Here we go Mary Lou

[Ian Thumwood]

This is another track that is impressive and really shows the influence of Earl Hines on MLW's piano playing. I love the way that the band comes in after about 1 min , 50 secs and the overall jivy feel to the record. The music is not played a high tempo or with much bombast but I still think that it epitomises what it means to swing.

[Ian Thumwood]

This is a new for me but you get the same jivy feel with the ensemble writing. The tenor soloist is Dick Wilson. I believe the drummer is Ben Thigpen for was the father of Ed who played drums with Oscar Peterson.

[Ian Thumwood]

It is interesting that she also revisited her earlier material. I believe the original "Mary's Idea" was recorded in about 1929 but the later version is really fascinating because the tune now seems more modern thinking and almost presages a lot of cool jazz, especially John Harrington's clarinet solo and the brass behind it. Yet again, there is that jivy feel with the brass punctuations and the sax motif. Even the them sounds like something that might have been recorded ten years later as opposed to being a tune that had it's origins in the 1920s. I always wonder if Kirk appreciated just how great his band was at that time. For me, the arrangements MLWs wrote for Andy Kirk are amongst my favourite pieces of jazz.

[Ian Thumwood]

Thinking back to the gig last Friday night, the musicians really lacked the clarity and directness of Goodman and Williams......

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks indeed, Ian. This is what this board is all about at its best.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Many thanks indeed, Ian. This is what this board is all about at its best.

Yes indeed, very helpful.

Here's today's (Tuesday) R3 helping....all with Andy Kirk:

Walkin’ and Swingin’
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy

A Kirk, ML Williams: Corky Stomp
ML Williams: Froggy Bottom
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy

Lotta Sax Appeal
Andy Kirk and his 12 Clouds of Joy

Mess-A-Stomp
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy
The Rocks
Mary Lou Williams, piano
Bearcat Shuffle
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy

Little Joe from Chicago
Mary Lou Williams, piano

Sammy Cahn & Saul Chaplin, arr. by ML Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band
Harry Mills, vocal
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy

Herman Walder/ML Williams: A Mellow Bit of Rhythm
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy
Mary’s Idea
Andy Kirk & His 12 Clouds of Joy

Twinklin’
Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy
Jelly Roll Morton, arr. ML Williams: The Pearls
Mary Lou Williams, piano
What’s Your Story, Morning Glory
Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy
Pha Terrell, vocal,
Scratchin’ in the Gravel
Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy

[Ian Thumwood]

SA / Bluesnik

Thanks for the comments. The tracks on today's programme are a good selection of her writing. Of these, only "Bearcat Shuffle," "Whats your story" and the Morton cover are unfamiliar. The singer Pha Terrill was pretty awful - I think he was originally a bouncer at a club. As well as the arrangements, I would single out the tenor playing of Dick Wilson who was rather like Basie's Herschel Evans but with a lightness in his phrasing. He features in a lot of these tracks but "Lotta sax appeal" was written as a feature for him.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hadn't realised that "Little Joe from Chicago" was a Mary Lou Williams blues - I use it as a limber up number whenever pretending to myself I could be a half-decent jazz pianist, but with a semitonal modulation up in bar 9 before returning to the tonic in bar 10, which I must've picked up from somewhere else, although having that solo album from '78, on a Pablo LP "The Best of Mary Lou Williams", issued in 1980, which consists of the live stuff on side 2 - mostly boogie and stride including what to my ears sounds like a friendly mickey take on one of Tatum's "Tea for Two"'s - and studio takes on Side 1 with Butch Williams on bass and Cynthia Tyson (it says) singing "The Blues" [sic] and the wonderful "My Mama Pinned A Rose On Me" - which among other things showed her remarkable adaptation to modalism.

Funny to think my introduction to Mary Lou Williams was via a 1946 piano trio version of Dvorak's "Humoresque" on a compilation album on RCA Camden titled "Great Jazz Pianists", which at the time (I was 15) seemed the most "modern" item on it, and now sounds remarkably prophetic of the way John Lewis "classicised" jazz with the MJQ five years on.

[Ian Thumwood]

I was working from home today so was able to listen to the Mary Lou Williams programme. I thought it was really interesting and was staggered that she initially had no experience at writing and orchestrating. You can understand why there might have been friction with Andy Kirk if she was not aware of fundamentals to begin with. The curious thing about some of her writing is that it was improved with age and sounds more modern than a lot of what other bands were doing. This seems strange because Frank Drigg's excellent book at Kansas City jazz states that the musicians centred around Basie's coterie considered Kirk's band to be a bit prissy and whilst history proved that the momentum of jazz development was certainly with Basie in the late 30's, MLW's writing does seem to be pitching towards a cooler and more thoughtful approach which did not become prevalent until the 1950s. I felt that the track "Scratchin' in the gravel" was a standout and felt it seemed weird how this was once considered popular music whereas in 2019 it comes across as a more "serious" jazz composition. The comparison with MJQ is quite useful because Kirk's band was similarly concerned with the mechanics of how jazz writing worked.

The inclusion of a piano version of "Little Joe from Chicago" was unusual as the more celebrated version was with Kirk's orchestra. I believe there is ambiguity as to the dedicatee insofar that it has been argued that it was the boxer Joe Louis or Joe Glaser who was the manager of Ellington, Armstrong, Goodman, Hampton, BB King and Billie Holiday amongst others. Initially the three most impressive elements in Kirk's band are the piano playing of MLW, her orchestrations and the tenor of Dick Wilson who was heard to good advantage on the programme today. However, I think that the trombonist Ted Donnelly and the clarinettist Harrington were also pretty useful. Late tracks included the likes of Shorty Baker (who later , briefly married MLW) and Howard McGhee on trumpet. Fats Navarro was a later member, also on trumpet. Wilson was another tragic feature who died young from TB in 1941. He was well respected at the time and I have an album by Glen Gray somewhere where the Kirk version of "Moten Swing" was recreated and Gray singled Wilson put for praise. It was quite intriguing because you would have thought that Gray and Wilson would have been operating on different orbits by the late 1930s.

I liked the arrangement of "What's our story" although I was not fussed by the singer. I have never heard this track before.

[Jazzrook]

Really enjoyed the 'Composer of the Week' on pianist/composer Mary Lou Williams.
It was a fascinating and moving 5 hours on her remarkable life and music and a model of jazz broadcasting intelligently presented by Donald MacLeod.
Surprisingly, he had little prior knowledge of her music.
Let's hope there'll be more jazz composers of the week on Radio 3 in future.

JR

[Jazzrook]

Mary Lou Williams solo piano at Montreux, 1978:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=ktmyulf11sQ

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Mary Lou Williams solo piano at Montreux, 1978:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=ktmyulf11sQ

JR

The programmes didn't mention Ceecil Taylor, did they...

[Jazzrook]

The programmes didn't mention Ceecil Taylor, did they...

A pity that the Cecil/Mary Lou encounter wasn't discussed. Apart from that it was a fascinating and enlightening series.

JR