My good friend Nic Caciappo has been involved in concert promotion and scheduling for quite some time. He was on the verge of scoring a major coup as he was  moving forward with booking a tour that included Patrick Moraz and three alumni from the band Brand X: John Goodsall, Percy Jones and Ronnie Ciago.

Patrick Moraz & Ronnie Ciago recorded Los Endos several years ago on a Genesis tribute album called The Fox Lies Down. The upcoming tour was being scheduled for May 2012 beginning with dates on the US west coast to be followed by shows on the east coast.

The proposed set list was to include a Yes Relayer suite, Moraz' i, selections from Moraz' band Refugee and plenty of Brand X material. This is something that would have been thrilling to witness. To see Patrick performing his own material from Refugee and certainly the Relayer suite from the Yes album of the same name would have been a concert that we would have promoted to the highest heavens. All this in addition to seeing Moraz alongside the members of Brand X performing that band's compositions.

A word about Patrick Moraz. He has often been called "the perennial replacement" due to his career of seeming to follow in the wake of other great keyboardists.  In 1973, Patrick teamed with Lee Jackson and Brian Davison to form the band Refugee after Keith Emerson had departed The Nice, leaving Jackson and Davidson as "musical refugees." Let me say it here and now, I was far more interested in Refugee than I ever was in The Nice. I found and I still find Moraz to be a far superior keyboardist to Emerson. In 1974, Refugee released their self-titled album.

Then things took off for Patrick when it was announced that Rick Wakeman was leaving Yes after Wakeman's disillusionment with Yes' album Tales from Topographic Oceans. Patrick was given the nod to fill those legendary shoes. The result was the Yes album Relayer and what an album it was! As guitar great Jay "Bird" Koder recalls, "We all went to that concert loaded with tomatoes ready to pelt Moraz... but we loved him! He was, in many important ways, better than Wakeman!" That was the discussion held by me and my friend Jackson King (of the Latin Jazz band Carlos Oliva & Los Sobrinos del Juez) back in high school.

In the following year, the members of Yes all released solo albums and Moraz appeared on the solo albums of Chris Squire and Steve Howe, while releasing his won solo album i which can only be described as visionary. Keyboard Magazine named it “Best Keyboard Album” of the year for 1976 with Patrick himself being named "Best New Talent" of the same year. Patrick's tenure of recording and touring with Yes lasted for three phenomenal years.

In 1978, Moraz was named to "replace" the beloved Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues when Pinder realized that he could not endure the rigors and horrors and another world tour after the band released their reunion album entitled Octave. Once again, Moraz proved musically superior to his predecessor.

During those years with the Moody Blues, he released two wonderful jazz albums with former Yes drummer Bill Bruford entitled Music for Piano and Drums and Flags. This was actually a return to Patrick's jazz roots from the 60's when he was the youngest person ever to win the  prestigious “Best Soloist Award” at the Zurich Jazz Festival. He was sixteen. He later would open for ...excuse me... John Coltrane on the Trane's European tour.

In the 80's, he worked with guitar legend Kazumi Watanabe, pan pipe virtuoso Simon “Syrinx” Stanciu and with none other than Chick Corea.

He remained with the Moody Blues until 1991 and, in my opinion, has never been given proper credit for his work and time with that band. The separation from the Moody Blues had been an arduous ordeal and he was forced to sue for millions in owed royalties. The band claimed that he was a "hired musician" and not a full band member, despite Patrick's name and photos appearing on all of the band's albums during Patrick's sojourn with them. I confess, I never bought another Moody Blues album after Moraz was gone. Patrick did win a judgment but nothing near what he was reportedly owed.

After his separation from that band, Patrick struggled in his transition to solo artist. Finally, in 1994,  Patrick released what I had always hoped to hear -- a solo piano album, Windows of Time. Robert Doerschuk of Keyboard Magazine described it this way: “If Beethoven had gigged with Yes, he might have wound up sounding like this”!

