"I'm the only living musician that has played all the eras," Mary Lou Williams confidently advised Marian McPartland on her acclaimed radio broadcast, Piano Jazz. "Other musicians lived through the eras and they never changed their styles." She was right. Her longevity as a top-flight jazz artist was extended because of her penchant for adapting to and influencing stylistic changes in the music. Her stature in the jazz world as the most important female jazz musician to emerge in the first three decades of the art writes an important chapter not only in the history of women jazz musicians, but also of twentieth-century African-American women and American history in a larger context. With Ronnie Boykins and legendary drummer Roy Haynes, this was a live concert appearance from the mid 1970s and the only recording to have surface of these two legends together. Here, the many facets of Mary Lou Williams coalesce into something that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts and will always be remembered with veneration and wonderment. |