  Mary Lou Williams, seen in this late-1930's
photo with Kirk bassist Booker Collins, bolsters her position in the
band with a patchwork of cushions laid across a kitchen chair. In
the 1970s, when there was no adjustable piano bench,Williams always
placed a thick telephone book on the bench to raise her hands to the
right level for playing. This practice has also been part of the behind-the-keyboard
technique of pianists Erroll Garner and Geri Allen. |
 The Andy Kirk reed section around the
mid 1930s featured John Williams (second from left), Dick Wilson (third
from left), and Johnny Harrington (far right).Check IDs with DM. |
 Dick Wilson, with Andy Kirk from 1935
to his untimely death at age 30 in 1941, was a significant voice in
jazz and the band's star horn man. Mary Lou Williams recalled in a
1980 conversation with Oscar Peterson that Wilson was a great jam
session player who energized other soloists to do their best playing.
Wilson original conception and sound placed him on a level with the
greatest tenor saxophonists of the day. This photograph, taken in
a Kansas City studio, dates from around 1936, judging from Wilson's
inscription to Williams. |
 Williams' manager, Fr. Peter F. O'Brien,
S.J., assisted Williams in her classes at Duke University from 1977
to 1981. He recalled that Ben Webster's was the first name she brought
up in lectures, workshops and demonstrations, so fond was she of his
feeling and phrasing. Webster briefly played with the Kirk band in
1933. Webster, who gained immortality with the Duke Ellington Orchestra
beginning in 1940, is seen in this vintage photo inscribed to Williams
during his tenure with Teddy Wilson's fine band. |
 Don Byas was another tenor saxophonist
whom Williams loved as musician and man. Byas' inscription, beginning
with, "To Mary, the sweetest girl I've ever known" and continuing:
"Here's hoping such a love as ours can never die . . . Yours forever,
Don," show that the feeling was mutual. Byas gained valuable experience
in the Kirk band from 1939-1940. Williams recorded with Byas for Asch
in 1944 and French Vogue ten years later. |
 Williams' inscription to Byas, dated
November 1, 1938 and found among her papers at the Institute of Jazz
Studies, simply reads, "Best wishes, Mary Lou Williams." They would
renew their friendship in the years Williams lived in Paris from 1952
to 1954. |
 Mary Lou Williams stood as the only
woman near the top tier of Swing Era instrumental jazz of the 1930s.
Seen here in 1936, with Andy Kirk (left) and singer Pha Terrell, Williams
wrote dozens of original compositions and arrangements, setting Kirk's
style, and played first-rate piano. Gradually, she turned her attention
to composing extended works and also played a significant role in
the bebop revolution. |
 "I didn't fall in love with men. I
fell in love with sounds," Mary Lou Williams once remarked to her
manager and confidant, Fr. Peter F. O'Brien, S.J. Harold Baker, a
member of the Kirk band from 1940-1942 who gained renown with Ellington,
became Williams' second husband in 1942. Baker, an early influence
on Miles Davis, died of cancer in 1965, still married to Williams,
though they had long since drifted apart. Williams left Kirk in 1942
and formed an unrecorded small group with Baker on trumpet. When Baker
joined Ellington, she traveled with the band as staff arranger. Among
the things she wrote were "Blue Skies," later called "Trumpets No
End" and "Stardust," a feature for Baker. |
 A proud Andy Kirk stands to the left
of the band that provided him a good run for twenty years. Although
the band did not break up until 1948, its days of prominence were
numbered from the time in 1942 when Mary Lou Williams left and relocated
to New York. |
 Williams is shown arranging for Decca's
Kansas City Jazz album in 1940. For Kirk, she arranged "Twelfth Street
Rag" and Ellington's "Ring Dem Bells." For a small-group session issued
as Mary Lou Williams and Her Kansas City Seven, she arranged two classic
Bennie Moten pieces, "Baby Dear" and "Harmony Blues." |