The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in—and stretching beyond—a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls.

Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over music’s evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages.

In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.

Biographical details and commentary on the music, performances, and recordings of jazz artist Mary Lou Williams are captured in this portrait of her life and work that explores the racial, social, cultural, and musical aspects of her time

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Northeastern University Press (March 18, 2004)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 348 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1555536069
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1555536060
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.52 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.75 inches
• Condition: Used-fine
• Dust Jacket: Fine

Previous owner’s bookplate on the front endpaper. Inscribed and signed by the author on the title page. In fine condition, with a fine DJ.