Ed:  Mary, where did you grow up?

Mary:  I grew up in Florida and resided there through my sophomore year of college.

Ed: At what age did you begin playing the piano?

Mary: I began at three years of age. My mother was taking guitar lessons at that time and I spontaneously began playing one day to the amazement of both my mother and her instructor, Uncle Tim. I vividly recall the exercise that she was playing, a simple I chord in ¾ time for four measures modulating to a IV chord for four measures and to the V and back to I again. Then as a test, she transposed the exercise to F major and I proceeded to play it without hesitation. It was a very natural experience for me; I thought everyone could do it.

Ed:  Mary, what kind of music did you listen to at that age?

Mary:  My father was a Pentecostal minister and so were all my aunts...But my uncles weren't. My Aunt Mary had stacks of religious recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the Soul Stirrers featuring Sam Cook, Ray Charles when he was a minister, The Harmonettes, and so on. Now my Uncle Peter used to play in a jazz combo and had a stack of Satchmo, B.B. King, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn (my cousin was dating her back then), Etta James, and the like. I also listened to the country western religious groups on Sunday mornings. We were not allowed to listen to any secular music on Sundays. At my home I also had over a hundred Peter Pan Golden records all memorized and some Van Cliburn LPs of Claire de Lune, Je Deauz, Pavanne, and there you have it! At one and a half years old I used to climb up on a chair and play those records over and over again.

Ed:  Mary, can you remember your very first performance?

Mary:  At three years old I had a thirty minute radio program where I performed pieces that I composed and other popular pieces like "How Much is that Doggie in the Window," "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf," mostly the pieces I had learned off of the Peter Pan collection.

Ed:  Correct me if I'm wrong, but during this period you played strictly by ear. What would you say to those who oppose this type of playing?

Mary:  I took Piano Pedagogy from Madame Voorum at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. She was Bela Bartok's protégé and mistress. We were taught to have a beginning student learn to play and transpose strictly by ear for a full month before ever looking at a piece of written music!

Ed:  Well, when did you begin formal training?

Mary:  When I was four years old, my kindergarten teacher had me accompany the class for music period. She told my mother to have Johnny Hammond, the music instructor for Bradenton Elementary give me formal music instruction. My mother followed her suggestion. Bradenton Elementary was a segregated school but I remember Johnny Hammond taking me to a big auditorium to play for the Supervisor of Music, Howard Brumfield, a white person who later took me into his home and became my piano teacher which was unprecedented during that era.

My formal training was strictly classical, but when I reached seventh grade, I began playing jazz and rock with my brother's nine piece band for school sock hops and proms. I was also exported to Sarasota, Florida to play with that school's big band because of my sight reading ability. My brother didn't want me playing with his band but he couldn't find anyone else. It was okay to have a girl singer but not a girl pianist and especially not his little sister. At 14, we backed up the original "Drifters" in Fort Myers, FL and they wanted me to travel with them. My brother flatly refused them, thank goodness.

Still fourteen years old, I entered a piano competition at the County Fair. I was the only black contestant and I won with a performance of a Mozart Sonata. They made me play an two extra movements before I could win the blue ribbon. (Now looking back, I think they just enjoyed the performance and wanted more.)

When I stepped out of the cocoon of my "mostly black world experience", I found that I had to be 10 times as good to be just good. I am thankful for that, because it kept me from being satisfied with mediocrity. Even now, I always strive to be better than excellent, whatever that may be. My mother used to tell me, when someone praises you or tells you how wonderfully you performed, ignore it and be your own barometer of success. If someone says you were lousy, you still know in your heart whether it's a true assessment or not. If it's true, "get on the stick," and be better next time.

When I was in the tenth grade, I took a college entrance examination and was offered immediate entry to Howard, Talladega, or Fisk Universities. At this time I also had a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati College/Conservatory of Music. I chose not to skip 11^th and 12^th grade and went to summer camp at the conservatory instead. It was the most wonderful experience of my life! The conservatory at that time was a part of the University of Cincinnati but was located about five miles away in the old Shillito mansion, the original conservatory, filled with leaded glass doors, oversized staircases, access to private rose gardens and clay tennis courts. We all cried when it was finally demolished and we had to move onto the main campus.

Ed:  Didn't you do any jazz performances at the conservatory?

Mary:  No, I didn't play any jazz until after I was married and had my third child. I was sitting in a nightclub and the announcer said there was a new performer visiting that night. I was looking around to see who it was and low and behold, he called my name.

Ed:  That must have been scary.

Mary:  I was petrified. The group that was performing played the head of a blues composition and then walked off of the stage for twenty minutes leaving me to solo with the bass and drummer. They were talking with their friends in the audience and purposefully wouldn't let me catch their eye to let them know that I was finished. That was the most horrible experience I've ever had. Someone handed me an album called, "Bitch's Brew" by Miles Davis with Herbie Hancock on piano. I transcribed all of the piano solos (skills I had learned at the conservatory) and learned to play them along with the record. I returned to that same pub a year later and sat in with that same group. They pulled the same stunt but the pianist ran back on stage after I had only played two choruses.

After that I began playing with the musicians from the Nick Clooney Show and the Bob Braun Show playing in big bands around Cincinnati. I was sometimes pianist/conductor, backing up Don Cornell, Allen and Rossi, several engagements with Johnny Desmond of the Glen Miller Orchestra, Jim Nabbi's Ink Spots, and so on. I also became music director for Scripps Howard WCPO Television in Cincinnati and was also the host band with my own quartet. We produced the George Rivers' Show (primetime) and several other shows.

I have done classical concerts in Florid, classical and jazz dual performances on television in Little Rock, Arkansas, Irvine, California, and Fergus Falls Center for the Arts, etc. and performed "Rhapsody in Blue" with the F-M Symphony Orchestra.

Ed:  Mary, why do you mix classical with jazz on the same program?

Mary:  I am of the opinion that it reaches a wider audience and inter-exposes them, if there is such a word, to a different kind of musical extreme that they would not normally experience. The stubborn classical aficionado and the stubborn jazz die-hards attending the same performance. Maybe the both of them will get musical religion.

Speaking as a classical pianist, jazz improvisation affords a much greater intimacy with my instrument; scales, chord progressions, sequences; having a rudimentary knowledge of these techniques in every key without having to think about it. This knowledge becomes as natural as breathing and it is such an exhilarating experience to be able to do this at will.

Written by Ed Christianson for "Just Jazz," a publication of the Jazz Arts Group.