Search - Mary Lou Williams :: Mary Lou Williams Presents: Black Christ of Andes

Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams Presents: Black Christ of Andes
Genres: Jazz, Pop

Track Listings (14) - Disc #1
1. St. Martin de Porres
2. It Ain't Necessarily So - Mary Lou Williams, Gershwin, George
3. The Devil - Mary Lou Williams, Moore, Ada
4. Miss D.D.
5. Anima Christi
6. A Grand Night for Swinging - Mary Lou Williams, Taylor, Billy [1]
7. My Blue Heaven - Mary Lou Williams, Donaldson, Walter
8. Dirge Blues
9. A Fungus a Mungus
10. Koolbonga [#]
11. Forty-Five Degree Angle [#] - Mary Lou Williams, Best, Denzil
12. Nicole [#]
13. Chunka Lunka [#]
14. Praise the Lord

CD Details

All Artists: Mary Lou Williams
Title: Mary Lou Williams Presents: Black Christ of Andes
Members Wishing: 2
Total Copies: 0
Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Release Date: 4/27/2004
Genres: Jazz, Pop
Style: Bebop
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 093074081624

Synopsis

Album Description

Mary Lou Williams, the "First Lady of Jazz," was an extraordinary pianist, composer, arranger, and master of blues, boogie woogie, stride, swing, and be-bop. Williams? complex harmonies and brilliant phrasing, rooted in spirituals and blues, border on the avant-garde. Black Christ is both a powerful secular statement and a call to the divine. Duke Ellington said, "[She was] beyond category - a pianist who sums up in herself the full essence of jazz and expresses it with skill and perception that few other jazz musicians have even approached." Originally issued in 1964, this CD contains an additional 4 unreleased tracks, new extensive liner notes, and historic photos. 53 minutes.

CD Reviews

Jazzmind

Scot Danforth | Knoxville, TN | 07/17/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Duke Ellington famously said that if music sounds good, it is good. Ellington had little interest in dividing jazz from other forms of music, and his heir in this regard was Mary Lou Williams. In her later career, she was determined to show that jazz, gospel, blues, boogie-woogie, and so on can all have common roots. This recording is a concept album for this thesis--and it is brilliant. She is also Ellington's heir at the keyboard: never overplaying, always aware of underlying harmonic structure, she swings like the devil. Even simple material, like her version of "It Ain't Necessarily So" here, gets a new Williams meter (6/8, rather than 4/4) and becomes uniquely her own. Let Mary Lou's synthesis grow on you--you just might find religion!"