Women's History Month 2021

Best known as the host of the weekly national radio program Piano Jazz, Marian McPartland helped to popularize jazz with her intricate knowledge and prowess on the piano. She made the program one of the most popular in the history of public radio.

Born to a musical mother who played classical piano, she studied at the famed Guildhall School of Music in London. Her first professional activity was as part of a touring vaudeville act featuring four pianists. During World War II, she entertained the troops and while playing in Belgium met her late husband, cornetist Jimmy McPartland, whom she married in 1945. They relocated to the U.S. in 1946, whereupon she performed in his band in Chicago. She formed her first active trio in 1950 for an engagement at the Embers in New York. Two years later, she began what would be an eight-year residency at the Hickory House in New York with her trio.

In 1963, she worked with the Benny Goodman Sextet, and in 1965 she began her radio career, at WBAI in New York. In 1970 she started her own record company, Halcyon Records, one of the first jazz women to do so. In 1979, she began her weekly radio show Piano Jazz, which -- after 30 years of continuous programming -- became the longest-running syndicated National Public Radio program, and led to McPartland's induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007. An intimate program involving just her and a guest -- usually a pianist -- the program won numerous awards, including the Peabody Award. Many of the programs have been subsequently released on compact disc. As part of the segments, McPartland interviewed the guest, drawing out colorful anecdotes and stories about their careers. The shows also included performances of McPartland and the guest together. Taken as a whole, the series presents a formidable history of jazz.

Her playing career also included piano tours with such greats as Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Ellis Larkins, and Benny Carter. She performed with symphony orchestras and at many of the major jazz festivals, and received numerous awards, including a DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

McPartland received several honorary doctorates as well as a Grammy Trustee's Award for lifetime achievement. She also authored The Artistry of Marian McPartland, a collection of transcriptions, and Marian McPartland's Jazz World: All in Good Time, a collection of her jazz profiles.

(Source:https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/)

Mary Lou Williams was an African American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded over one hundred records.  Williams was born as Mary Elfireda Scruggs on May 8, 1910 in Atlanta, Georgia, but grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was one of eleven children, and taught herself to play piano at a very young age, performing her first recital at age ten. She became a professional musician at the age of fifteen, when she played with Duke Ellington and the Washingtonians. In 1925, she joined a band led by saxophonist John Williams, and married him in 1927.

Williams and her husband moved to Oklahoma City, where in 1929 John joined Andy Kirk’s band, Twelve Clouds of Joy. Mary Lou Williams worked for a year as a solo pianist and a music arranger until she joined the band in 1930.  By that point she took the name “Mary Lou” and was recording jazz albums.  By the late 1930s Mary Lou Williams was now well known as a producer, composer, and arranger working for bandleaders Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey.

Williams left Twelve Clouds of Joy in 1942 after divorcing her husband. She moved back to Pittsburgh, where she started a band with Harold “Shorty” Baker and Art Blakey. Williams eventually left the group to join Duke Ellington’s orchestra in New York where she became the star vocalist.  In 1947 Williams moved back to New York where she started a radio show called Mary Lou Williams’s Piano Workshop.

In 1952, Williams took her talents overseas, moving to Europe for two years, and performing mostly in England.  In 1954 she abruptly retired from music and focused on her newly embraced Catholic faith.   She created the Bel Canto Foundation, an effort to help addicted musicians return to performing.  By 1957 she returned to the music business in time to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival.  She also started her own record label and founded the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival.

Through the 1960s Williams focused on religious jazz with recordings like Black Christ of the Andes which was a tribute to the Afro-Peruvian priest St. Martin de Porres.  She also wrote Music for Peace which was choreographed and performed by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.   Williams never fully abandoned secular music as in 1965 when she performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival.   In the 1970s her career underwent a revival when younger audiences discovered her talent.  She recorded new albums and became an artist-in-residence at Duke University (1977-1981), teaching the History of Jazz among other courses.  She also directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble.  In 1978 she performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and invited guests.  Later that year she participated in Benny Goodman’s 40th anniversary Carnegie Hall concert.

Mary Lou Williams died in Durham, North Carolina on May 28, 1981. She was 71.

(Source: blackpast.org)

Lil Hardin was originally from Memphis and raised on and taught to play church hymns, traditional spirituals, and classical music.  Her early piano education began with her third grade teacher, but Hardin would go on to attend Fisk University to study piano and music.  One of her first gigs was working in a cabaret, something she knew her family would not approve of...so she told them she was the accompanist for a dance school.  She later studied at New York College of Music and earned her post-graduate diploma in 1929.   She was working with bandleader Lawrence Duhe, when King Oliver asked her to join his band.  She played with that band until her return to Chicago in the early 1920s.  Her noted works with Louis Armstrong, who was her husband from 1924 until their divorce in 1938.  Her contributions to Armstrong's Hot Fives and Hot Sevens are many.  Not only was she a well-schooled pianist, she was also a vocalist and composer.  Among her well-known compositions are classics "Struttin' With Some Barbeque" "Just For a Thrill" and "Clip Joint."  Hardin also led her own swing bands in the late 1930 and early 40s.  She died in Chicago and, unfortunately, her letters and the unfinished manuscript for her autobiography disappeared from her home.