NAME(S) ON TILE:                 MARY LOU WILLIAMS

                                                    1991 MELLON JAZZ FESTIVAL

                                                    HONOREE

DONOR NAME(S):                   MELLON BANK

Widely known as “the little piano girl,” Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in 1910 in Atlanta, Ga., where she began playing piano at age three.  In 1914, she moved to Pittsburgh with her mother and was soon performing at the private parties of moneyed Pittsburgh families including the Oliver’s and Mellon’s.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, Williams traveled with Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy, composing songs, gaining recognition for the power and subtlety of her playing and contributing to the development of “Kansas City Swing.”

During the Swing Era, Williams wrote and arranged for popular big band artists including Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, the Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.  During the transition to modern jazz, she helped encourage the development of musicians including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

Williams’ compositions pioneered the combination of jazz and symphony and jazz and gospel music.  Her desire to spread jazz to a wider audience led to frequent involvement in workshops, concerts, lecture-demonstrations and academic residencies.

Widely recognized for her extraordinary life in music, Williams received a grant for musical composition from the Guggenheim Foundation; honorary doctorates from Fordham University and Loyola University; and a street, Mary Lou William’s Lane, named after her in Kansas City.  Williams died in 1981 in Durham, N.C.