Mary Lou Williams Live at The Cookery

Trio 3 + Geri Allen - Celebrating Mary Lou Williams: Live At Birdland New York (2011) {Intakt CD 187}
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© 2011 Intakt Records | Intakt CD 187
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Post Bop

In Memoriam. Sad news as Geri Allen has passed away. RIP Geri Allen. Trio 3 played five evenings together with pianist Geri Allen in the New York jazz club Birdland, paying homage to the jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. They presented fresh and individualistic interpretations of some of the most beautiful pieces of the "First Lady of Jazz". Intakt has recorded these evenings.

Robbie Williams performs a tribute to the classic songs of the fifties and the legendary singers, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jnr and Dean Martin, who made them hits. Duets include 'Somethin' Stupid' with Jane Horrocks, and 'It Was a Very Good Year' with a video footage version of Frank Sinatra, among others.

Most of the musicians heard on this fourth installment in the Classics Mary Lou Williams chronology are women. During the second half of the 1940s, this was considered unusual and innovative. Female musicians, with the exception of carefully coiffed vocalists and the occasional pianist, were generally regarded by the public, by the entertainment industry, and by most male musicians as curious anomalies and were not taken very seriously. Mary Lou Williams always preferred to surround herself with musical minds possessing artistic acumen commensurate with her own highly developed musical intellect. The first four tracks were recorded for the Continental label in 1945 with guitarist Mary Osborne, bassist Bea Taylor, and percussionists Margie Hyams and Bridget O'Flynn, a fascinating duo who took turns either handling the vibraphone or the drums…

This seventh volume in the Classics Mary Lou Williams chronology opens with a pair of gorgeous modern-sounding rhythm quartet tracks recorded in London on June 26, 1953. The next leg of her journey took her onto the northern European mainland. After a period spent gigging in France and Holland the pianist settled in Paris at the Hotel Cristal in St.-Germain-des-Prés, not far from the Deux Magots and the Café de Flore. On December 2, 1953 Mary Lou Williams recorded eight selections for the Vogue label with her good friend the perpetual expatriate tenor saxophonist Don Byas, bassist Buddy Banks, and drummer Gérard Pochonet. This exceptionally satisfying material has popped up here and there over the years but like much of Mary Lou Williams' oeuvre (and most jazz in general) it seems to have eluded the public…

Mary Lou Williams & Cecil Taylor - Embraced (1977) {Pablo PACD 2620-108-2 rel 1995}
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© 1977, 1995 Pablo Records / Fantasy | PACD 2620-108-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Stride / Piano

A masterful meeting of two important piano modernists – Mary Lou Williams and Cecil Taylor – sounding incredibly wonderful here in each other's company! The set features a core rhythmic pulse from Mickey Roker on drums and Bob Cranshaw on bass – and Williams and Taylor really take off on their twin pianos – with Cecil almost leading Mary Lou more into territory of his own, although she also brings an undercurrent of soul to the set that makes the record unlike any other that Taylor ever recorded! The approach shouldn't work, but it's captivatingly brilliant from the start.

One thing about chronologically arranged reissues - you never know exactly what you're going to bump into. The third volume of the complete recordings of Mary Lou Williams, for example, opens with a pair of tunes sung by Josh White. It's good to hear the lyrics to Williams' cool, bluesy "Froggy Bottom," but "The Minute Man" is one of those obligatory, rhetorical patriotic numbers that cropped up everywhere during WWII and are relevant today only as historical curiosities. Most of the music reissued in this compilation originally appeared on scratchy 78-rpm records bearing the Asch label. Tenor sax archetype Coleman Hawkins is featured on the lush "Song in My Soul" and trumpeter Bill Coleman presides over a laid-back strolling blues with the worrisome title "Carcinoma"…

Mary Lou Williams - Plays In London (1954) {Vogue–Legacy No. 05 rel 2013}
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© 1953-54, 2013 Vogue / Legacy / Sony Music | No. 05 / 88725443772-05
Jazz / Bop / Mainstream Jazz / Piano

Mary Lou Williams traveled to London, England in the winter 1953 and sometime in 1954 for these sessions, likely spaced about a year or so apart, with two different British rhythm sections, the common denominator throughout being bongo player Tony Scott. This Vogue album originally titled Mary Lou Williams Plays in London and issued in the U.S. on the GNP Crescendo label as In London, is back on Vogue as The London Sessions.

This CD features the great pianist Mary Lou Williams during her earliest period. She is heard in 1927 on six selections with The Synco Jazzers (a small group that included her then-husband John Williams on alto) and then on the first 19 selections ever recorded under her own name. Performed during the long period when she was the regular pianist with Andy Kirk's 12 Clouds of Joy, Williams is featured on two hot stride solos in 1930, leading trios in 1936 and 1938, playing "Little Joe from Chicago" unaccompanied in 1939 and heading septets in 1940; among her sidemen were trumpeter Harold "Shorty" Baker and the legendary tenor Dick Wilson. Many of the compositions were written by Williams including "Night Life," "New Froggy Bottom," "Mary's special," and "Scratchin' the Gravel;" her version of Jelly Roll Morton's "The Pearls" is a highpoint.