obviously very often used his name as a person that he emulated, which I found surprising. When he moved away from Roy I talked to Roy and Dizzie within a space of 2-3 days. What do you remember about Roy Eldridge.
W I just remember that he was a great trumpet player. I liked him. There were several favorites of mine. Harold Baker. Roy Eldridge, Sweet Edison. I have quite a few trumpet players.

S Chick Webb as a composer or arranger.
W He was a drummer.

S Did he do some arranging also.
W I don't remember.

S Didn't he write one of the tunes with Ella.
W I really don't know. Perhaps he just put his name on it because he was the leader of the band.

S Did that happen often?
W Oh, yeh. During that period it did. I don't remember him being a composer. Maybe he was.
P Edgar Sampson arranged for him. He wrote Stomping at the Savoy. A Tisket a Tasket Ella wrote.

S I thought his name was on that.
P She might have done that too because she worked for him. The important arranger for Chick Webb is Edgar Sampson.

S Billy Taylor. He was, I just talked with him in Miami Florida. I didn't interview him. He performed at the convention, the Music Educators National Conference in Miami. What do you know about Billy?
W I've known Billy quite a while, we are very good friends. When I was at the Cafe and I went out, he came and played. 3 or 4 months or 5 or so.

S This is the Cafe Society in New York.
W Yes.

S How would you, is there anything you can say about his style of playing and how it relate to the way you play or the way you see jazz.
W It is a beautiful style of playing. He is expressing himself like the rest. I think it is a beautiful style that I enjoy listening to.

S He's one of the individuals that I think is doing a great deal now in terms of education and jazz and black music. He is making his ideas felt throughout the country, especially on the National Endowment of the Humanities and Arts scene. Have you been involved on a national level in these kinds of things.
W No I am not involved in anything like that because I think half of the music they teach is wrong. They don't teach it right.

S What would be a right way. What is wrong about it?
W Nobody will ever learn it and they will still be splitting the real jazz right down the middle.

S What is the real jazz?
W From what I told you in the beginning: Spirituals, ragtime blues, Kansas City Swing. It doesn't mean that you play it the way it was played during the period that it was created, but some of the love of the old way of playing has to be in it. You cannot go into books and teach this music. I have to do a great deal of writing and teaching students myself. I have to show then how to teach themselves. I don't teach them. There is only one girl here who wants to play like me, and a boy. They copy my solos from the records. I don't teach them to play like Mary Lou I try to teach them to play like themselves and practically anybody under 40 years old is not teaching jazz or are they playing jazz. I don't know what good anybody could be doing. There are several people that can teach it. Dizzie Gillespie is a very good teacher, Barry, Eddie Baerfiel. Nobody is teaching. That is pitiful.

S You feel that it can be taught though.
W Yes, but you have to get away from the books. I have told you several times that I have a way of making my students hear it. Max Roach is a good teacher.

S He's the next person I have here to ask you about.
W I imagine quite a few that are not teaching, I haven't found anybody out here now that is teaching.

S What about Teddie Wilson?
W Teddie Wilson is a good teacher period. But he is classical jazz.

S He went to Tuskegee didn't he. I believe he studied violin there.
W I don't know. The real jazz of the bop era has more technique than the classics. It does not come out of Tuskegee, or Boston Conservatory. It comes from somebody that is already playing, a professional musician that is already playing and then teach it. That is how it is done. It is taught from somebody that is already playing. During the hour that I am teaching a student may switch several times so we can absorb, or get into it, or how to play it. I could very easily take a job teaching out of books. But they would still be playing mess and stuff that you hear now. It is in a very, very bad way now. A lot of people using the name jazz and they are not playing none of it.

S You feel that jazz teaching has a very dismal future?
W No, no. You got me wrong. If the right cats would come out and teach it. Dizzie can't afford to stop. In his band, every musician that has played with him he has taught.

S ...
W He has to make a living for himself. I am teaching and doing concerts also.

S Couldn't Dizzie do that?
W I don't know what he can do and I don't know what he would want to do. But I know how I am doing it.

S Two things can happen. They could be many more Mary Lou Williams out there trying to it because you want to preserve it. Or there could be many more.......... Mary Lou, we were talking about teaching a few moments ago. Do you feel that all performers, the jazz performers, the great that you have on that tree, for example, are they good teachers, could they be?
W Every one of them. They were very anxious to teach anybody that wanted to be helped. For instance when Earl Garner first came out he was playing so much like Tatum with fast technique, everything, some of the greats grabbed him and said no, you do your own thing, because you will never make it. Or someone playing exactly like Bud Powell. Those guys are dead. You don't have too many left.

