Behind the Beat

with Mark Tucker

A child piano prodigy grows up in poverty to become star soloist and arranger with one of the leading swing bands in America. She rides the crest of the boogie woogie wave while entertaining at Café Society in New York, arranges for Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, and joins the bop revolution in Harlem, serving as a mentor to Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and other young musicians. Disillusioned with the jazz life, in the 1950s she drops out of the music business, converts to Catholicism, and starts her own charitable foundation. Eventually a Jesuit priest coaxes her back into performance and she resumes an active career while also composing several large-scale sacred works. At Duke University she becomes artist-in-residence and continues to concertize until her death in 1981 at the age of seventy-one.

These are the bare bones of the story recounted by Linda Dahl in Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Pantheon, 2000; $30). It’s a wonder no one has come along to tell it sooner, but fortunately Dahl’s richly comprehensive account can serve as a standard for some time. Given full access to unpublished sources by Williams’s close associate, Father Peter F. O’Brien, Dahl draws upon letters, diaries, and autobiographical writings to reveal the private side of a complex artist. Plagued by personal problems throughout her life–involving family, lovers, financial woes, and career struggles–Williams found solace through music and spirituality, persevering in her mission to spread the gospel of jazz and blues wherever she went.

Curiously, given Dahl’s subject and background (author of Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen), she does not delve into issues of gender in this biography. Williams herself apparently steered clear of the topic (“As for being a woman, I never thought about that one way or the other. All I’ve ever thought about was music.”), but for a biographer to follow suit is surprising. There is also little detailed discussion of the music–Dahl mainly cites critics and scholars for opinions–but we can hope that future studies will tackle this subject, now that the basic elements of Williams’s story have been put into place.

One of the odder episodes in Williams’s career was a concert she gave in 1977 with avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, portions of which can be heard on Embraced (Pablo PACD-2620-108-2). Williams cared little for experimental jazz, but apparently she perceived Taylor as a sympathetic figure utterly dedicated to his art. At the concert, though, the two pianists seemed to inhabit radically different worlds, with Williams digging deep into the blues, ragtime, and boogie-woogie while Taylor carried on as though oblivious to what she played, building up dissonant waves of sound that constantly threatened to drown out her contribution. They appeared to be antagonists rather than collaborators, and afterwards Williams was angry with Taylor for stubbornly going his own way and refusing to meet her in the middle.

Trumpeter Dave Douglas pays tribute to Williams on his major-label debut disc, Soul on Soul (RCA Victor 09026 63603-2)–the title is a phrase Duke Ellington bestowed on her. The music is beautiful and invigorating, much of it by Douglas, who contributes nine originals and interprets only four of Williams’s compositions. She would be pleased to know that her musical legacy is being explored by a young musician this way. Certainly her high standards of musicianship, fusion of traditional and modern values, and unstoppable creative drive remain an inspiration.

All Miles. When the autobiography of Miles Davis appeared in 1989, many were stunned that such a flood of words and memories could pour forth from someone whose public reticence was legendary. Davis riveted the jazz community with his frank assessments of other musicians, graphic accounts of drug addiction, and troubling revelations of violence toward women. At the same time, one wondered how such a tough-talking, hard-edged character could produce music prized for its emotional intimacy, vulnerability, and fragile beauty.

This question is addressed, though not resolved, in Miles and Me (University of California Press, 2000; $19.95), an engaging memoir by poet Quincy Troupe that relates his personal history with the trumpeter–first as a listener and young fan growing up in St. Louis, later as Davis’s neighbor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and eventually as literary collaborator, friend, and confidante. Davis’s “blunt, even hostile exterior,” Troupe writes, “hid from public view a funny and caring person.” Partly the forbidding facade protected Miles from hordes of people seeking contact with a star; a surefire way to incur his wrath was to walk up and initiate a conversation, as Troupe and many others learned the hard way. But Troupe also attributes Davis’s aloofness and seeming arrogance to his identity as an “unreconstructed black man,” placing him in the company of other defiant, uncompromising individuals–among them Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Amiri Baraka–who went their own way, regardless of how whites (or anyone) judged their actions.

Beyond presenting a rare close-up of this enigmatic artist, Troupe surveys Davis’s recorded career and celebrates his legacy. “Great art has mystery and magic,” Troupe writes, “an attitude, a stance.” Davis had these traits in abundance. As for human warmth, sensitivity, kindness–look for these not in the man but in his music.

