Morning Glory

by Linda Dahl

  Blatant appropriations, copyright wrangles, and swindles seem built into the music industry. Says jazz pianist Billy Taylor, who knew Mary well, “People used to just take $40 or $50 for a tune until they wised up.” And everyone seems to have his or her own example of a ripoff. Mary’s anger over the use of another of her tunes may have had its origin in the racist system that barred the door to all but a very few black musicians. “If you’d like to hear where ‘Blues in the Night’ began,” she suggested in frustration, “listen to the clarinet section part in ‘Big Time Crip’ ”—which supplies the “my mama done tole me” hook of that hit song. The clarinet part to which she referred had been adapted from her “Little Joe from Chicago,” written in 1938. “Crip,” written in ’39, was recorded in ’41, the same year Harold Arlen’s “Blues in the Night” was released. Arlen and lyricist Johnny Mercer both loved jazz and liked to hang out in Harlem listening to bands like the Clouds of Joy (playing “Big Time Crip”?). Mary’s resentment about Arlen’s hit wasn’t about borrowing per se, but rather the fact that he had the hit in a Hollywood movie. That was something practically unheard of for blacks: about the only black musician-composer who crossed that barrier in those days was Benny Carter. And he was limited by the industry in what he could compose. As he explained, “The studios have always typed their product, their needs and their supplier. So I was typed early.”

  Mary, meanwhile, was solidifying her early reputation as a musician’s musician, and her work for the band plus some much-admired small-group pieces established her as one of the best swing-style writers. If it was often journeyman work, such as recobbling popular material into a swing style, nevertheless she enjoyed it. “I was beginning to get telegrams from Gus Arnheim, Glen Gray, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Cab Calloway, Red Norvo, Les Brown, Earl Hines, and Louis Armstrong. I was writing for some half-dozen bands each week,” Mary estimated. “As we were making perhaps 500 miles per night, I used to write in the car by flashlight between engagements. The band parts too,” she added. “And when we started to hit, and practically every band in the U.S. asked me for arrangements, I’d work twice as hard. I wrote many arrangements while playing with the band on the stand, playing with my left hand and writing with my right.” She had achieved, when not yet out of her twenties, her fantasy of playing and writing at the same time, like Lovie Austin back in Chicago. And, she added proudly, “Whenever musicians listened to the band they would ask who made a certain arrangement. Nearly always it was one of mine.”

  AMONG THE BANDLEADERS who sought Mary out was Benny Goodman, at the behest of the peripatetic John Hammond, then his manager. “I was in Kansas City and John Hammond came and liked what I was doing,” wrote Mary. “He suggested that I write a blues or something for Benny Goodman. Although most black musicians,” she added meaningfully, “never liked to play the blues or boogie. They said it was kindergarten. I liked to experiment. But the blues were the easiest for people to hear and then the boogie caught on. So we did more than our share of them.” Her taste for experimenting led her, as usual, to write a number of original, slyly hip boogie-woogies. In 1936 she recorded several with a trio, including a version of “Froggy Bottom” called “Overhand.” For the Goodman band’s radio show, she arranged “The Count,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Messa Stomp,” and “Toadie Toddle.” In the spring of ’37 she wrote the theme for Goodman’s radio show (sponsored by Camel cigarettes), “Camel Hop,” followed by the wonderful “Roll ’Em.” The name of the latter tune harked back to the Sunset Club in Kansas City, where Pete Johnson was the piano player. “Ben Webster would yell, ‘Roll for me, roll ’em, Pete, make ’em jump,’ ” said Mary, “and then Pete would play boogie for us.”

  Mary wrote “Roll ’Em” for her usual fee—peanuts, no more than twenty-five or thirty-five dollars. But it was a very successful song for Goodman and had the effect of widening the breach between Mary and Andy Kirk: Mary had written a hit for a rival bandleader. If Kirk was hopping mad, Benny Goodman, a difficult taskmaster, loved Mary’s work, so much so that he asked her to arrange exclusively for his band. She turned him down. “Usually, we’d play five or six arrangements in a set and each would be three minutes,” he said. “But some of those arrangements Mary Lou Williams wrote you would want to play for more than three minutes and the dancers would want you to, too.” When Teddy Wilson left his small group, Goodman offered her the piano chair; again she turned him down, as she turned down others.

