This is the way I walk,
when I got plenty of money on Broadway!
- Lyric from Ain’t Misbehavin’ recorded by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson
In those early vaudeville days, the mountain black artists had to climb to showcase their talent is unimaginable. It really amazes me how much determination, strength of spirit, and sheer courage the few who made it must have had. I also think about how lonely black artists must have been in an industry dominated by whites.
In a later interview, Mary Lou Williams recalls when she was traveling on the B. F. Keith vaudeville circuit in 1926, where the theaters were large and glamorous and the acts and audiences were white, that the only other black act in those days was Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Like Jackie Robinson later accomplished in baseball, Bill Robinson broke the color barrier in vaudeville. He paved the way for other black artists and musicians, like Mary Scruggs, who later became legendary as Mary Lou Williams or The Lady Who Swings the Band:
This is an awesome musical and video tribute to Mary Lou Williams!
The most influential vaudeville circuit that hired black performers was the Theater Owners Booking Agency (TOBA). Formed by retired comedian Sherman Dudley, TOBA was an early twentieth-century equivalent of the minstrel companies of the late nineteenth century.
It helped promote blues stars such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and pianist James P. Johnson. The increasing spread of Jim Crow at the turn of the century left black performers with few options outside segregated entertainment. “Toby time” – another term for TOBA – served as a new road for talented, young blacks to advance toward careers as professional performers. In doing this, TOBA maintained some of the separateness of black musical direction, unhampered by the demands of commercialism. However, that road was tough. Like earlier road companies, TOBA wages were low and life on the circuit could be brutal and dangerous. Not surprisingly, black performers claimed its initials stood for “Tough on Blacks Artists” and “Tough on Black Asses”.
Mary Scruggs was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910. As part of the great black migration, her family traveled north and somewhere between 1914 and 1916 landed in Pittsburgh. By the age of six, Mary was already known around Pittsburgh as “The Little Piano Girl.” By the age of 12, she sat in with the Pittsburgh Union Musician’s Band. She even played with the big bands when they were in town, like Earl Hines' band and the McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, pictured here:
In 1922, Buzzin’ Harris, a blackface comedian and owner of the Bits and Hits show, had lost his piano player and needed a replacement quickly. Locals told him to go find young Mary Scruggs. He went out to East Liberty, the black suburbs of Pittsburgh, and found her playing hopscotch. After hearing her play, like when Ellington hired Jimmy Blanton, Harris hired her on the spot. Williams’ first professional job was in TOBA.
Jeanette Taylor formed a highly successful act with her husband Seymour James, touring big-time white vaudeville circuits with their own band, the Synco-Jazzers. They remained popular until Seymour James’s untimely death in 1926.
Jeanette hired young Mary Lou Burleigh, the stage name for Mary Scruggs, and continued touring with the Synco-Jazzers. Here is an interesting clip from the 1926 Pittsburgh Courier about their performance at the Grand in Chicago. Here’s the lobby of the Grand Theater.
This is Mary Lou Williams' first recording, What’s That Thing with Jeanette James and Her Synco-Jazzers:
You’ll have to listen closely for her piano. She’s mainly keeping time but opens it up near the end from the 2:10 mark to the end. Awesome stuff that reminds me of Earl Hines. The alto player in the Synco-Jazzers was John Williams. They married later that same year and moved to Memphis.
In 1929, 19-year-old Mary Lou assumed leadership of the Memphis band when her husband accepted an invitation to join Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy band in Oklahoma City. She joined her husband there but did not play with the band.
When the Clouds of Joy accepted a longstanding engagement in Kansas City, Missouri, she joined her husband again and began sitting in with the band, as well as serving as its arranger and composer.
She quickly rose to prominence in the band. Her first recording with Andy Kirk was in 1929, when the regular piano player missed the recording session and her husband suggested that she take his place. In 1931, she joined the Clouds of Joy band full-time and continued to play with them until 1942.
Mary Lou Williams wrote and arranged one of my favorite Clouds of Joy songs, Froggy Bottom. Recorded here on Decca label in 1936:
The "Froggy Bottom" is the cheapest area of land, swampy, and liable to flooding. It was often the place where juke joints were to be found. I think this song captures that feeling.
In 1943, Williams moved to New York City and formed a small coterie of musical admirers. Her apartment was a gathering place for many of the bright lights of the early bebop period. On this occasion, you find Jack Teagarden, Dixie Bailey, Mary Lou Williams, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, and Milt Orent around the piano at her apartment.
Williams provided important musical knowledge to her visitors and would be called upon by Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington for her compositions and arrangements. She was indeed the lady who swings the band.
She also became the center of what has been termed an important musical collective whose association has, until recently, often been left out of jazz history. This collective loosely called “The Three Musketeers” consisted of pianists Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Bud Powell. You can read more about this collective here.
However, it was her association with the great pianist Herbie Nichols that I find the most interesting. In fact, Mary Lou Williams was the first to record a Nichols composition — Stennell, retitled for her 1951 Atlantic record as Opus Z:
Lady Sings the Blues is Nichols’ best-known song; however, very few people realize that he was the composer. Billie Holiday recorded it in 1956 as a title track for her new album. She also used the title for her autobiography.
Next week, that Big River called Jazz follows the long and winding journey of this little-known pianist, Herbie Nichols. He is one of my favorite musicians, who incredibly remains in the shadows of so many other great jazz pianists.
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Until then, keep on walking….