Mountain home cemetery mary lou6/3/2023 ![]() She met him at a performance in Cleveland where he was leading his group, the Syncopators, and moved with him to Memphis, Tennessee. In 1927, Williams married saxophonist John Overton Williams. Williams shyly told what happened: "Louis picked me up and kissed me." Louis Armstrong entered the room and paused to listen to her. One morning at three o'clock, she was playing with McKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club. During the following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. In 1922, at the age of 12, she went on the Orpheum Circuit of theaters. She married jazz saxophonist John Williams in November 1926. She became a professional musician at the age of 15, citing Lovie Austin as her greatest influence. She began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl". At the age of six, she supported her ten half-brothers and sisters by playing at parties. ![]() Mary Lou Williams played piano out of necessity at a very young age her white neighbors were throwing bricks into her house until Williams began playing the piano in their homes. A musical prodigy, at the age of two, she was able to pick out simple tunes and by the age of three, she was taught piano by her mother. The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ![]() 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. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). ![]() Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs – ) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. ![]()
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