Jazz

The unique pianist/composer/arranger Mary Lou Williams – by far the most important and influential woman in jazz history – published an extensive autobiographical account (almost complete here) in the British magazine Melody Maker in 1954. She had been everywhere, known everyone,
and seen everything, and was still looking forward expectantly as well as back nostalgically.

Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) 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).[1] 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.

Still, he knew the Palomar was a more imposing room, and, chastened by the experience in Denver, Goodman decided to open with stock arrangements and sugary ballads. He continued in that vein for an hour with no response, but by the second set he had made up his mind that if he was doomed to failure he would go down honorably. He called for the Henderson charts and counted off "Sugar Foot Stomp." The crowd roared with approval. He couldn't believe it. This was what they had come to hear, the good stuff. The young audience stopped dancing and pressed against the bandstand. On that night, August 21, 1935, the Swing Era was born, because on that night middle-class white kids said yes in thunder and hard currency.