Biography
Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) was an American jazz pianist and composer. She has written hundreds of songs and recorded more than a hundred records, she remains to this day one of the most important women in jazz.
She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1910, the second of 11 children in the family. From the age of 3 she emerged as a child prodigy as she had started playing the piano with great skill. Her mother was her first teacher and as there were financial difficulties, her parents took advantage of her talent and from a young age she played the piano at parties and events bringing income to the house. At the age of 10 she was known as "the little girl on the piano". She made her professional debut with large bands in 1922, at the age of 12, when she replaced a pianist on "Buzz and Harris Revue". In the following years she went on many tours and passed through New York several times, playing the piano for many famous artists of the time.
She married jazz saxophonist John Williams in November 1926 and moved with him to Memphis, Tennessee, where she became his band's pianist. In 1929, at the age of 19, she took over the leadership of the band when her husband accepted an invitation to join Andy Kirk 's band in Oklahoma City. In 1942, having divorced, she moved to New York and in the following years she would play in many clubs. From an established swing musician she will turn to the bebop and will be one of the pioneers of the genre as she wrote many important works of this genre.
In 1955 she took a 3-year break from music as she went through a period in which she devoted himself to religion (Catholicism) and to actions for the poor and those in need of detoxification. Convinced by some of her friends that she could serve God and the Catholic Church by using her extraordinary gift to create music, she returned to music with many religious compositions, hymns and liturgies in the 1960s. In 1970 she returned to jazz. .She appeared in concerts and college workshops, in jazz festivals, in clubs, on radio and television, made recordings, taught jazz history. In the last year of her life she founded "The Mary Lou Williams Foundation". She died of cancer in 1981.