1 	Tisherome 	2:49
2 	Knowledge 	2:26
3 	Oo-Bla-Dee 	2:44
4 	Shorty Boo 	2:53
5 	Bye Bye Blues 	2:48
6 	Moonglow 	2:29
7 	Willow Weep For Me 	2:56
8 	I'm In The Mood For Love 	2:33
9 	Opus Z 	2:54
10 	The Surrey With The Fringe On Top 	2:28
11 	My First Date With You 	3:12
12 	Pagiacci 	2:44
13 	'S Wonderful 	2:51
14 	From This Moment On 	3:39
15 	You're The Cream In My Coffee 	2:52
16 	Mary's Waltz 	3:25
17 	Would I Love You 	3:04
18 	In The Purple Grotto 	3:04
19 	Walking 	2:37
20 	The Sheik Of Araby 	2:45
21 	When Dreams Come True 	2:51
22 	Bobo 	2:50
23 	Kool 	2:24

Denzil Best 	Drums
Bill Clark 	Drums
George Duvivier 	Bass 
Martin "Marty" Glaser 	Clarinet (Bass)
Kenny "Pancho" Hagood 	Vocals 
Dave Lambert & His Singers 	Vocals
Mundell Lowe 	Guitar 
Carl Pruitt 	Bass 
Idrees Sulieman 	Trumpet
Billy Taylor, Sr. 	Bass
Al Walker 	Drums 
Mary Lou Williams 	Organ, Piano, Primary Artist 

Always in sync with progressive developments in jazz music, pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Mary Lou Williams turns out to have made more records during the 1940s and '50s than most people ever realized. Thanks to the Classics Chronological Series, listeners are now able to follow her career session by session throughout these eventful and transitional years. The fifth installment of her complete recorded works in chronological order opens with a fascinating pair of angular studies in chamber bop. Recorded for the King label on March 18, 1949, these tracks feature the most dramatically modern-sounding band that Mary Lou Williams had ever assembled. With a front line of trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, Alan Feldman on clarinet and alto sax, and pre-Eric Dolphy bass clarinetist Martin Glaser backed by Williams, guitarist Mundell Lowe, bassist George Duvivier, and drummer Denzil de Costa Best, "Tisherome" and "Knowledge" are bracing examples of a bop logic that is strikingly adventuresome. The flip sides are topical bop scat novelties featuring vocalist Kenny "Pancho" Hagood. On January 3, 1950, the rhythm section met again to wax four more sides for King. Here the material consisted of jazz standards with Williams at times playing organ or piano or both instruments simultaneously -- during "Bye Bye Blues" she operates the organ with her left hand, piano with her right. On March 7, 1951, the Mary Lou Williams Trio cut ten sides for the Atlantic record company for release on the new LP format. This session turned out to be decidedly cool and nonchalant -- even old "Pagliacci" becomes irresistibly hip. This excellent survey of vintage early modern jazz concludes with five sides cut for the Circle label in June of 1951. The first of these, a carefully devised bop love song sung by the Dave Lambert Singers, features Elbert "Skippy" Williams on bass clarinet. The remaining tracks, recorded four days later, are delightfully cool studies for Billy Taylor's string bass, Willie "Bobo" Correa's conga drums, and the creatively inspired piano of Mary Lou Williams. ---arwulf arwulf, AllMusic Review

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1 	Fandangle 	02:02
2 	Mama, Pin A Rose On Me 	03:25
3 	Roll'em 	03:35
4 	Sweet Sue 	03:30
5 	Lullaby Of The Leaves 	05:14
6 	Taurus 	02:14
7 	Jericho 	03:27
8 	I Love Him 	04:40
9 	Amy 	03:58
10 	Talk Of The Tawn 	04:37
11 	I Love You 	03:26
12 	Easy Blue 	03:58

Bass – Wendell Marshall
Drums – Osie Johnson
Piano – Mary Lou Williams

This date in 1910 marks the birth of Mary Lou Williams, an African American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist.

Mary Elfrieda Scruggs (her name at birth) was born in Atlanta, but was raised in Pittsburgh, where she learned to play piano by ear and was performing in public by age six. Williams appeared in a number of talent shows and by thirteen was working in carnivals and vaudeville shows. She was married three years later to John Williams, a musician, and together they moved to Memphis, TN, where she made her first record with his band, the Synco Jazzers. When John joined Andy Kirk’s band, Mary Lou hired Jimmy Lunceford and began to run the group herself.

In 1929, the band moved to Kansas City, and by 1931, she was writing arrangements and playing as the band's regular pianist. It was clear at this point that her arrangements were ahead of their time; this is obvious in her 1936 arrangement, "Walking and Swinging," which contained the seed of Thelonious Monk’s "Rhythm-A-Ning."

