Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Music in American Life)

First time in paperback and e-book! The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in—and stretching beyond—a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls. Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages. In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history. | Cover Title Copyright Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgments Prefae to the New Edition Introduction 1. I Dream a World 2. Take Me to Froggy Bottom: The Early Musical Years 3. From East Liberty (Pittsburgh) to Beale Street (Memphis) to Eighteenth and Vine (Kansas City) 4. Until the Real Thing Comes Along: The Andy Kirk Years (1931– 42) 5. How Do You Keep the Music Playing? 6. Love on a Two-Way Street: Barney Josephson and Moe Asch 7. Under the Signs of the Zodiac 8. The Calm before the Storm 9. The Crossroads 10. The Long Journey Back Home 11. What a Difference a Day Makes 12. A Season of Change 13. The Fruits of One's Labor Notes Bibliography Selected Discography Index Back cover| "Recommended." — Choice "Diligently chronicles the life and times of the extraordinary innovator."— Jazz Times "Kernodle's Soul on Soul serves as an essential text, working to set the record straight on one of the genre's most significant—and conspicuously ignored—composers." — DownBeat | Tammy L. Kernodle is a professor of musicology at Miami University of Ohio. She served as associate editor of the three volume Encyclopedia of African American Music and as a senior editor for the revision of New Grove Dictionary of American Music . "The pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) was one of the most significant and influential artists in the history of jazz. A versatile musical genius who experimented with and mastered most of the emerging styles in jazz's evolution, Williams wrote and arranged for such greats as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and was a friend, mentor, and teacher to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Yet throughout her prolific career of nearly six decades, she had to fight to achieve recognition, equality, and acceptance as an African American woman in the male-dominated world of jazz." "Now William's artistic brilliance and lasting legacy are affirmed in this definitive volume, which interweaves biographical details with incisive commentary on her music, performances, and recordings. Setting Williams's intriguing story against the racial, cultural, and musical currents of her times, Tammy L. Kernodle draws on extensive interviews and meticulous research to chronicle the tragedies and triumphs of Williams's stormy private and professional life." "Born to an impoverished, unmarried mother in Georgia, and raised in Pittsburgh, the self-taught Williams started performing publicly at age six, Kernodle follows Williams's harsh life on the road, her rise to fame in the 1930s, her role as matriarch of the bebop movement, and her blossoming spirituality. In her later years, Williams wrote sacred jazz pieces that brought emotional healing to listeners, and she worked tirelessly to help and rehabilitate addicted, down-and-out musicians. She was also strongly committed to advancing jazz composition and to educating others about the cultural roots of jazz."--Jacket "This biography presents the life and music of the pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981), a talented and versatile jazz artist well versed in most of the emerging styles in jazz's evolution. Williams wrote and arranged for the likes of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and was a friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and other stars of the bebop scene. Tammy Kernodle draws on extensive interviews, letters, oral histories, and meticulous research, bringing rich biographical detail together with incisive commentary on Williams's music, performances, and recordings. This deeply contextualized portrait chronicles Williams's impoverished upbringing in Pittsburgh, where she began performing publicly at the age of 6, through her harsh life on the road and rise to fame in the 1930s. In later years, Williams's powerful sacred jazz compositions and dedicated support to help rehabilitate jazz musicians struggling with addiction contributed further to her lasting influence as a composer and educator"-- Provided by publisher