Marian McPartland
NEA Jazz Master, Marian McPartland (1918-2013) was one of the most important broadcasters in the history of jazz. As a distinctive piano stylist and composer, she was a respected figure on the American jazz scene for 60 years. Born Margaret Marian Turner in the English town of Slough, she had perfect pitch and studied violin and singing, while teaching herself piano by ear. She was accepted into Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1935, winning academic prizes for her compositions. By this point she had become interested in jazz, and particularly swing and stride pianists like Teddy Wilson, Fats Waller and Mary Lou Williams. McPartland’s first professional experience in 1938 was with a novelty 4-piano group led by Billy Mayerl, and she left Guildhall without graduating.
During the Second World War, she volunteered for various groups travelling to coninental Eruope, to entertain Allied troops. At a jam session in Belgium in 1944, she met Chicago cornettist Jimmy McPartland and within four months they got married in Germay, giving her American citizenship. Moving to New York after the war, she remained resident in USA for the rest of her life, while maintaining dual citizenship. The couple soon returned to Jimmy’s native Chicago, where he had been a member of the ‘Austin High School Gang’ with Dave Tough, Bud Freeman and Frank Teschemacher – a group that were instrumental in the early development of Chicago jazz. During the late 1940s, Marian worked in bands with her husband, including an appearance at the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949. That year they returned to Manhattan, where she began to put together her own groups, accompanying musicians like Roy Eldridge and Terry Gibbs and making her first recordings for Savoy from 1951. She soon secured a residency at the Hickory House from 1952 to 1960 with her own trio. This group featuring drummer Joe Morello and bassist Bill Crow established her as a force to be reckoned with, and they were named Small Group of the Year in 1954 by Metronome Magazine. At the same time, McPartland established herself as a writer, particularly championing the issues faced by women in jazz. In 1958, McPartland participated in the famous ‘Great Day in Harlem’ photo shoot – the only musician there out of 57 not born in the United States.
McPartland joined Benny Goodman’s septet briefly in 1963. She started teaching at jazz clinics from 1964, and in 1966 she began a career in broadcasting with a weekly radio show called ‘A Delicate Balance’. She divorced Jimmy in 1967, though they remained close friends and remarried in 1991, weeks before his death. In 1969 she founded her own record label Halcyon, releasing a number of records during the 1970s, including duet albums with Teddy Wilson and Joe Venuti, before beginning a long association with Concord Records. In 1978, McPartland was to make her first recording of Piano Jazz for NPR with her hero, Mary Lou Williams. The series would become the longest-running jazz performance programme in US broadcasting history and has featured virtually every significant jazz US jazz musician including Eubie Blake, Teddy Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Keith Jarrett and more recently musicians from other genres Norah Jones and Elvis Costello. Still performing and broadcasting into her 90s, McPartland was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2000, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, and was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 2010.
Key Recordings:
Piano Jazz Broadcasts including Bill Evans, Mary Lou Williams, Eubie Blake, Shirley Horn, etc
From This Moment On (Concord 1978)
In My Life (Concord 1993)
Silent Pool (Concord 1997)
