{"id":1261,"date":"2019-02-11T13:53:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T17:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2019-02-11T13:53:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T17:53:28","slug":"mary-lou-at-the-savoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2019\/02\/11\/mary-lou-at-the-savoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Lou at the Savoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Mary Lou at the Savoy\u2019 is a tribute to the great jazz pianist, composer and educator Mary Lou Williams (1910 \u2013 1981), whose career spanned most of the twentieth century and who influenced and contributed to every major era of jazz, including swing, bebop, modal, funk and avant garde.\u00a0 The progression is borrowed from \u2018Stompin\u2019 at the Savoy\u2019, the title of which commemorates the Savoy Ballroom, where many swing era bands performed.\u00a0 The composers of \u2018Stompin\u2019 at the Savoy\u2019 include Benny Goodman and Chick Webb, each of whom led major bands of the swing era.\u00a0 \u00a0(After his untimely death, the leadership of Webb\u2019s band was taken up by its singer, Ella Fitzgerald.)\u00a0 Another somewhat lesser known but still successful group of the era was Andy Kirk\u2019s Twelve Clouds of Joy, which included Mary Lou Williams in a role she described as \u2018composer, arranger and first-class chauffeur\u2019.\u00a0 She also often sat in with the band on piano.\u00a0 As she described in an interview with Melody Maker<\/a>, the Kirk band\u2019s first performance in New York City was at the Roseland Ballroom, and from there \u2018they moved to the celebrated Savoy Ballroom, where they faced Chick Webb’s orchestra. The Savoy was a place of tremendous enthusiasm, a home of fantastic dancing.\u2019\u00a0 Williams says the Kirk band \u2018faced\u2019 the Webb orchestra, emphasizing how the two bands were in competition as they alternated sets.<\/p>\n

The melodic line for the A section of \u2018Mary Lou at the Savoy\u2019 is inspired by Williams\u2019 piano solo on one of the pieces she composed for the Kirk band, \u2018Walkin\u2019 and Swingin\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 This piece is also often acknowledged as the source for her friend Thelonious Monk\u2019s iconic tune \u2018Rhythm-A-Ning\u2019 (the phrase borrowed by Monk can be heard at 1:13).\u00a0 The inspiration for the bridge melody comes from a later Williams piece, \u2018Rosa Mae\u2019<\/a> from her 1974 album \u2018Zoning\u2019.\u00a0 This tune demonstrates her gift and passion for astutely absorbing the musical style of any era in which she found herself and transforming it into a personal expression. In \u2018Rosa Mae\u2019, she finds a fresh harmonic alteration of the blues progression (something she did as frequently and brilliantly as Duke Ellington) and combines it with a rock\/funk groove that would be at home on albums like Freddie Hubbard\u2019s \u2018Red Clay\u2019 or Herbie Hancock\u2019s \u2018Fat Albert Rotunda\u2019.\u00a0 Another example of William\u2019s remarkable stylistic breadth can be heard on her album \u2018Mary Lou Williams Presents Black Christ of the Andes\u2019<\/a>, which combines exploratory jazz piano duo and trio music with music for choir and jazz ensemble that is at once both spiritual and universal, and accessible while still being utterly original and modern.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mary Lou at the Savoy\u2019 should be practiced along with my Scale outline for Stompin\u2019 at the Savoy<\/a>.\u00a0 It is also important to listen to some of the many great versions of \u2018Stompin\u2019 at the Savoy\u2019, including the original recording by the Chick Webb Orchestra<\/a>, Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s vocal version from \u2018Ella and Louis Again\u2019<\/a>, featuring the lyrics by Andy Razaf, Ahmad Jamal\u2019s deconstruction of the tune<\/a>, and Charlie Parker\u2019s and Dizzy Gillespie\u2019s \u2018Relaxin\u2019 with Lee\u2019<\/a>, which uses the tune\u2019s changes but not its melody.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Mary Lou at the Savoy\u2019 is a tribute to the great jazz pianist, composer and educator Mary Lou Williams (1910 \u2013 1981), whose career spanned most of the twentieth century and who influenced and contributed to every major era of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1269,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}