Harlem Nocturne (22 page)

Williams wanted to plan the concert for 1947; however, as is to be expected, she met with a great deal of resistance. Such a show would have been illegal in Georgia. Williams certainly knew this, but she persisted. In September 1946 she began corresponding with the Georgia governor, Ellis Arnall. She also enlisted the support of prominent individuals, asking them to send letters and telegrams to the governor in support of her efforts. Writing from Hyde Park on September 12, Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that Williams get in touch with novelist Lillian Smith. “She knows Georgia, she is sympathetic and could give you better advice than I could,” Roosevelt wrote.
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Lillian Smith was the white southern author of the antilynching novel
Strange Fruit
. Williams wrote to Smith, and to Walter Winchell, Orson Welles, and others as well. Winchell, who by now was assisting J. Edgar Hoover in his efforts to bring down Barney Josephson—and who later would have a terrible run-in with Josephine Baker—nonetheless did write to Governor Arnall at Williams's request. (In 1951, Baker was refused service at the Stork Club because of her race. On her way out, she yelled at Winchell, a frequent patron and booster of the establishment, because he did not come to her defense. In turn, he began to accuse her, in print, of having both fascist and communist sympathies.) Boxer Joe Louis telegraphed Williams, writing, “I am sending a telegram to Governor Arnall at your request. I hope this meets with success.”
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On September 23, Williams received the governor's reply. He wrote, “I do not desire to get involved in the controversy your request would precipitate.” Not to be deterred, Williams persisted, writing to Bill Nunn, managing editor of the
Pittsburgh
Courier
. On October 1, Nunn promised to “get on this thing immediately and do everything in my power to help you out.” He contacted Benjamin Mays, the distinguished president of Morehouse College, who served as mentor and model to generations of Morehouse men, including Martin Luther King Jr. In a November 1946 letter, Mays wrote to Nunn explaining the tense racial situation and the delicate balance of race relations in Atlanta at the time (see Appendix B). According to Mays, “It would be virtually impossible and certainly unwise right now for us to plan in Atlanta the kind of program Miss Williams suggested.”
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Nunn forwarded this reply to Williams, and she kept it in a file of correspondence regarding her efforts until her death more than thirty years later. Williams must have been disappointed that her efforts were met with such disapproval. Surely, the experience seemed to demonstrate the difference between the progressive interracial circles in which she traveled and the strict limitations of life in the South. Those limitations were evident in both the continued commitment to racial segregation on the part of southern whites and the careful strategy taken by well-respected blacks. Williams's approach is somewhat telling: she did not first contact southern black leaders and request their assistance in her plan. Instead, she went to northerners in positions of power and influence, perhaps recognizing that the southern black leadership would be less likely to act in such a direct manner.

In addition to these more organized efforts to use her art to address major social issues of the day—Jim Crow and the
growing rate of “juvenile delinquency”—Williams continued her own individual efforts to alleviate suffering. Gray Weingarten recalls going with Williams on expeditions of mercy to care and cook for sick musicians. She would try to set up a rehab clinic in her own apartment, bringing strung-out musicians into her home to help them kick their habits. Convinced of the healing power of music, she played it for these addicts and encouraged them to play through their cravings. “Any body who was sick or broke or out of food, she would say ‘Gray, you gotta come help me,'” Weingarten remembers. According to Weingarten, they visited one musician and did fourteen loads of laundry in an effort to clean and organize his space. “There was no dryer, so she sent me to get rope and we strung it throughout the apartment in order to hang the wet clothing.”
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During this period, Williams was drawn to a variety of forms of divination practices, many of which could be found in Harlem. Some were pure scams, while others were linked to long-standing spiritual practices, such as Hoo Doo, Voo Doo, and Santeria. “Before she got religion we did all kinds of crazy things,” noted Weingarten, including visiting fortunetellers. This constant seeking hints at Williams's longing for a sense of spiritual direction and purpose. She visited diviners to seek guidance and solace. She played and composed music as a way of expressing her spiritual striving and to heal those who listened. And she engaged in personal acts of caregiving and charity, as well as larger, more political efforts, as a way of bettering her fellow human beings and her nation.

Six months into her break from Café Society, and having lost or given away a substantial part of her savings, Williams started performing again. The jazz world was beginning to undergo significant changes. As bebop replaced swing, uptown venues that had catered to dancers began to close. The new modern jazz, whose birth Williams had witnessed and nurtured, began to be identified with young men. Because of her age and her gender, she was no longer seen as an innovator by those who booked the clubs. And so she hit the road, leaving New York more and more often for work.

Williams continued to record and began to take on more students. At times, Julliard students made their way uptown, but Williams was very picky about the classically trained musicians with whom she would work. She did continue to serve as friend and mentor to younger musicians, however, and she began to publish her thoughts on and theories about the role of modern music. In November 1947 she published a short but important essay entitled “Music and Progress” that appeared in the
Jazz Record.
She explained, “Once a composer or a musician stops being aware of what is going on around him his music also stops.”

The essay, which appears to be advice to younger musicians, contains a seed of the pedagogical stance she would develop in later years: “If we are to make progress in modern music, or, if you prefer, jazz, we must be willing and able to open our minds to new ideas and developments. If we decide that a new trend is real music we must work with that new trend and develop it to its peak of perfection.” This statement underscores Williams's
own practice. She helped to develop swing, boogie-woogie, and bop. She embraced newer musical innovations as they developed. If those who ran the business side of the music no longer thought of her as an innovator, musicians knew otherwise. Duke Ellington famously noted: “Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary.”
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Bop had opened Williams up to new possibilities in her own music. Having innovated in and then grown tired of swing and boogie-woogie, she found a new creative space in the arena of bop. “The music was so beautiful it just gave you a sight of a new picture happening in jazz. It had such a beautiful feeling. It didn't take me very long to get on to it or create in my own way,” she wrote.

