The Prayerful One

There came a time ten years ago when Mary Lou Williams decided that jazz was the devil's own music. She was among the best of the bebop pianists, but out on the scene she sensed evil all around her. She could even hear it echo in her playing. One blue night in Paris, "the badness" overwhelmed her; she got up from the piano and quit jazz cold. She drew up a list of names to pray for (urgent cases marked in red), and before long she had an endless coil of sadness, an encyclopedia of bad trouble, a roll of death and dishonor. For years there was nothing for her to do but pray.

Then she joined the Roman Catholic Church. A priest convinced her that God would be pleased to hear her play once more: music was his greatest gift to her, and music played by a prayerful person, the priest explained, is a kind of prayer. Mary Lou broke her silence six years ago, but she found little pleasure in performing. Last week, still a bit reluctant, still mightily prayerful, Mary Lou was at the piano inside the oval bar at Manhattan's Hickory House. The town's best jazzmen were sprinkled through her audience, and there was nothing for her to do but play.

In Transition. Mary Lou led her two accompanists through the basic jazz vocabulary like a teacher running a spelling bee; posing questions in rhythm and harmony, she would close her eyes to listen for the answers on bass and drums. Often she seemed concerned with cliches. But somehow, when her fingers sounded the familiar oo-bla-dee and ba-ree-bop, the old phrases rang like new coinage. Which was only right, since Mary Lou minted them first. In the old days when she played "zombie music" and early bop, her style was constantly in transition, constantly a skip ahead of jazz. Now, "playing in the tradition" is a high ideology with her, and any echo of the avant-garde enrages her. "Have you heard these 'freedom' players?"* she asks, lips curling in disgust. "They're making people sick all over town."

In contrast, Mary Lou thinks of herself as a "soul" player--a way of saying that she never strays far from melody and the blues, but deals sparingly in gospel harmony and rhythm. "I am praying through my fingers when I play," she says. "I get that good 'soul sound,' and I try to touch people's spirits."

Down & Out. Her discoveries of both God and the devil in jazz reflect perhaps the troubled state of her own spirit. But even so, she seems to have found her way. With the help of a priest, she has written a jazz hymn to St. Martin de Porres, a mulatto saint of the 17th century, and she is now working on a jazz Mass.

Away from the piano, her life is even richer. She is founder and proprietor of a foundation for the rehabilitation of down-and-out jazzmen, and she runs a Manhattan thrift shop for the foundation's benefit. Musicians who are doing well drop by with contributions nearly every day, and turning the merchandise into cash can sometimes tax even the devotion of Mary Lou. Only recently, Louis Armstrong's wife donated 100 pairs of size 41 shoes; the Duke donated a hand-painted pool stick and a mink bow tie.

* Jazzmen such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and, lately, Sonny Rollins, whose ensemble playing ignores harmonics in pursuit of "free" melody lines.

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