In 2000-2003, Moraz released two more solo piano works Resonance and ESP (Etudes, Sonatas, Preludes). They were splendid! In 2009 Patrick released Change of Space which is a collection of new songs and instrumental pieces. Some of the great musicians who are featured on this album are:  Bunny Brunel on bass, John Wackerman on drums, Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, Alex Acuna on Percussion, Alex Ligertwood on lead vocals, Don Adey also on lead vocals, Janis Liebhart on backing vocals,  Michael Tovar on Guitar and Ronnie Ciago on drums. Which brings us back to the proposed tour in 2012 with Ronnie Ciago,  John Goodsall and Percy Jones from Brand X to join with Patrick Moraz.

Nic Caciappo had managed to gather these great musicians together for a brief tour and I was in high expectations at the prospect. This was the concert I had wanted and awaited.

However, while the dates and venues were being arranged, Moraz withdrew from the proposed tour citing an inability to participate due to lack of time available in the summer. This does not close the door entirely but, meanwhile, the Brand X alumni are considering other options. 

I am bitterly disappointed.  It was going to be a great show and we would have had a grand time together, listening to the legendary Patrick Moraz with Brand X.  Perhaps someone will be able to plead enough with Patrick so that he reconsiders. We would have filled the place up!

The Left Banke was one of my very favorite bands of all time and some things never change. They have been described as "Baroque Pop," "17th Century Rock 'n Roll," "Bach Rock" or even "Baroque 'n Roll." If you have ever heard them, you will know what I mean.

They  formed The Left Banke in New York City in 1965 with personnel including Michael Brown (songwriter/keyboardist), George Cameron (guitar), Tom Finn (bass), Warren David-Schierhorst (drums) and Steve Martin (vocals), not to be confused with the banjo-playing comedian. They were all Americans but were certainly influenced by the vocal harmonies of the British Invasion bands. Tom Finn cites the Beatles, Kinks and Zombies as having the greatest impact on the band.

Songwriter/keyboardist Michael Brown's father, Harry Lookofsky, operated a recording studio in New York and became the manager/producer/publisher for The Left Banke. After a very short time, George Cameron switched over to drums, replacing David-Schierhorst, while Jeff Winfield joined for guitar only to be replaced with Rick Brand after the release of the band's first album. So now you know the dramatis personae.

Harry Lookofsky was a classical violinist and session musician which probably contributed to Michael Brown's Baroque leanings. One might also think of Doug Ingles' keyboard styles and the obvious influence of his father who was a church organist. But Harry did more than influence, he actually played the string parts for the band.

There is so much to say about the sound of this group. It wasn't just the Baroque influence and imitation (and I mean that is a good way) but there was something so very soul-stirring in the harmonies of Cameron and Finn and in Steve Martin's lead vocals. There was a melancholy, a depth to the sadness, in their singing.

I can specifically recall when I first heard what would become their smash hit, entitled "Walk Away, Renee." The opening lyrics were: "And when I see the sign that points one way..." To this day, I cannot hear those words without a pause in whatever I am doing or thinking. The complete lyrics are:

And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every day
Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

From deep inside the tears that I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
Now, as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me, it cries

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
Now, as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me, it cries

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still finds a way to haunt me though they're so small

Just walk away, Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

Of course, the song appears to be about the loneliness of break-up and how one might never get over such loss. But there is also the sadness and loneliness of following that one-way sign; the sign that allows for no retreat or exit. She is free to turn and walk away, but he is on a path of no deviation. He is in a trapped life. That was how I heard it.

There is a great but apocryphal tale about the inspiration and writing of this song. The story centers around a young blonde beauty named Renee Fladen. It is a romantic tale of unrequited love... and it is false.

The truth is, and this according to Tony Sansone who co-wrote the lyrics, the mention of the one-way sign was regarding the change of Hull Avenue from a two-way street into a one-way street. He says that a little piece of his world changed with that. He also says that the sign was located at Hull and 207th Avenue in The Bronx. For Tony, the song is about growing up and saying goodbye to youth (He was 26 when he co-wrote those lyrics). Tom Finn confirms this and even offers the enigmatic suggestion of the initials of the song Walk Away Renee spells "WAR." During the height of the Viet Nam War, everyone's world had changed.

