Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams

by Tammy Kernodle

First time in paperback and e-book!The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in—and stretching beyond—a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls.Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages.

In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.

Genres: Jazz, Music

375 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 18, 2004

Reviews

[Cecilia Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive book on the market on the unheralded she-hero of jazz Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)! I’ve not only read this book a few times, it is also my reference book for lectures, documentaries, and interviews.

Mary Lou’s work as a contributor to the development of jazz is grossly overlooked. Jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell (just to name a few,) hung out at her house and picked her brain on her knowledge of jazz harmony and improvisation. Mary Lou was the go-to person during all the important periods of jazz. Mary Lou wrote more than 300 compositions, big band and orchestral arrangements. She also arranged for all the major big bands including Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Yet she was challenged with the industry excluding her significant contributions to the jazz art form.

I started the Mary Lou Williams Resurgence Project in 1998 with the mission of bringing Mary Lou’s contributions to the world’s performing platforms by performing, recording and arranging her works. I’ve also composed new compositions based on her harmonic and improvisation concepts.

Understanding Mary Lou’s life is an important part of understanding her compositional sensibilities.
Musicologist, Dr. Tammy Kernodle’s research into the depths and facets of Mary Lou’s life makes this possible through this outstanding biography. A must read for understanding not only jazz history, but also American history!

[Nuha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to University of Illinois Press and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Professor Tammy Kernodle's Soul on Soul is a passionate, engaging and frank discussion about the incredible yet still underappreciated life and music of Mary Lou Williams. As a Black woman, Mary Lou Williams pioneered several movements in contemporary jazz, including integrating classical music and gospel music into the work. In addition, Lou Williams worked closely with other legendary jazz artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to shape the future of jazz.

What struck me again and again is Mary Lou William's tenacious spirit and belief in her craft. Faced with constant racism and sexism in her industry, Lou Williams rarely expressed her frustration. Instead she chose to return to work again and again despite the lack of financial reassurance that other contemporary male artists were receiving. There is something both incredibly hopeful and incredibly tragic in her story, in a society that refuses to invest in Black women's talent. What would the world of jazz music be like if Mary Lou Williams was encouraged and reached her full potential?

Overall, this is a thought provoking and well-written exploration of an incredible artist's life.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography of jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams was both enjoyable and illuminating. Kernodle provides a clear-eyed and sympathetic recounting of Williams' life, detailing the ups and downs of her career and the evolution of her music. I liked the way Kernodle addressed the effects of racism and sexism on Williams, and the way she wrote about the pianist's religious awakening and the way it shaped her later music. This book brought Williams and her music to life and, like all good music writers, Kernodle made me want to listen to her subject's work.

[jalylah · Rating 2 out of 5]

She could sometimes be a little presumptive with regards to the states of mind of Williams and her family especially the women. There was a lot of choppy historiography on black womanhood that I didn't think was necessary. It's a biography. It suffices to talk about Mary Lou Williams experience (which the author does) without the other extraneous commentary. I feel I learned a great deal about Williams. I read Donald I. Maggin's Dizzy bio first and he consistently recounts Gillespie's close relationship with Williams and while Kernodle asserts the same she doesn't show it. I wonder what else could be missing.