S Mary Lou, we were talking about teachers a few moments ago and the fact that more jazz should be taught but not from the books. How do you do it?
W I can give you an idea of how it should be done. The greats that I have on this tree they taught everyone. They were more charitable as far as the young musicians playing. I said to you once before about the blues, most of the music of today has lost that feeling. I can play the old fashioned blues to give you the feeling and show you other things that are modern and are the blues, doesn't have to be 8 bars, 12 bars or anything. It is the feeling of the blues. Here's the old fashioned. Here's a little blues that I wrote that is called Many Number One. The chords are different. The harmony is the same.

S Can you make that sound like an old fashioned blues?
W I would have to change it. What we want to do is just to get the soulful feeling of that particular music that has been lost in what is happening now. All of the musicians playing commercial rock, black magic, exercises a classical books. Don't misconstrue the meaning of what I am trying to get to. You have to study little but you cannot go altogether into it in a big way like you would with the classics.

S You are going right up the tree trunk, so to speak. You gave us the traditional sounding blues
W After the suffering that was the blues, the next would be, what I left out was that it was really created out of the spirituals. That was the beginning of it. There's the blues..... Gospel...... And then to the jazz...... I was into the gospel.

S Could you rag that?
W I don't know. I will play you a ragtime. One that my mother taught me when I was 2 years old. The only one that I can play...... That is ragtime. It is a little different than that Joplin. He studied and this is the really authentic, more or less with the swinging left hand.

S You have obviously in ragtime as in precursor of jazz. What of that that we have just heard could you play in a jazz piece and still retain a bit of the.....
W It would change.

S Miss Williams, you were about to demonstrate a link between ragtime and jazz since let us call them two relatives, musically speaking. Show us maybe a ragtime version and then move into a jazz version and tell us about the differences between the two versions.
W I think the ragtime was more staccato and jazz became more legato. More love and longer notes. I'll try the ragtime first....... Swinging, left hand jazz period....... All of it is jazz. As I said before in the beginning you had the spirituals and this jazz is created out of that.

S You have us hanging now. You gave us some good jazz of the 30s. Shall we go to bop can you give us another step. Mary Lou Williams has taken us through to a kind of maze of.....
W I gave you the Kansas City kind of what was happening there. During that period was also playing what we call zombie music.

S Why do you call it zombie music?
W The guys would have me play for them after they jammed all night and they called the zombie music. It sounded like that to us during that period. Everything else had such a beautiful feeling.

S Have you heard Bill Bolcom's Brass Knuckles. His crashing chords and all that.
W Some of them did that and stuck with it and left the jazz completely. It is nothing like........ Different styles of the blues. I'll tell you what happened with the blues. The way it was played in Kansas City and when the bop era came along what happened......... The Bop era was more harmony and more notes and the feeling of the blues was still there.

S What was that piece?
W That was something I just made up to give you an idea of harmonies and improvisation on the bop, when the bop came along. I was still playing the blues. That was the blues of the 30s. Ok, bop era....... More notes.

S What about boogie woogie. Could you take that
W That was during the 30s, the Kansas City era....... Boogie woogie pianist.

S Now we have gone the gambit. Could we come back to gospel for just a moment because gospel has such a variety of manifestations.
W OK I only know a couple of gospel things now.

S You said you also jammed in Mintons with the great names on the tree there. Give me some of the names of persons you have performed with, that you have jammed with at Mintons.
W I didn't jam too much there. That was the beginning of the era. I sat and listened. What really happened was that the guys moved up to my apartment, guys like Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Dizzie. We used to have sessions at the house.

S Like the rent party that you read so much about or the dance.
W We would start playing 3 in the morning until maybe 3 the next afternoon.

S Where do you want jazz to go? What do you want to happen to it.
W I think it should be played by more people than the musicians that are playing it now. Drop all the other things. If every musician that is out there playing now, creating all the other things, rock, commercial rock, if they went back to the 30s, the swing era of Count Basie and came back through that and then go back to their avante garde the music would be much better.

S With Miles he seems to have assimilated all of that.
W Miles never lost a feeling as far as I am concerned. Everybody that copied Coltrane couldn't make it because Coltrane was a real giant. He knew what he was doing. I think, from what I heard, that Coltrane is the only man that could play like that. He always sounded good to me.

S Sort of like Charlie Parker.
W Coltrane played different than Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker was a real giant. He came out of Charlie Parker's music.

S Is there anyone today around that reminds you of or gives you a feeling for the people that you have mentioned, besides Miles? The jazz that you love so much, it is in your hands, it in Dizzie's hands, and many of these others, Alberta Hunter, the singer. Are there any of the youngsters coming up that.
W No.

S Are there any blacks that you know of...?
W I haven't heard any. They don't even know about the music half of them.