  While Mary was diverting her attention to the writing arrangements for other bands and her output for the Clouds of Joy declined, “Real Thing” crooner Pha Terrell suddenly hit big—the first smooth-singing black balladeer to be widely popular with whites. With a commercial success on their hands, Kapp, Glaser, and Kirk set their sights on a repeat of “Real Thing” ‘s success. That never happened, but in 1938, twenty-two of the band’s twenty-seven recordings were vehicles for Terrell, while Mary produced fewer and fewer numbers for the band—just half a dozen more originals for the Clouds after ’39, although several of those are among her best.

  THOUGH THERE ARE only a few recordings to document the fact, Mary was an excellent accompanist of singers, having cut her teeth in vaudeville behind performers. John Hammond was well aware of this. In ’38, as A&R man at Columbia Records for jazz, he arranged for her to record with Billie Holiday. Sadly, this pairing of perhaps the two greatest women jazz artists never took place. Instead, Mary was rushed to the hospital in Chicago in June. She kept quiet about her illness, writing only in one diary entry that she had “passed out,” and in another, that she had had “female troubles” and needed an “operation.” She was replaced, both on the Clouds’ gigs and in the record session with Holiday, by an up-and-coming young pianist, “Countess” Margaret Johnson from Kansas City, a friend of Lester Young’s. “Margaret Johnson copied all Mary’s intros and everything. She tried to play just like her,” recalled John Williams, adding, “Of course she was no Mary, but she was good.” (Here was yet another bright young musician to die young, cut down by TB—in Johnson’s case, hardly more than twenty.)

  Mary’s personal unhappiness was building. She was already toying with the idea of leaving the band (possibly in part to extricate herself from a turbulent, at times physically abusive affair she was having with Don Byas) when she went to her sister Mamie’s to recuperate after her operation. But there Mary soon found herself in the familiar old sea of domestic problems. Though she was still weak, her mother and other relatives pressed her as usual to contribute to the households. Incredibly, unable to find enough steady work as a pianist in Pittsburgh, she took up her sister Mamie’s trade—”pressing dresses,” as she put it—to earn something. But the hard tedious work of ironing further exhausted her “until I was unable to do it,” she wrote. By September 1938, Mary was back with the band.

  Almost immediately, Mary recorded as a leader with Booker Collins on bass and Ben Thigpen on drums. In a quietly masterful mood, she recorded her version of Jelly Roll Morton’s “The Pearls,” which flowed into “Mr. Freddie Blues,” “Sweet (Patootie) Patunia,” and “The Rocks.” They constitute a kind of essay, or précis, of the music on which she had cut her teeth, yet she was experimenting, too, in a delicate way. Especially in “Mr. Freddie” and “Patunia,” there are hints of the modern jazz to come in the next decade, of harmonic inversions and complex chords.

  The following year, John Hammond finally got to record Mary with a singer—Mildred Bailey—and it was an excellent session of blues material, released under the odd title of Mildred Bailey and her Oxford Greys (“greys” then being a hip term for blacks). Bassist John Williams, with whom Mary had played in Memphis a decade before, drummer Eddie Dougherty, and the Clouds’ guitarist Floyd Smith were also on hand. The pairing of Mary and Mildred Bailey was brilliant; they were in synch and supremely relaxed as they spun out “Prisoner of Love,” “Barrelhouse Music,” “Arkansas Blues,” “You Don’t Know My Mind Blues,” “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,�
�� and “Gulf Coast Blues.” On the last two selections, Mary provided especially sparkling backup for Bailey, and turned in a superb solo on “Gulf Coast Blues.”