Back to the Future. An energetic advocate for jazz and new music, Howard Mandel is known to many as a print journalist, National Public Radio commentator, and website editor for the Jazz Journalists Association (www.Jazzhouse.org). In Future Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1999; $26) he celebrates such innovators and experimenters as John Zorn, Cassandra Wilson, David Murray, Geri Allen, Henry Threadgill, Vernon Reid, Steve Coleman, Butch Morris, and John Scofield, presenting interviews with them in the familiar format of jazz magazine profiles. Despite its title, Future Jazz is more retrospective than forward-looking, giving a sense of trends and issues that surfaced in the 1980s and 1990s–including an interview with Wynton Marsalis from 1984, just as his solo performing career was starting to soar.

In his forecast for jazz in the years ahead, Mandel implies that eclectic, risky, genre-crossing artists will set the agenda. A sampling of musicians fitting this description can be heard on the companion CD for Future Jazz (Knitting Factory Records KFR-249; available through ), which limits its contents to artists who have recorded either for the Knitting Factory label or Blue Note. Except for two older tracks by Eric Dolphy and James Newton, all the performances date from the 1990s, including selections by Don Pullen, Cassandra Wilson, Andrew Hill, and the Jazz Passengers. The compilation is a kind of updated version of the “Wildflowers” loft-jazz recordings from the 1970s, giving a vivid picture of New York’s vital downtown musical scene with performances that embrace heterogeneity and flaunt canonical virtues.

Recent Jazz. Chicago-born pianist Anthony Wonsey debuts as leader on Open the Gates (Criss Cross Jazz 1162), a set of smoothly swinging straightahead jazz that features outstanding performances by trumpeter Nicholas Payton and drummer Nasheet Waits. Like Mulgrew Miller, one of his early keyboard mentors, Wonsey knows how to create uncluttered textures and infuse a contemporary musical language with plenty of blues and soul. . . . Vibraphonist Stefon Harris displays quicksilver fluency and sophisticated harmonic ideas on Black Action Figure (Blue Note 7243 4 99546 2 5). The roiling textures and sense of urgency may result in part from the presence of M-Base alumnus Greg Osby, who produced the recording and plays alto on a number of tracks. Harris’s compositions don’t yet have the force of personality heard in his playing, but he’s a young artist-in-progress, heading in a promising direction. . . . Clarinetist Don Byron’s latest effort, Romance with the Unseen (Blue Note 7243 4 99545 2 6), is pure delight. From the quirky good humor of Ellington’s rarely heard “A Mural from Two Perspectives,” to the sweet setting of Lennon and McCartney’s “I’ll Follow the Sun,” the artful reworking of Herbie Hancock’s “One Finger Snap,” and the eerie David Lynch-Angelo Badalamenti mood of “Basquiat,” the level of musical engagement is consistently high and refreshingly off-center. Guitarist Bill Frisell’s gritty rock and country licks nicely balance the open, rounded tones of Byron’s clarinet, while drummer Jack DeJohnette creates surging rhythmic undercurrents that send everyone flying forward. . . . Not long after releasing the classically tinged Elegiac Cycle, pianist Brad Mehldau continues his prolific recording streak with Art of the Trio 4: Back at the Vanguard (Warner Bros. 9 47463-2), featuring regulars Larry Grenadier on bass and Jorge Rossy on drums. Technically, Mehldau continues to grow. His bold rhythmic experiments and fluent ability to play independent left-hand lines are especially impressive. The unaccompanied cadenzas, though, are becoming a bit mannered—like the one that ends “Sehnsucht,” resembling a student etude inspired by Bach, boogie woogie, and Chick Corea. More troubling is the aura of virtuosic grandstanding now hanging over Mehldau, as though he feels under pressure to reaffirm his artistry rather than just letting it flow. . . . In the early 1960s, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and trombonist Roswell Rudd formed a quartet devoted exclusively to the works of Thelonious Monk. Only one recording (School Days, 1963) documents that historic group, but a mini-reunion occurs on Monk’s Dream (Verve 314 543 090-2), with Lacy and Rudd placed once again in a “pianoless” quartet, demonstrating their uncanny telepathy in a set of tunes by Monk, Ellington, and Lacy himself. What’s impressive about both players is their air of relaxed mastery. Even while striking out into realms of freedom, they maintain a calm insouciance not normally associated with the avant-garde. Then again, “avant-garde” hardly seems an adequate label for Lacy and Rudd. Call them two Old Masters of improvised music, graduates of the school of Monk who keep alive their guru’s playful spirit and probing intelligence.

Editors' Note: An exhibition entitled Mary Lou Williams in Her Own Right will run from 21 September through 31 December 2000, at the Flushing Town Hall in Flushing, NY (718-463-7700) . The exhibition will be on display at the Duke University Museum of Art from 26 January through 18 March 2001.

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