Jazz historians will tell you that pianist, songwriter and arranger Mary Lou Williams was as instrumental to the evolution of jazz music as some of the big named male artists who generally receive credit. Interesting for a woman who had to come off of the road a few times to regroup from the sexism she faced with male musicians. Interesting for a woman who worked as a freelance writer and arranger for men like Benny Goodman. Bebop as a genre developed and flourished in her small Harlem apartment in Hamilton Heights. But something else happened there.
At 63 Hamilton Terrace, Mary Lou Williams provided an unexpected form of hospitality. In 2019, music historian Tammy Kernodle wrote one of the most remarkable and thoughtful pieces I’ve ever read about Mary Lou Williams’s musical impact and her home (A Woman’s Place: The Importance Of Mary Lou Williams’ Harlem Apartment, NPR). She wrote,
Following her own spiritual and physical breakdown in Paris in 1954, she returned to America and entered a period of spiritual transformation and converted to Catholicism. After experiencing the death of Charlie Parker and witnessing the deterioration of Bud Powell, Williams decided to intervene. In addition to taking musicians to church, she turned her one-bedroom apartment into a one-woman rehabilitation center. 63 Hamilton Terrace became a halfway house where Williams detoxified, fed, clothed and found work for addicted musicians… She funded her efforts through royalty checks and donations from other musicians like Dizzy and Lorraine Gillespie.
In the 1940s Mary Lou Williams entertained and allowed musicians to workshop their music in her space and in the 1950s she provided a space for musicians to self-care and heal. It is why when I listen to her music, I love her even more.
Please read 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Mary Lou Williams to learn more about Mary Lou Williams and her music. I’ve provided a NYT gift link.
(Originally published February 25, 2024, Substack)