Obviously, I let the first line dictate the mood and meaning of the whole song for me.

Walk Away Renee was released in 1966 and became a big hit; reaching No. 5 on the charts and staying on the charts for 10 weeks. Even in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it at No. 220 in their issue of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Yes, I would have put it much higher.

The minor key and use of those strings were just so compelling.

Early in 1967, The Left Banke released a second single called Pretty Ballerina. It was another Michael Brown composition and again the vocals were, I have to use the word, haunting. I regret having to use that word only because it has been used over and over by writers trying to describe the sound. However, it wasn't just Martin's vocals but the entire band's contribution to the complete sound that was so moving. Again, Finn and Cameron deserve so much of the credit for that.

Yet, with all that, there was this hilarious sense of self-deprecation that forced a smile even in the midst of this melancholy.

I called her yesterday
It should have been tomorrow
I could not keep the joy that was inside
I begged for her to tell me
If she really loved me
Somewhere a mountain is moving
Afraid it's moving without me

Here is the pay-off comedic line: I called her yesterday... it should have been tomorrow! Ah, 20/20 hindsight. Then the stanza concludes with the idea that somewhere, for someone, faith may be paying off. But for our guy, there may be a mountain moving but it is doing so without any regard to his misspent hope.

Pretty Ballernia reached the charts in early 1967, and The Left Banke released an album entitled Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina. Then came the fracture in the band.

Unbelievably, Michael Brown recorded a single, Ivy, Ivy b/w And Suddenly as The Left Banke, while only using session musicians and Bert Sommer on vocals. What was he thinking? Attorneys were hired and radio stations (and even the band's own record label) were left in a quandary over which group to support.

Late in 1967, the group reunited and recorded new material, including the splendid single Desiree, which peaked at only no. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was a wonderful song. In fact, it was a masterpiece... and it killed the band. Many radio stations were still unsure about promoting the band after the debacle over the Brown single. Furthermore, as of 1967, Desiree was said to be the most expensive single ever produced.

Michael Brown left the band forever shortly following this. Cameron, Finn and Martin continued recording and touring, with Tom Feher on keyboards and writing half of the new material.

A second album was released late in 1968 called The Left Banke Too. Just for fun, you should know that this album contained backing vocals by one young man named Steven Tyler (yes, that Steven Tyler). The second album was every bit as moving, eloquent and elegant as the debut album.

The band continued touring through 1969, but without Michael Brown and Steve Martin, and they soon broke up citing financial problems. Later that same year, Michael Brown and Steve Martin reunited to record another single under the name The Left Banke. The record was Myrah b/w Pedestal and this was their final single for Smash Records.

Throughout the 1970's various members of the band would record and tour and collaborate but with little success and, in many cases, little notice (Except by me. I would grab everything I could find and cherish any morsel available).

Then came 1992 and Mercury Records, bless them, released a Left Banke compilation entitled There's Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966–1969. Supposedly, it was going to bring together the band's complete recordings from the years 1966 to 1969. However, a 1969 outtake called Foggy Waterfall, which had previously appeared on two earlier compilations, was not included. The album was dropped from the catalog quickly after its initial release and is now considered a rarity. And, no, you cannot have mine. I don't care what you have to pay to get this compilation but get it. It remains one of my most-played CDs. Listen to The Left Banke radio station on Pandora. Do what you have to do.

In 2005, Alice Cooper recorded a cover version of Pretty Ballerina on his album Dirty Diamonds. Listen to the original, then listen to Cooper's cover. I am not sure if it is heretical or hilarious.

On June 13, 2009, Jeff Winfield, the original recording guitarist of The Left Banke, died  following his admission on February 25 for an emergency hernia operation with complications of diabetes. His condition worsened with pneumonia.

In early 2011, Sundazed announced that they had arranged to reissue the two Smash label recordings on CD. Sadly, no singles-only tracks will be included. Those two beautiful albums can be purchased on CD or 180 gram vinyl at the Sundazed website here: http://www.sundazed.com/shop/june2011.php

Tom Finn and George Cameron reformed The Left Banke in March 2011. They performed live at Joe's Pub in New York City on March 5 and 6 to sold out audiences. In April 2011, Tom Finn revealed in a Facebook posting that he had reformed the group, with two shows planned for July in New York City. I jumped on every word and have begged them to come to the West Coast.

