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First Lady of Jazz

In the 1950s she broke through the man's world of jazz to become a star in her own right. As she turns 90, Marian McPartland is still making magic.

By Bill DeMain

Monday, April 28, 2008

Don't mention the "R word" to Marian McPartland. "No, I'm not retiring," says the near-90-year-old jazz pianist. "It's so silly. When people asked Duke Ellington, ‘When are you going to retire?' He said, ‘Retire to what?' And that's what I say. To me, retire means just waiting to die. Or you get in a Winnebago, drive to Florida, and play shuffleboard. I don't want to do that. I've got a job."

Actually, she's holding down two jobs at the moment. As the host of NPR's Peabody Award-winning Piano Jazz, she's been delighting listeners for thirty years, trading fours with artists such as Oscar Peterson, Tony Bennett, Burt Bacharach, and Diana Krall.

When she's not jazzing up the airwaves, Marian continues to compose and record. She's recently written her first symphonic piece, "A Portrait of Rachel Carson." And in March, she releases "Twilight World," a beautifully reflective album of originals and ballads such as "Alfie" and "How Deep Is The Ocean?"

Marian allows that the slower tempos may be a concession to hitting the nonagenarian mark. "I've got arthritis in my knees and hands. I can't play all those fast runs like I used to. But I think I'm playing better. I've learned the art of less is more."

The first lady of jazz has definitely lived what you might call a more-is-more life. Born Margaret Marian Turner on March 20, 1918 in Slough, England, she hopped up onto the piano bench at age 3. "My mother was playing a Chopin piece and didn't even know I was listening," Marian recalls. "And I tried to play the same piece, and it seemed that was what I always did from then on, was play piano. I just picked up tunes from the radio, strictly by ear."

Early influences included Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Fats Waller. After a stint at music school, Marian hit the British vaudeville circuit. "I was approached by a guy who was putting together a four-piano act," she says. "Of course, I was thrilled. But my parents were horrified. My father tried to bribe me with a thousand pounds if I wouldn't go on the road. My mother said, ‘Oh, I don't know what will become of you. You'll marry a musician and live in an attic.'"

Marian pauses, then chuckles. "Which I did, of course."

She fell in love with jazz cornetist Jimmy McPartland while performing in the USO for Allied Forces during World War II. They got hitched in a military government building. "Not a very glamorous place," laughs Marian. After the war, the couple moved to the aforementioned attic—"actually, a not-so-great apartment"—in Chicago.

"If it wasn't for Jimmy, I never would've got started at all," Marian says. "He kept saying, ‘You should have your own group.' He helped me get set up. He was the most un-jealous person you could imagine, because I wound up getting more gigs than he did, although we always worked together here and there until the end of his life." He died in 1991.

The couple followed their muses to Manhattan in 1949, where Marian started a decade-long residency at the Hickory House, a club on storied 52^nd Street. She says, "It was a great place to play, and because of its location, you could go to hear other music. Birdland was two blocks away, and when we took a break, we'd run over to hear whoever was playing—Stan Kenton, Bud Powell. We would finish at three, and I would rush down to the Village Vanguard to hear Bill Evans, who worked until four."

Was it hard being a woman in the man's world of jazz? "I had Jimmy on my side, so I didn't get bothered too much," she says. "Sometimes I'd hear, ‘You play very aggressively for a woman.' I'd say, ‘Well, women have to be strong, doing all the laundry and handling babies. Why can't we be strong at the piano?'"

As Elvis and the Beatles turned the musical tides in the ‘60s, Marian sought creative outlets beyond the club scene. A morning jazz show on New York's Pacifica radio eventually led to NPR giving her Piano Jazz, which debuted in June 1978.

"I thought, ‘This will be something I can do for a few months,'" she recalls. "Then all of a sudden it went on for years."

The long-running program sparkles with Marian's encyclopedic knowledge of the Great American Songbook, and her improvised rapport with guests. "The show always sounded very relaxed," she agrees. "We didn't have any of it laid out. It's still that way, except now we've added so much more than piano players—guitarists, singers, horn players."

This has included rock acts like Steely Dan and Elvis Costello, which has angered some jazz purist listeners. Marian is dismissive. "It's important to stretch the boundaries a bit, not just be conservative and predictable. You have to keep looking to the future, not just to the past."

This forward-thinking attitude is one of the qualities she cites as a possible reason for her own longevity. "That and being busy, always having something to do. I don't drink anymore. I used to a bit, but I gave that up. I have never smoked. That probably has something to do with it, too."

As Marian looks ahead to another decade of jazz, she plans to keep doing what's brought her the most joy in life. "Just playing gigs," she says. "I figure as long as I have my brain and my two hands and can still play; that's all I need."

Marian turns 90 on March 20. Click here to read birthday tributes from Tony Bennett, Burt Bacharach, Linda Ronstadt, and other musicians.

A freelance writer in Nashville, Tenn., Bill DeMain has talked with hundreds of artists. His radio deejay dad interviewed Marian in the 1950s.

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