Williams remained with Kirk until 1942, working as a freelance arranger with Benny Goodman and others on the side. After her divorce, she moved to New York and led her own group that included Art Blakey and she also played with Duke Ellington’s band as a staff writer.

She began working under her own name and performed her "Zodiac Suite" with the New York Philharmonic at the Town Hall in 1945. She retired from music while living in Europe, although she made a guest appearance with Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport festival in 1957. Williams then toured Europe in 1968 and 1969, which included an appearance with Cecil Taylor in 1977, the Goodman Carnegie Hall anniversary in 1978, and Montreux festival in 1979. Her interest in astrological titles had few follow-ups until the “Age of Aquarius” made it acceptable.

Her Christian conversion and writing of religious works from the 60s set a tone for those jazz musicians who then began performing in church. Mary Lou Williams remained a close friend of Duke Ellington from their first meeting, and was an artist in residence at Duke University until her death on May 21st 1981. ---aaregistry.org

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1 	The Blues	5:37
2 	N.G. Blues 	2:27
3 	Dirge Blues 	5:52
4 	Baby Bear Boogie 	2:23
5 	Turtle Speed Blues 	2:11
6 	Blues For Peter 	4:17
7 	My Mama Pinned A Rose On Me 	3:04
8 	Prelude To Prism 	3:20
9 	Prism	2:50
10 	What's Your Story Morning Glory	3:58
11 	Prelude To Love Roots	1:59
12 	Love Roots 	2:02
13 	Rhythmic Pattern 	2:34
14 	J.B.'s Waltz	4:34
15 	The Blues	0:44
16 	No Title Blues 	4:41
17 	Syl-O-Gism (Bonus Track)	6:30

Bass – Butch Williams
Piano, Producer, Liner Notes – Mary Lou Williams
Vocals – Cynthia Tyson (tracks: 1, 15), Mary Lou Williams (tracks: 7) 

In this studio set with bassist Buster Williams and the occasional vocals of Cynthia Tyson, pianist Mary Lou Williams performs a full set of original blues. A certain sameness is heard after a while, but in general the music is quite stimulating, showing that Williams (even this late in her career) had not lost her power and authority at the keyboard. ---Scott Yanow, AllMusic Review

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)—pianist, composer, arranger and teacher—was not only the First Lady of jazz; she has a place at the very top echelon of the jazz pantheon. Among her few peers in the over half- century she was active were Duke Ellington, Benny Carter and Sonny Blount aka Sun Ra, all musicians, composers and arrangers who successfully remained contemporary through vast stylistic shifts in the history of jazz, from before swing until well after bebop. Indeed Ellington captured her well, calling her "perpetually contemporary . Williams came to prominence in the late '20s and '30s as the principal composer-arranger and pianist for Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, enhancing her reputation by contributing to the big band books of Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, Tommy Dorsey and, later, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. She became an early champion of bebop, adapting its modern harmonies and rhythms to her blues and boogie rooted piano style. In the '50s she had a spiritual crisis that led her to abandon music for about three years; she became a Roman Catholic. From that point she devoted most of her career to spiritual music, much of it (unlike Ellington's ecumenical "Sacred Concerts , which would not sound out-of-place in today's feel-good mega-churches) written for the specific, Eucharistic liturgy of the Catholic mass.

Mary Lou's Mass brings together the music she originally recorded as the LP Music for Peace with additional recordings that together became the music for Alvin Ailey's full-length ballet, Mary Lou's Mass, plus some additional material, including two choral pieces she wrote for Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination, recorded at the Vatican. Most of the music is recorded by a Williams-led trio with voices, plus a flute and/or guitar. Although she herself didn't consider all of this music jazz, you can hear how she incorporates jazz harmonies, rhythms (including Afro-Cuban) and phrasing into her spiritual approach. And her "Our Father , soulfully sung by Carline Ray, is one of the most striking settings of "The Lord's Prayer in all of music.

My Mama Pinned a Rose on Me is Williams' salute to the blues, recorded late in her career (1977). It is a piano tour-de-force, Williams alone or joined by bassist Buster Williams and, on two tracks, singer Cynthia Tyson. That same year Williams recorded a duo concert with pianist Cecil Taylor in New York. Having been at that concert, this reviewer wishes Taylor had deigned actually to embrace (the resultant album, ironically, was titled Embraced) Williams in a blues dialogue instead of playing as if she wasn't even on stage, for Williams proves on this wonderful, career embracing outing that she commanded the totality of jazz piano techniques in her blues approach. ---George Kanzler, allaboutjazz.com

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