Finn lists current members as (in alphabetical order):
Paul Alves - Guitar
George Cameron - Vocals
Charly Cazalet - Bass
Mickey Finn - Keyboards
Tom Finn - Guitar / Vocals
Mike Fornatale - Guitar / Lead Vocal
Rick Reil - Drums / Vocals

I can recall when I heard in 1969 that The Left Banke were finished. Even though I was very young, the profound sense of loss was so heavy. No more songs like Shadows Breaking Over My Head (Brown/Martin) or Goodbye, Holly (Tom Feher) or the great three; Walk Away Renee, Pretty Ballerina and Desiree.

It's funny but when I watch the movie That Thing You Do I always feel like I am watching a movie inspired by The Left Banke which I know is not the case but I am affected the same way.

We cannot go back in time but, with the reforming of The Left Banke, maybe we really can pick up where we left off so long ago. There is always a chance for new beginnings.

Let me introduce you to someone you may not know but who was important to the development of the world of jazz. Someone that was so powerful, so influential to every age of jazz. She was brilliant. She was beautiful. She was amazing.

Anyone who had such an effect on figures like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonoius Monk and Charlie Parker simply must be one to never lose the spotlight. It is nowhere near enough to say that she was the greatest female jazz performer of all time. It must be declared that she was among the greatest jazz performers of all time and shared the summit of jazz composition alone with Duke Ellington.

"I'm the only living musician that has played all the eras," Mary Lou Williams confidently advised Marian McPartland in the debut of McPartland's acclaimed radio broadcast, Piano Jazz. "Other musicians lived through the eras and they never changed their styles."

She was correct. Jazz fans and historians long ago concluded that Mary Lou Williams was the most important female jazz musician to emerge in the first three decades of jazz. William's multidimensional talents as an instrumentalist, arranger, and composer made her a star from her earliest days and, over the long haul, an equal to any musician—male or female—successful in those endeavors. Her longevity as a top-echelon jazz artist was extended because of her penchant for adapting to and influencing stylistic changes in the music.

In his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress, Duke Ellington wrote, "Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary. Her writing and performing have always been a little ahead throughout her career. Her music retains, and maintains, a standard of quality that is timeless. She is like soul on soul."

Indeed, this process of constant reassessment and renewal she applied to her art is only one of the qualities that made Williams a truly unique figure in the history of jazz. William's range of talents, summed up by what Ellington termed "beyond category," suggests both the richness and the ambiguity that have made assessing her role in jazz history challenging.

Her work as a composer and arranger for Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy in the early 1930's reveals one of the earliest examples of a woman given due respect from her peers for her musicianship. William's career opens a window into the critically important Kansas City jazz scene that produced such giants as Count Basie, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. Her stature in the jazz world is a natural attraction for scholars examining the lives not only of women jazz musicians, but also of twentieth-century African-American women and American history in a larger context.

Mary Elfrieda Scruggs was born in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910. To keep order in the house, her mother used to hold Mary Lou on her lap while she practiced an old-fashioned pump organ. One day, Mary Lou's hands beat her mother's to the keys and she picked out a melody. When her mother discovered this (Mary Lou believed she was two or three years old at the time), she had professional musicians come to the house to play for Mary Lou. Thus, very early, Mary Lou was exposed to Ragtime, Boogie-woogie and the Blues.

Later, the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Mary Lou was exposed to all kinds of music. She studied for a time under the then-prominent Sturzio, a classical pianist. An uncle, Joe Epster, paid Mary Lou 50 cents a week to play Irish songs for him (an all-time favorite was "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"). Grandfather Andrew Riser would pay her 50 cents a week to play from the classics which she learned from watching and pressing down the keys on a player piano. However, it was her stepfather, Fletcher Burley, who hummed the Boogie and Blues for her and he would be her main inspiration along with brother-in-law Hugh Floyd.

