Live at Rick’s Café Americain

MARY LOU WILLIAMS SOLO AND TRIO This Mary Lou Williams double-CD contains the complete session she did at Rick’s Café Americain, Chicago, November 14, 1979. There are 27 tracks on the 2 Cd’s. 6 are her own compositions and the remaining are standards. Milton Suggs is her bassist and Drashear Khalid her drummer. Mary Lou is one of the few famous female pianists in Jazz like Hazel Scott, Dorothy Donegan and Marian McPartland. She is also a fantastic arranger. She did many arrangements as a member of Andy Kirk’s Mighty. She also made arrangements for the Duke Ellington Orchestra when she was traveling with the band as Harold “Shorty” Baker’s wife; Listening to Mary Lou Williams is always pleasurable for the fineness of her constructions, the richness of her ideas and, as her friend pianist Billy Taylor notes, “her ability to swing in any situation.