S Have the blacks turned their backs on their music?
W I don't think they really turned their backs on it. It is a little bit heavy for them. They would really have to go through some really heavy training in order to get back to it. It is not that easy to learn. What happened is that their young parents didn't teach them about the music, or tell them about it.

S Did your parents teach you?
W Yes, my mother played a little piano. She played organ for the church. I knew about the music through hearing it. Unfortunately the young blacks of this era don't have that opportunity.

S What do you think about George Benson?
W He is from my home. I would kill him. To my opinion he is the greatest guitarist out here and for him to switch and play what he is playing now I just can't, I don't know what has happened. I guess he wants to become a millionaire. He is really my favorite.

S ...
W Fantastic musicians.

S And I think Mary Lou Williams is right at the very top.
W I don't know where I am but I am still trying to do it.

S You are doing a darn good job of it, I can tell you that. How is it that Duke University what attracted you down here besides Peter?
W It didn't attract me. It came to me.
P I came with her. I wasn't here.
W Frank Turro came to me or he called me and I had him come to the house. He said we want you at Duke. I thought that was a little abrupt. I felt that I should stay out here and play. After a while, he kept writing and calling, and I said to Peter, who is my personal manager maybe we had better take a chance and go and see what is happening. Before the two years was up they gave me three more years, which I am very happy about. I discovered a lot of things that I can use in trying to preserve the music and many, many, beautiful things that have happened jazzwise. If I had to live my life over again this would be the music that I would always play because it is fantastic, it is interesting, everything happens in this direction.

S What kind of programs have you established since you have been at Duke?
W Not anything much. I had a band at one time that I wrote some arrangements for. But all I am doing is teaching the students the history with father Peter O'Brian and we work together as a team. I expose them to records and have them sing along with the record, fantastic way of teaching them.

S Do you have many blacks in your classes.
W In the beginning I didn't. Then the word got around and we have quite a few now.

S I wonder why you didn't at the very beginning.
W They didn't know the music. They didn't know anything about it. One girl said her mother told her to stay away from the music because it was the white man's music. I had some crazy awful sounds like that coming forward. The next time I got one I think I got a little angry and that brought in three or four more.

S Do you think the colleges and universities are doing enough for jazz and black music.
W I don't think so. I think they are doing too many other things. One thing that is really terrible is the music that the colleges are buying up for the bands. I had to stay up night writing arrangements for the band when I arranged for the band, 8 of them. It is terrible. A tune like 'Round About Midnight has the wrong chords and the arrangements that is being bought by colleges are really terrible.

S These are stage bands?
W Yes.
P I wouldn't call it a stage band. That is a concept that she would not agree with.

S What do you call them?
P A jazz ensemble. A real jazz band.

S These are stock arrangements that you purchased from.
W They are worst than stocks. At least stocks are right. When you buy a stock arrangement that means it isn't out. A thing like Duke Ellington would write, but it is right, the chords are right. These things are terrible. They are simplified but they have mistakes in there. A lot of mistakes that I couldn't understand. I went to the office and sat there and looked at all of them. They were terrible so I had to start writing. It took me about six months to finish up. I think because we were traveling also. I finally got it together.

S Have you ever heard of the jazz group that North Texas State University in Texas
W Yes. In fact I ran into them...... That's a chord...... Hear the difference. That's a mistake in the chord. The wrong melody. Not in this particular thing but I happened to be thinking about. Most of the things that are bought have the wrong melody and wrong chord changes and everything. They are amateurish.

S But are they amateurish because even the finest musicians at many colleges and universities are terrible when it comes to playing jazz.
W I am speaking of the music itself.
P The people who wrote the arrangements are amateurs too.

S Miss Williams, it has been delightful having been able to talk to you this evening. I notice you have a few more things that I haven't gotten yet and one of which is this beautiful tie where is that from?
W You remember the Bell...... Foundation for Musicians. That is Louie Armstrong and Lucille Armstrong gave me over 100 ties and clothes to raise money. I still have the Louis Armstrong ties. I had this one framed. Isn't it beautiful.

S Is that one that he actually wore?
W Yes it is.

S Let me add. This is a digression too. Did his wife die at his funeral?
W That was his first wife, Lillian. I saw it, while she was performing she just keeled over.

S Is there anything else in this room that you would like to tell me about.
W Maybe you would like to film the little things I collect.......... And this is a bronze done for you by a local artist?
W Tony Salime.

S Where is he located now. New York?
P Eastern Pennsylvania.

S Why would he do this for you. Did he ever see you perform? I think it is a marvelous piece of work. What about this piece? Did you have to spot some of his work before that was done for you.

END OF INTERVIEW