Fletcher would hide young Mary Lou underneath a big overcoat that he would wear and sneak her into all kinds of places (including gambling joints) where his buddies gathered. Mary Lou describes it: "He'd take off his hat, put it on the table, put a dollar into it, and say: "Stop! Everybody -- my little girl is gonna play for you." He'd pass the hat around. Often, when I'd leave, I'd have twenty-five or thirty dollars. When we got back outside, he'd say: "Give me back my dollar," and then we'd go home. My mother would ask, "Where were you?", and he would reply, "Oh, we went over to Rochelle's." Years later, when she found out where Fletcher had been taking me, she almost went into shock.

Known throughout Pittsburgh as "the little piano girl," Mary Lou was often heard at private parties (including those of such super-wealthy families as the Mellons and the Olivers) well before she was ten years old. Brother-in-law Hugh Floyd would take Mary Lou to the theater to hear and see musicians at work. One day while at the theater Mary Lou heard a great woman pianist and musician, Lovie Austin:

“I remember her in the pit of the theater, legs crossed, cigarette in her mouth, playing with her left hand, conducting at least four other male musicians with her head, and writing music with her right hand for the next act that would appear on the stage. As a little girl, I said to myself, "I'll do this one day." Later on when I was traveling and doing one-nighters with Andy Kirk, I'd play all night with my left hand and write new arrangements with my right -- sometimes I'd work crossword puzzles on the stand. The memory of Lovie Austin is so vivid to me. Seeing her, challenged me into doing difficult things.”

In 1924, age 14 she was taken on the Orpheum Circuit. At fifteen she took to the road with Seymour & Jeanette, a vaudeville act popular in the 1920's, which required that she play purely pop style. That year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. A high and learned salute to her talent came when she was only 15. One morning at 3 AM she was jamming with McKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club. The great Louis Armstrong entered the room and paused to listen to her. Mary Lou shyly tells what happened: “Louis picked me up and kissed me.” When in Kansas City, she quit the vaude circus and joined the dance band of John Williams, a skilled saxophonist and clarinetist from Memphis.

It was during the mid-twenties that she made her first recordings with John Williams' Jazz Syncopators. They were soon married, but, lacking in expert management, Williams abandoned his own group and, along with Mary Lou, joined Andy Kirk's orchestra in 1928. Initially, Kirk already had a pianist so Mary Lou forsook the keyboard to write compositions and arrangements and tour with the group as a sort of child bride of Williams. It was this foray into composing and arranging that eventually place her on equal footing with the greatest jazz composer of all time, Duke Ellington. Her situation changed when Kirk gave her the piano chair with his Clouds of Joy and began a series of record sessions for Brunswick. Tunes like "Cloudy", "Messa Stomp", "Loose Ankles", "Casey Jones Special", and "Froggy Bottom" proved classics of the late twenties.

She came to real prominence in the early 1930s with Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, a leading southwestern territory swing band. Williams was not only the band's star soloist but also its chief arranger. Beyond the normal obstacles confronting African-Americans in that pre-civil rights era, she also had to contend with a musical milieu in which women instrumentalists were rare and women arranger/composers virtually non-existent. Billed as "The Lady Who Swings the Band," William's playing and writing were on a par with any of her more famous contemporaries. "Outside of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, there's no other composer she has to take a back seat to," David Berger, professor at Manhattan School of Music, told The Washington Post.
During one of those trips to Chicago in 1930, Williams recorded "Drag 'Em" and "Night Life" as piano solos.

Williams took the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion of Brunswick Records' Jack Kapp. The recorddone for Brunswick Records sold briskly, catapulting Williams to national fame. Soon after the recording session she signed on as Kirk's permanent second pianist, playing solo gigs and working as a freelance arranger for such noteworthy names as Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. In 1937 she produced "In the Groove", a collaboration with Dick Wilson, then Benny Goodman asked Mary to write a blues for his band. The result was "Roll 'Em", a boogie-woogie piece based on the blues, which followed her successful "Camel Hop", which was Goodman's theme song for his radio show sponsored by Camel cigarettes. Goodman tried to put Williams under contract to write for him exclusively, but she refused, preferring to freelance. Williams had become one of the most sought-after composers of the Swing Era.

