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Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams. By Tammy L. Kernodle. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2,004. 348 pp.
Women & Music readers who are interested in jazz history have surely noticed the ubiquitous "Mary Lou Williams Paragraph" as it appears in countless documentaries, textbooks, and other sweeping representations of jazz history. With a teensy-weensy bit of exaggeration, it goes something like this:
Although jazz is primarily a man's world (except for singers who are tragic and don't know what they're doing), one woman excelled, thus proving the meritocracy of jazz. The child prodigy known as "The Little Piano Girl of East Liberty" came of age as "The Lady Who Swings the Band" before her remarkable career peaked in New York as "The Maternal Care Giver of the Troubled Young Men Who Invented Bebop." A selfless accompanist to "real jazz history," Williams is notable for not thinking of herself as a woman, for her religious fanaticism, and for her amazing chameleonic ability to absorb and repeat every style in every era of jazz without calling attention to her own abilities.
Feminist jazz historians have shuddered at this familiar and trifling framework for this important composer, arranger, pianist, educator, and jazz innovator whose career spanned sixty years, who penned over one hundred compositions and arrangements, and who appeared on over one hundred recordings. At the same time, I must admit that I, for one, have found the "Mary Lou Williams Paragraph" an extremely useful bit of easy-to-find evidence for demonstrating the sexism of mainstream jazz historiography.1 Yet in the process of presenting a critique of jazz historiography through pointing out the tokenizing representations of Williams, I suppose I am guilty of inventing my own "Mary Lou Williams Paragraphs" that don't tell us much about her music and life. Not developing an analysis of what makes her "important" unwittingly capitalizes on the fact of her unquestioned greatness to prove sexism runs counter to Williams's own career-long stance of distancing herself from discussions of gender discrimination and glosses over the voluminous creative and intellectual work she accomplished.
The invaluable trio of books published in the 19805 by Linda Dahl, D. Antoinette Handy, and Sally Placksin have served a crucial purpose in summarizing the achievements of...
