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Mary Elfrieda Scruggs was born on May 8, 1910 in Atlanta, Georgia, second of eleven children. Though she was born in Georgia, she grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
At the age of 3, Mary taught herself how to play the piano, and by the age of 6, she was playing at parties to make money to help support her large family. When she was 7 years old, Mary began performing publicly and earned the nickname in Pittsburgh as “The Little Piano Girl.”
When she was 15, Mary became a professional musician, and one year later she married John Williams, a jazz saxophonist.
Professionally, she was known as Mary Lou Williams, and she proved herself to be multitalented, not only as a pianist, but also as a composer, arranger, and bandleader. As the years went by, Mary Lou could be found living and working all over the eastern United States in cities like Baltimore, Cleveland, New York, Tulsa, Kansas City, Missouri, and others.
Mary Lou was also a mentor, teacher, and collaborator with many of the American musical greats of the day such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker.
Mary Lou, though primarily devoted to jazz, did not limit herself to jazz. Rather, she was no stranger to bebop, boogie-woogie, swing, and third stream (a fusion of classical and jazz music).
After taking a break from music in the early 1950’s, Mary Lou returned to the United States and, with Dizzy Gillespie’s wife Lorraine, entered the Catholic Church in 1954. It was then that Mary Lou’s missionary work began to shine. One of the ways she helped others was by establishing the Bel Canto Foundation that turned her apartment into a help center for the poor and musicians who were battling drug addiction. She also established a halfway house by raising money from a thrift store in Harlem. Many friends believe that much of Mary Lou’s passion for helping those with addiction came from the love for her friend and student, Charlie Parker, who suffered from addiction.
Mary Lou was encouraged to use her musical talents by Catholic priests and the bishop of Pittsburgh. So, with their encouragement, as well as that of Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou once again used her music to serve God. With the help of church leaders, Mary Lou became the first musical composer commissioned to write liturgical music in jazz form. Like Servant of God Thea Bowman who brought African American soul music into the mainstream of Catholic worship, Mary Lou sought to do the same with jazz. She performed her “Mary Lou’s Mass” on a popular television show, The Dick Cavett Show, in 1971.
In time, Mary Lou performed in Carnegie Hall in New York City and for President Jimmy Carter and his guests in the White House, and she taught for a time at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
For the rest of her life, Mary Lou continued serving those suffering from drug addiction.
Mary Lou Williams died from bladder cancer on May 28, 1981 at the age of 78 in Durham. She is buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
