Performance, personal appearance, and candid

Series 2 contains photographs representing all phases of Williams’s life and career. It includes materials retained by Williams and photographs collected by Williams’s manager and later executive director of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, Peter O’Brien. The depth and coverage of the photographs in the Mary Lou Williams Collection extends beyond the documentation of Williams’s career to other phases and personalities in jazz history. There are many rare images of early jazz territory bands and show business figures. Among the images are Seymour and Jeanette James, Butterbeans and Susie, Blanche Calloway, Detroit Red, T.H. Holders Orchestra, Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, Alphonso Trent Orchestra. The Andy Kirk period (1929-1941) is distinguished by publicity photos of Williams both alone and with the band, in addition to a series of candid shots of Williams and Kirk taken at the Apollo Theater in 1938. Many excellent images capture Williams during her steady engagements at Café Society (1942-47), when she was known among musicians for her interest in furthering modern jazz. Photos from Williams’s extended stay in Europe (1952-1954) show Williams with such figures as Don Byas, Buck Clayton, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, and Kansas Fields. Also of particular interest during this period is a series of photographs taken by Chuck Stewart during an unreleased 1957 Roulette Records recording session, remarkable for the interplay between Williams and other musicians on the date. There are also copies of the famous August 1958 photograph by Art Kane for Esquire magazine of 57 jazz stars in front of a Harlem brownstone and immortalized in the 1994 short film short, A Great Day in Harlem. The period of the 1960s is notable for a series of portraits by photographer Bert Stern (one was the cover photo for Linda Dahl’s 2000 biography, Morning Glory), ample documentation of two thrift stores in Harlem that Williams operated to raise money for struggling musicians, and a photograph of Pope Paul VI greeting Williams in Rome. Photographs from the 1970s capture engagements at such venues as Village Gate (New York, 1970), The Cookery (New York, 1971, 1975), Keystone Korner (San Francisco, 1977), as well as appearances at Monterey Jazz Festival (1971), the White House celebration of the Newport Jazz Festival’s 25th anniversary (1978), and the Grand Festival du Jazz (Nice, 1978), featuring photos by O’Brien of Williams and other festival participants. Williams’s groundbreaking January 1975 presentation of Mary Lou’s Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral can be found of the event made by The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Documentation also exists of honors she received in the latter part of her life, including honorary degrees from Fordham University (New York, 1973), Boston College (1975), Bates College (Lewiston, ME), Loyola University (New Orleans, LA), Loyola University (Chicago), and acceptance of an NAACP award (Atlanta, 1978). There is also ample coverage of Williams’s time at Duke University as artist in residence (1977-1981), including her work with students and concerts. Of special note from the Duke period are a series of color photographs of Williams teaching students at a piano placed next to her hospital bed in February 1980. Note: Researchers are encouraged to consult scrapbooks in the Williams Collection where additional photographs overlapping with these subseries may be found.


Williams’s family life is less well documented than her career as a jazz artist. Subseries 2.1: Early life and family contains photos, mostly candid, of significant family members, including her maternal grandmother, mother, stepfather, siblings, half-siblings, and nieces and nephews, in addition to the earliest known photographs of Williams.
Subseries 2.2: Photographs and studio portraits traces Williams’s career in formal portraiture and publicity photographs over fifty years. Coverage includes her earliest professional work with the territory band Buzzin’ Harris and His Hits and Bits (1925) and the dancers Seymour and Jeanette James (mid-1920s), Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy (1929-1941), Café Society Uptown and Downtown (1942-47), and publicity photos from 1957, 1975, and a 1977 photo for the duet concert at Carnegie Hall with the avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor (1977). Also included in this subseries are rare, signed publicity photos of some of the stars of the Andy Kirk band and another of the Kirk sax section.
Subseries 2.3: Performance, personal appearance and candid photographs conveys the richness of her times, activity, settings, and associates in her lengthy and diverse professional life. The bulk of the collection documents the early 1970s to around the time of Williams’s death in 1981, although the period from the 1930s to the 1960s provides adequate coverage of her activities. The concentration from the 1970s to 1981 is due to the efforts of Peter O’Brien to obtain prints directly from photographers who covered her engagements. In the case of Chuck Stewart, who photographed an unreleased Roulette Records recording session in 1957, O’Brien obtained multiple prints and contact sheets.
Subseries 2.4: Other artists contains formal portraits and candid shots of musicians, show business personalities, and personal friends of Williams that do not include Williams in the photograph. Some of the photographs contain rare inscriptions to Williams or, with some dating from the 1930s, to John and Mary Williams. The depth and date span of the photographs complement other series in the Mary Lou Williams Collection in documenting her activities. Among the artists documented with inscribed photographs are Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Don Byas, Roy Eldridge, Erroll Garner, Billie Holiday, Jimmie Lunceford, Red Norvo and Mildred Bailey, Rex Stewart, Ben Thigpen, Sarah Vaughan, Ethel Waters, and Ben Webster.
Subseries 2.5: Religious contains photographs of Williams performing in religious settings or meeting with religious figures. Items include Pope Paul VI greeting Williams at the Vatican, multiple performances of Mary Lou’s Mass, and photos from Peter O’Brien’s ordination. And Subseries 2.6 collects photographs not captured in any of the above subseries. The photographs in this subseries include pictures that capture the milieu of the Kansas City and New York City music scenes, and photos of unidentified persons and places in Williams’s life.