In 1942, Williams, who had divorced her husband, left the "Twelve Clouds of Joy" band, returning again to Pittsburgh. She was joined there by band-mate Harold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed a six-piece ensemble that included none other than Art Blakey on drums. After a lengthy engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band in New York, and then traveled to Baltimore, where she and Baker were married. She traveled with Ellington and arranged several tunes for him, including "Trumpets No End" (1946), her version of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies," but within a year had left Baker and the group and returned to New York.

With Williams again settled in New York, where she opened her Harlem apartment to all types of musicians and was particularly encouraging to the experimentation of the young modernists. She helped to inspire and then adapted to the revolutionary new style known as be-bop, which reduced many of her contemporaries to anachronisms. It was Mary Lou who mentored many of the movement's founders, including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. [She crossed similar stylistic frontiers in 1977 when she performed a Carnegie Hall concert of duets with the free-form pianist Cecil Taylor. How I would have loved to see that!]

Her writing also continued to grow; along with Duke Ellington, she was a pioneer among jazz composers in producing extended works, such as the Zodiac Suite. In 1945, she debuted segments of the Suite on her weekly radio broadcast, Mary Lou Williams Piano Workshop, and performed three movements with the 70-piece New York Pops Orchestra during the June 1946 Carnegie Hall Pops Series. William's tours of England and France in 1952, both widely covered in the European jazz press, placed her in the tradition of Armstrong and Ellington two decades earlier in spreading jazz on the Continent.

In 1956, Williams underwent a spiritual conversion to Catholicism and gave up playing to concentrate on spiritual matters until reemerging in 1957 with a performance alongside Dizzy Gillespie at the Newport Jazz Festival. Compared to her rigorous schedule of touring over the previous 30 years, she played only sporadically over the next decade. She formed the Bel Canto Foundation to assist drug- and alcohol-dependent musicians in 1958. This initiative prefigured her founding of Cecilia Music, a publishing firm to release her compositions, and the establishment of Mary Records to issue her and other selected artists' recordings. Both of these events occurred in the early 1960's.

She wrote and performed religious jazz music like Black Christ of the Andes (1963), a hymn in honor of the St. Martin de Porres; two short works, Anima Christi and Praise the Lord. In this period Mary put much effort into working with youth choirs to perform her works, including mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York before a gathering of over three thousand. She set up a charitable organization and opened thrift stores in Harlem, directing the proceeds, along with ten percent of her own earnings, to musicians in need. As an 1964 Time article explains, "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.'" She performed at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival in 1965, with a jazz festival group.

Williams undertook several ambitious extended works during this period, including her 1971 composition Mary Lou's Mass, which was choreographed by Alvin Ailey and, in 1975, was performed during celebration of a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 1977, her career undertook yet another significant turn. Duke University formalized William's role as an educator by appointing her as artist-in-residence, a position she held until her death.

Up to the end of her life on May 28, 1981, Mary Lou Williams was thoroughly involved in her music, and in the fight to expose Jazz and see that it survives and develops further. As well as teaching as Artist in Residence at Duke University, she frequently found herself involved in Concerts, Workshops, Residencies, Lecture-Demonstrations, Discussions, Radio and TV. A three or five day residency on a Campus found her on stage in concert with her trio, in a music or black history class, in lecture-demonstrations in large halls detailing, on the piano and in question-and-answer periods, the roots and history of Black American Music and Jazz, with the college archivist taping oral history for the future. [Duke University permanently honored William's contributions by opening the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture in September 1983 with an address by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.]

Mary Lou appeared in clubs, on the concert stage, in the recording studio, on radio and TV, in churches large and small in performances of her Mass, in grade and high schools playing and lecturing at assemblies -- in short, she continued to be directly in the forefront of music which is exactly where she has always belonged.

Mary Lou Williams died of bladder cancer in Durham, North Carolina, aged 71. She was buried in the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in her native Pittsburgh. As she herself said, looking back at her life, "I did it, didn't I? Through muck and mud."