Being a woman in the music business has never been easy. Being a black woman surely made it even worse to get the credit one deserved. Being a black woman who pursued a career as jazz instrumentalist from the 1920s on must have been real hard. Even today most jazz music aficionados first think of male jazz musicians when asked for their favourite musicians. Sure, there are quite a lot women singing jazz. But how many of them wrote their own songs? And how many female jazz instrumentalist are really popular? Unfortunately only a few. Mary Lou Williams is certainly one of the first women who made it as a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in 1910 in Atlanta, Georgia, and taught herself to play the piano. In 1930 she joined Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy and became the band’s leading soloist, composer, and arranger. In 1941 she worked as a staff arranger with Duke Ellington for about six months. Eventually she formed her own group in 1942 with her second husband Harold Baker. For more info about Mary Lou Williams visit the detailed feature at newarkwww.rutgers.edu.
Like Mary Lou Williams Geri Allen is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. And Geri has made a name for herself in recent years. The chances are quite good you have a record in your collection, that features Geri. She appeared on albums by Courtney Pine, Betty Carter, Dewey Redman, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden or Ralph Peterson Jr. to name a few.
Under the moniker of The Mary Lou Williams Collective Geri Allen (piano), Buster Williams (bass), Billy Hart (drums) and Andrew Cyrille (drums on two songs) pay homage to Mary Lou Williams and they re-interpret her twelve part Zodiac Suite, which originally was written in 1945. Jazz music is often referred to as the black people’s classical music. And it’s an opus like the Zodiac Suite that lives up to this reference. Here we find a deep and emotional touching performance which is only made up of three instruments and thus a stark contrast to the usually higly ornate classical (European) music of the white man.
Like every musical suite the Zodiac Suite works best from start to finish. The last three tracks are a welcome addition to the Zodiac Suite. The BeBop Waltz, written by Herbie Nichols, is also known as Mary’s Waltz. Intermission is a cover of a collaboration between Mary Lou and bassist Milton Suggs while Thank You Madam is a tender ballad composed by Geri Allen as tribute to Mary Lou Williams.
Also worth mentioning is the booklet with detailed liner notes by Rev. Peter F. O’Brien, who was Mary Lou’s personal manager for the last seventeen years of her life.
There’s only one point of criticism, though, and that is the sound quality. Although recorded on various dates between 2000 and 2003 parts of the recordings doesn’t sound as clear and brilliant as you would expect it from a CD.
But overall this a welcome revitalising of the work of one of the great jazz pianists and composers of all time.

Tracklisting of Zodiac Suite: Revisited: 1. Aries/ 2. Taurus/ 3. Gemini/ 4. Cancer/ 5. Leo/ 6. Virgo/ 7. Libra/ 8. Scorpio/ 9. Sagittarius/ 10. Capricorn/ 11. Aquarius/ 12. Pisces/ 13. The BeBop Waltz/ 14. Intermission/ 15. Thank You Madam | released 2006 Mary Records

For more infos visit marylouwilliamsfoundation.org (right now unfortunately with no content), The Mary Lou Williams Center For Black Culture, newarkwww.rutgers.edu, geriallen.com, music.umich.edu, and kzsu.stanford.edu.

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