Performance and personal appearance files, 1927-1986, bulk: 1940-1981

Series 6 contains programs, itineraries, handbills, correspondence, business papers, newspaper articles and clippings, ledger books, contracts, pay stubs, concert tickets, festival badges, posters, hand-sketched artwork, travel expenses, and receipts related to the professional life of Mary Lou Williams. Performances and personal appearances include concerts, club dates, religious performances, recording sessions, radio and television appearances, interviews, and conferrals of advanced degrees from universities among other awards and tributes. Some posthumous tributes and memorials to Williams are included in this series until 1999, when the Collection was transferred to the Institute of Jazz Studies, but the Mary Lou Williams Foundation papers contain many more.
Subseries 6.1 includes performances and other appearances made by Williams throughout her career. There is unfortunately very little documentation of Williams’s performances preceding her time with Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy. Her time with Kirk is documented by notebooks and itineraries. Extant documentation of her performances picks up after her time with Kirk. Indeed, for events produced by Williams—for example, New Modern Works Benefit for Symphony of Musical Arts in 1962 and Embraced: Mary Lou Williams and Cecil Taylor—the variety, wealth and detail of information is remarkable. Other highlights include performance ledgers covering her work in a combo co-led by her husband Harold “Shorty” Baker in 1942, scripts and other material from her 1945 radio program on WNEW, documentation of her European tour starting in 1952, before her hiatus in 1954, her Bel Canto benefit concert in 1958, the first annual Pittsburgh Jazz Festival in 1964, materials related to her masses, including her 1967 Carnegie Hall performance, her Lenten masses in 1968 and 1969, and Music for Peace/Mary Lou’s Mass performances throughout the 1970s, her multiple stands at the Cookery and performances at universities, and many festival appearances, including Newport, Monterey, and Montreux, and her participation in President Jimmy Carter’s Jazz at the White House event in 1978. Series 6.1 also includes awards and honorary degrees bestowed upon Williams, including the “Top Hat” award from the Pittsburgh Courier, and honorary doctorates from Fordham University, Boston College, and others.
Subseries 6.2 includes performances by others, largely centering on tribute concerts made after her death. It also includes an “order of service” for her New York City funeral.
Where they can be tied to a specific time and place, Williams’s appearances on radio and television are included in series 6.1. 6.3 includes more general correspondence with media organizations, as well as materials relating to film projects by Joanne Burke and others.
Subseries 6.4 contains public relations and publicity files, including multiple biographical texts, materials related to promotion of Williams’s albums, press kits, press releases, and song, interview, and appearance requests.