Mary Lou Williams Rutgers Interview Block 879 (Q13067)

I decided to try to go out on my own. Really I haven't been successful in doing things except when Father Peter O'Brien came and picked me up. I tried things and I did jobs now and then. It didn't pay enough even for me... because jazz was kind of going down then, you know, and rock was coming up. Priests and Father Anthony Woods - oh, Father Anthony Woods raised some money for me once. We were the first blacks in the Lincoln Hall Philharmonic. They were not going to have any black opera singers in. The whole thing was prejudiced. The musicians were meeting up here in a little room in Harlem. So I called Father Anthony Woods and I said, "...Melba Liston and a lot of the musicians are having meetings up in <span class="otherMatch" rel="popover" id="other_3057_1901494">Harlem</span> and they're talking about <span class="otherMatch" rel="popover" id="other_3057_1901544"><span class="otherMatch" rel="popover" id="other_3057_1901554">Philharmonic</span></span>. " He said, "Break it up. " I said, I cannot break it up. " He said, "Break it up! Let's try something else. "  So I went to the meeting. The only thing I could do was pretend I drank a little beer. I said, "I've been drinking. If you don't get out of this place we're going to fight. " I tried everything else. She said, "What's wrong with you? " So she came up and she told the musicians, Tell Lou I'm back with my music. " I felt that we had a Communist in it because when the kids would speak or some- thing, specifically to do with something that would help the thing along, there would be a big argument against it. I think he's the cat that tried to blow up Statue of Liberty. I'm not sure but I think he was. We found out later. He'd seeped in on this and everything was a big, big argument. So when she came out the whole thing broke up. I went to Father Anthony Woods and he said, "I think you ought to do something with <span class="fullMatch" id="match_661">Dizzy Gillespie</span>. " So Father Anthony Woods got together and he booked us in the <span class="otherMatch" rel="popover" id="other_3076_1913362"><span class="otherMatch" rel="popover" id="other_3076_1913372">Philharmonic</span></span> himself and he'd never done anything like that before. So he got together and he did it. I told Dizzy Gillespie, "I think we have a thing in the Philharmonic. " Dizzy Gillespie had a  pieee band and I did the History of Jazz, the fandangle and the ragtime. They said, "Why do we have to go hack so far? " I said, "Well, I'm going to do the History of Jazz. " He thought it was something else, you know. So we were the first in the Philharmonic as a jazz unit.