  Despite the success of this date with Bailey, it was one of very few times Mary worked for Hammond. Though she gave him his due for his help to musicians and maintained a cordial relationship with him, she found him patronizing, as did Duke Ellington among others, and she didn’t appreciate his interference, well-intentioned though it might be, in the music. “I stay friends with John Hammond by staying away from him,” she told her own friends. Yet there seems to be little doubt that Hammond would have done more to “build” her career if she had let him.

  He had been “pursuing” her since the success of the 1936 recordings. This letter, dated July 1938, makes it very clear that he was interested in shaping her career:

  Dear Mary Lou,

  Forgive me if you can. The arrangements arrived, they were swell. Leora Henderson copied them, and Benny received them just before he sailed for Europe. I didn’t know just how much you should get for them, but something like $50 a piece, plus an advance from the publishers for the two originals and something additional for the stocks should be about right. Unfortunately Benny sailed before I could see him about paying you, but I had his sister send you an advance of $75 last week, which you should have received by now. The rest will be sent as soon as Benny returns the first week in August.

  Now that that business is out of the way—how are you feeling? I really miss seeing you around, for Andy’s band is empty indeed without you. I hope that darned female ailment of yours has improved enough so that you get some pleasure out of life and feel like traveling to New York again.

  And now, Mary Lou, I’ve got an idea. As you probably know Basie opened at the Famous Door two weeks ago, and has suddenly become the greatest attraction in the entire city. The place is jammed to the doors every night with bandleaders, musicians, actors, gamblers, tarts, and plain Basie enthusiasts. The joint, although it holds no more than 150 people, is making more money than any place in the entire city (I know, because I have an interest in the place) and it is absolutely the ideal spot for Basie. Acoustics are perfect, the management is fair enough (Negroes are not only welcome as customers but dance on the small floor) and altogether the place rocks more than any place I can remember in downtown New York. The poor old Onyx Club has practically had to fold up in the interim. Basie is signed there for six months solid, with the likelihood that he’ll become a permanent fixture there eight months out of the year.

  They hired Rose Murphy from Cleveland for the intermissions. I think Rose is swell: a fine pianist, mediocre singer, and delightful personality; but she hasn’t clicked too well with the Broadway crowd, which seems to want either a terrific singer (which she is not) or somebody who just plays piano. Now here’s my idea: while you are recuperating would you like to take this job (I think it pays $75) which doesn’t begin until 10 at night and is really very simple? Certainly it is much better than traveling around in cars sleepless and knocking yourself out working in a band. You also could arrange for whomever you wished—Andy, Benny, or even the Count, and make yourself additional change. The important thing is that you would be very much in the spotlight, you would get some inspiration every night, and you could be sure of getting your New York card.

  I don’t want you to think that I want you to do anything that might hurt Andy. He is a swell guy and deserves every possible break. But those terrific jumps every night are hard enough on the guys in a band, to say nothing of a reasonably fragile person like you, and I think that you owe it to yourself and your public (maybe that means me) to take it a little easy and work in a permanent spot. Anyway, I wish you’d let me know pronto so that I can complete arrangements here.

  Everybody tells me that Louise Mann is pretty fine, but I would prefer hearing her myself before sending you any advice.

  In the meantime take care of yourself—and be good.

  Affectionately,

  John H.

  In August, Hammond wrote her again:

  Dear Mary Lou,

  It sounds like bad news that you are signed up to Andy and Joe Glaser, but if you can get a release the job is open for you at the Door. My suspicion is that they won’t let you do it, but anyway there’s no harm in asking.

  It seems that your arrangement of “After You’ve Gone” was a little too elaborate for Benny’s men, which may mean that he’ll want to fix it up a bit before playing it. As soon as he starts using the stuff, we’ll get you the whole amount. I hope you are really well by now and I’m sure looking forward to seeing and hearing you again soon.