As Williams began to write her thoughts down in a more systematic way, she fleshed out this notion of musical development as it applied to black American music, insisting upon a connection between the earliest and the most modern forms. She wanted to impart a sense of history and purpose to modern jazz; she was also concerned that black Americans, and black American musicians, in particular, were in danger of losing—or, worse still, throwing away—their musical heritage. Even in the essay, a narrative of progress, Williams was situating “jazz” in the context of “modern music” and placing it alongside other highly regarded art forms: “When it has reached this so-called ‘peak,'” she wrote, “it is really only the beginning, for then we build the new ideas on top of the old. This is not only progress in music, for the same is true for all forms of art including painting, sculpture, architecture, and even the theater.”

Williams ended the essay with an expansive and inviting notion of the music she performed. “Modern music,” she wrote, “is not only limited to small groups of musicians.” She cited the Carnegie Hall Concert of 1946, where the New York Pops symphony orchestra played her music, as an example. She also stated her commitment to playing in as many venues, such as universities, as possible. One gets the sense that Williams, while always convinced of the magnitude, value, and complexity of black music, finally saw herself as one of that music's missionaries, ushering it into the halls of respectability.

Still, ensuring jazz's permanence and protecting its legacy proved to be an uphill battle. A recording ban—which prevented musicians from recording for eleven months starting in January 1948—as well as the closing of clubs on 52nd Street, amounted to a severe blow to the New York jazz scene. Many of the clubs were turned into strip joints.
Time
magazine bemoaned the change, writing, “Along New York's Swing Lande, where nightclubs in sorry brownstones crowd each other like bums on a breadline, an era was all but over. Swing was still there, but it was more hips than horns. Barrelhouse had declined. Burlesque was back.”
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Unable to record and having difficulty finding work in the city, Williams got a job providing arrangements for Benny Goodman's orchestra and eventually replaced Teddy Wilson, at his suggestion, when he left the band. However, the arrangement didn't last. Goodman could be difficult to work with, and he remained a little hostile to the new music. Williams, who by now was incorporating many bebop ideas into her writing,
bumped heads with him. They did, however, record a few sides before parting ways.

Williams would spend the remainder of the decade composing and recording her own music. She received a commission from the director of a choir in her hometown of Pittsburgh in 1948 and enthusiastically took up the offer. Pittsburgh provided a change of pace and scenery and helped to revitalize her. Williams would often spend time with family, and she also made time to write. One composition, “Elijah Under the Juniper Tree,” set to the poetry of Ray Monty Carr, provided Williams with the opportunity to experiment in a number of directions. With “Elijah,” she wrote for voice, a first for her. The religious themes were new for her as well. With this piece she planted the seed that would flower years later in her Masses.

Back in New York, Williams's agent, Joe Glaser, continued to try to find bookings for her, but things were not working out. When Williams returned, she found that her beloved apartment had been burglarized, yet another indication of Harlem's desperation. Her records were gone, as were her gowns and her jewelry. In the words of writer Claude McKay, Sugar Hill had become “vinegar sour.” Williams had become victim to the crime she had hoped to alleviate. Apart from a brief and successful stint at the Vanguard, Williams was unable to find work in the kinds of venues she wanted. Her surroundings had changed for the worse. In need of money and in poor health, Williams became despondent, exhausted, and depressed. In another blow, Moe Asch, her beloved record producer, went bankrupt in 1948.

Williams eventually signed with King Records, but it was not a good relationship. She wanted to record more experimental, bebop work as well as more solo work. King, in contrast, wanted commercial recordings. The company encouraged her to record swing music and do an organ album that would attract rhythm and blues audiences. Ultimately, the company refused to record her but would not release her from the contract. Williams sought the assistance of the American Federation of Musicians and was eventually released—but not without consequences: she always felt other recording companies saw her as a troublemaker.

Finally, Williams signed on with Circle Records, with whom she recorded solos as well as several of her bebop compositions and her experiments with bongos. The latter albums were released, but the solo material, which was to have been released as
Midnight at Mary Lou's
, would not appear until 2006, over fifty-five years after it had originally been recorded. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Father Peter O'Brien, a Jesuit priest and director of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, all of the Circle material, including the solo medleys, is now available as
Mary Lou Williams: The Circle Recordings
. The work anticipates the solo concert Williams performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1978. Here, in 1951, we hear the artist at her best—and her most personal. It is like listening to a sonic autobiography. The choice of material, the phrasing, and the chords all create a rich, deep, soulful listening experience. Lacking in pretense or sentimentality, the performance is intimate, but also an extraordinary display of Williams's genius
at the instrument. The artist at forty, a woman who had already made major contributions to American music, here plays her history with an eye on the future. “Why,” written by Consuela Lee, aunt of filmmaker Spike Lee, is especially beautiful. What's more, the performance also contains a history of black music, and as such is a sonic interpretation of American history. The music of the enslaved—the spirituals—branches out and is influenced by and influences American popular music. The medley starts with bars of music inspired by African American spirituals before turning to George Gershwin's “It Ain't Necessarily So,” from the opera
Porgy and Bess
, which was itself inspired by black folk music. Then Williams turns to standards, recognizable popular songs over which jazz improvisers composed their own unique solos. All of these elements become vehicles for Williams's own improvisation, her personal history of jazz. The medley evolves into a music that captures the particular history of an individual, allowing her room for creativity and individual expression, yet it is also a music that contains the tragic and hopeful history of a people and a nation.