Artist: Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer.

She wrote hundreds of compositions and  arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis,  Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie. 

Williams was the arranger and pianist for recordings in Kansas City (1929), Chicago (1930), and New York City (1930). She was a freelance arranger for Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. In 1937, she produced In the Groove (Brunswick), a collaboration with Dick Wilson, and Benny Goodman asked her to write a blues song for his band. The result was "Roll 'Em", a boogie-woogie  piece based on the blues, which followed her successful "Camel Hop", named for Goodman's radio show sponsor,

In 1942, she was joined there by bandmate Harold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed a six-piece ensemble that included Art Blakey on drums. She then left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band in New York City. She traveled with Ellington and arranged several tunes for him, including "Trumpet No End" (1946), her version of "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin. 

Williams accepted a job at the Café Society  Downtown, started a weekly radio show called Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop on WNEW, and began mentoring and collaborating with younger bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and  Thelonious Monk. In 1945, she composed the bebop hit "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" for Gillespie."

In 1945, she composed the classical-influenced  Zodiac Suite, in which each of the twelve parts corresponded to a sign of the zodiac and were accordingly dedicated to several of her musical colleagues, including Billie Holiday, and Art Tatum. She recorded the suite with Jack Parker and Al Lucas and performed it December 31, 1945, at Town Hall in New York City with an orchestra and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. 

In 1952, Williams accepted an offer to perform in England and ended up staying in Europe for two years. By this time, music had taken over her life, and not in a good way; Williams was mentally and physically drained. 

A three-year hiatus from performing began when she suddenly backed away from the piano during a performance in Paris in 1954. Her hiatus may have been triggered by the death of her long-time friend and student Charlie Parker in 1955. Dizzy Gillespie convinced her to return to playing, and she performed at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival with Dizzy's band.