  Best luck,

  John

  Nothing came of these plans, though he did help her a couple of years later in New York. She remained tied to the Clouds, legally, emotionally, and musically—and this fact comes through in a very important recording she made in 1940 with six of her colleagues, including an assertively lyrical Dick Wilson. Dubbed Six Men and a Girl, it was one of her favorite records, like a relaxed jam session: “The vibes were right on this date,” as she said, “and it was straight ahead.”

  Containing one of Mary’s outstanding compositions from the period, “Scratchin’ in the Gravel,” a piece she revisited often to reshape as jazz styles progressed, and with majestic solos by both Mary and Wilson, the session also looked ahead in other pieces. In both “Tea for Two” and “Zonky,” Mary’s fast and forward-reaching harmonies sketched the next movement in jazz now known as bop, which Mary was to become engrossed with—what Schuller describes as her “cubistically modern ‘comping.’ ” “I was one of the first with these frozen sounds, and after a night’s jamming would sit and play weird harmonies (just chord progressions) with Dick Wilson,” she commented. “Those screwy chords reminded us of music from Frankenstein or any horror film,” she added with relish (Mary also loved lurid True Confessions–type magazines). Later that year, the band’s version of “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal, You” is notable for what Schuller calls Mary’s “zig-zagging, astoundingly adventurous modulations in and out of the key. Is there an influence on Thelonious Monk in all this?” he wonders. (Within a decade, Mary and Monk would be close friends, cocomposing at least one piece).

  Mary closed out 1940 with another brilliant recording as a leader. In November, at producer Dave Dexter’s behest, she returned to the studio, billed as Mary Lou Williams and Her Kansas City Seven. Dexter parceled out two tunes each to various southwestern leaders for an album of Kansas City swing (though Mary actually is on four: two are arrangements of Bennie Moten riff tunes, two are material by the full Clouds of Joy).

  Again, she used musicians she worked with in the Clouds, and again, too, there is a jam-session feel to the date. As it turns out, “Kansas City Seven” is the sole example of a small-group recording of Mary with her soon-to-be second husband, trumpeter Harold “Shorty” Baker, playing lovely obligatos contrasting with Dick Wilson’s gruff tenor. Although she stayed in the Clouds of Joy for a year and half longer, Mary was more or less marking time after 1940.

  Though Mary was not a prolific melodist, tending instead to weave her work from found objects of riffs, voicings, and rhythmic patterns with the same economy and attention to particularities as, say, a quilter or regional novelist, it is her harmonics and the subtle rhythms of jazz that place her in the inner circle, a musician’s musician. Said the late pianist Jimmy Rowles, “I learned how to accompany singers and horn players by listening to the backgrounds that arrangers like Sy Oliver and Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams wrote for their soloists. Particularly Mary Lou when she was with Andy Kirk. It’s unbelievable how much I owe that woman.”

  Chapter Seven

  Why Go On Pretending?

  1941–1942

  PUBLICLY, MARY LOU WILLIAMS rarely expressed regret over her failed marriages and love affairs, often making instead the kind of flip, partially true comments that sounded good—and forestalled further scru
tiny. “I fell in love with horns, not men,” she would say, preferring to keep her disappointments to herself. But later in life, in her sixties, Mary offered a young bassist she thought had promise the bitter fruit of her own experience. He should scrap his plans to get married, she said. A jazz musician shouldn’t marry; he can’t be a great artist and have a marriage.

  From the time Kirk’s band hit big, Mary’s life became frenetic with travel. Her tendency to exaggerate the time spent on the road getting from gig to gig is understandable: “5,000 or 6,000 miles a week on one-nighters all through the South, repeating most of the dates before coming west again—for nearly three years,” she remembered. It must have seemed like 5,000 miles. “We arrived in most places in time to play, and left right afterwards. I have gone to sleep with my fur coat on, near to freezing, and woken up in the car hours later wet with perspiration in the sub-tropics of Florida.… I remember jumping from St. Louis to Canada: over 750 miles in one day. We played St. Louis until 3 A.M., slept and left for Canada around 11 A.M., and arrived at 10 at night—one hour late for the job.”