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Posts tagged as “Ben Webster”

#WomensHistoryMonth: Mary Lou Williams, Piano Prodigy and Jazz Music Legend (LISTEN)

#WomensHistoryMonth: Mary Lou Williams, Piano Prodigy and Jazz Music Legend (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 31, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

We close out #WomensHistoryMonth with Mary Lou Williams, one of the most talented and revered pianists, composers, and arrangers in jazz music history.

Williams, who grew up in Pittsburgh, was a self-taught musical prodigy who cited Lovie Austin, who we did a daily drop on yesterday, as her greatest influence.

Since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC has held an annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival – this year’s will be held in May. To hear our Drop on her, press play:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, still a little stuffed up, but here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Thursday, March 31st, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Born in 1910, composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams was a self-taught musical prodigy who cited Lovie Austin, who we did a daily drop on yesterday, as her greatest influence.

One of the first renowned female players, composers and arrangers in jazz, Williams was a working musician by the age of 15, and by 18 had joined the Andy Kirk Orchestra based out of Kansas City, Missouri.By the 1940s she had her own weekly radio show, Mary Lou Williams’s Piano Workshop, where she mentored Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

In 1945, Williams composed one of her most noted works, Zodiac Suite, which she said was inspired by the astrological signs of famous friends in the jazz world. “Aries” which you are hearing now, was inspired by Billie Holiday and Ben Webster.

[Excerpt from “Aries”]

After converting to Catholicism in the 1950s, Williams quit performing to aid musicians with addictions, even turning her home into a halfway house.

When she returned to music years later, Williams composed sacred works such as 1971’s acclaimed Mary Lou’s Mass and supported musicians in need by tithing her proceeds for the rest of her life.

Even with her self-imposed break, in her lifetime, Williams composed over 350 songs and recorded over 35 albums. Williams passed in 1981 and in 1983, Duke University established the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture.

And since 1996, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC has held an annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival. The next one will be held this May.

To learn more about Mary Lou Williams, check out the Mary Lou Williams Foundation webpage, read the 2020 biography Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams by Tammy L. Kernodle, 2001’s Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams by Linda Dahl, watch the 2015 documentary Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, currently available on Showtime, listen to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” 2019 segment on her that includes interview audio of Williams, as well as NPR’s whole “Turning the Tables” series of features on Williams.

And if you really want to deep dive, like I know I do, you can listen to and read all seven tapes and transcripts of Mary Lou Williams’ interviews from the 1973 Jazz Oral History project where her archives are stored at Rutgers University.

And, of course, you can buy or stream her music on Apple Music or Spotify. Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.

Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

Excerpts from “Aries” from Zodiac Suite and “Credo” (Instrumental) from Mary Lou’s Mass by Mary Lou Williams are included under fair use.

If you like these Daily Drops, please consider following us on Apple, Google Podcasts, RSS.com, Amazon, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a rating or review, share links to your favorite episodes, or go old school and tell a friend.

For more Good Black News, you can check out goodblacknews.org or search and follow @goodblacknews anywhere on social.

Sources:

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[Featured photo via marylouwilliams.foundation]

Born on This Day in 1915: Legendary Jazz and Blues Singer Billie Holiday (LISTEN)

Born on This Day in 1915: Legendary Jazz and Blues Singer Billie Holiday (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2020

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

GBN delights in the opportunity to commemorate the birth of Billie Holiday, one of America’s most talented singing artists, on what would have been her 105th birthday.

Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915 and raised primarily in Baltimore, MD, Holiday is best known for her signature songs “God Bless The Child,” which she co-wrote with Arthur Herzog, Jr. and “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching protest song she first recorded in 1939.

Holiday is also well-regarded by musicians and music enthusiasts alike as a masterful interpreter of jazz and pop standards with instrumentalist-like phrasing, and was a major influence on popular singers such as Carmen McRae, Frank Sinatra, and Joni Mitchell.

Although Holiday’s music had its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, current generations got a chance to connect with Holiday’s genius and story through Audra McDonald‘s Tony-winning portrayal of her in the 2014 Broadway musical Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.

Slightly older generations may have become acquainted with Holiday through the 1972 film Lady Sings The Blues, which garnered Diana Ross an Academy Award nomination for the title role.

Billie Holiday Statue (photo via flikr.com)

A statue of Holiday by sculptor James Earl Reid was erected in her hometown of Baltimore in 1985 and rededicated in 2009 on a majestic granite pedestal to better capture the significance of her stature.

To read more about Billie Holiday’s life and music, there are fortunately several choices, such as her 1956 autobiography Lady Sings The Blues (as told to William Dufty), Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday by Robert O’Meally, With Billie by Julia Blackburn, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon by Donald Clarke and Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, And An Early Cry For Civil Rights by David Margolick.

Above you can watch Lady Day in 1957 on CBS’ The Sound of Jazz performing “Fine and Mellow,” the blues standard she wrote and first recorded in 1939, with Jazz All Stars such as Lester “Prez” Young, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, Milt Hinton and Mal Waldron.

Below you can experience a comprehensive compilation of Billie Holiday’s recordings in a Spotify playlist called Loving Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday. Click through to follow and/or download. Enjoy!