Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 235 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Three great keyboardists and composers share the same birthday today, so I’m throwing a party for all of them. According to many music historians, Scott Joplin was born on Nov. 24, 1868. Theodore Shaw Wilson, known to the world as Teddy Wilson, was born on Nov. 24, 1912. And William Strethen Davis, who used the stage name Wild Bill Davis, joined our world on Nov. 24, 1918.
Scott Joplin was the first member of this distinguished trio to be born. Though some researchers dispute the actual year of his birth and even the day he was born, I’m going to stick with the day his birth is usually celebrated.
Here’s a quick eight-minute video biography:
And here’s his biography from Musician Guide:
As Johann Strauss is to the waltz and John Philip Sousa is to the march, so is Scott Joplin to ragtime: its guru, chief champion, the figure most closely associated with its composition. It was Joplin’s short, hard-driving melodies–and the syncopated backbone he furnished them–that helped define the musical parameters of ragtime, a style that gave voice to the African-American experience during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sadly, for all his accomplishments in putting a new musical form on the map, Joplin spent his final years madly obsessed with a fruitless crusade to enter, if not conquer, another arena: opera, the staid, classical venue accepted by a white community that had for so long ridiculed ragtime as cheap, vulgar, and facile black music.
Many of the details of Joplin’s life, like much of his music, have been lost to history. He was born November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, a small city straddling the border of Texas and Arkansas. Joplin’s father, Giles, was a railroad laborer who was born into slavery and obtained his freedom five years before his son’s birth. Florence Givens Joplin was a freeborn black woman who worked as a laundress when not taking care of her children. Like many in the black community, the Joplins saw in music a rewarding tool of expression, and the talented family was sought out to perform at weddings, funerals, and parties. Scott, whose first foray into the world of scales and half notes came on the guitar, discovered a richer lyrical agent in his neighbor’s piano. At first, Giles Joplin was concerned that music would sidetrack his son from a solid, wage-earning trade, but he saw the clear inventive genius in Scott, who, by the time he was 11, was playing and improvising with unbelievable smoothness. A local German musician, similarly entranced with Scott Joplin’s gift, gave the boy free lessons, teaching the works of European composers, as well as the nuts and bolts of musical theory and harmony.
In a move not uncommon for young blacks at the time, Joplin left home in his early teens, working as an itinerant pianist at the honky-tonks and salons of the Midwest, South, and Southwest. Although some revisionist historians have placed the birth of ragtime at the feet of white composers, such as Irving Berlin, who published “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911, the true origin of the music was to be found in these low-rent music halls. In explaining the black roots of the musical form, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis wrote in They All Played Ragtime, “Piano ragtime was developed by the Negro from folk melodies and from the syncopations of the plantation banjos. As it grew, it carried its basic principle of displaced accents played against a regular meter to a very high degree of elaboration.” The signature fast and frenetic pace of ragtime reflected the jubilant side of the black experience–compared with the melancholy-heavy blues–and the music became, according to Blesh and Janis, America’s “most original artistic creation.”
Joplin’s story continues via Biography:
Writing Huge Hit: ‘Maple Leaf Rag’
Joplin studied music at Sedalia’s George R. Smith College for Negroes during the 1890s and also worked as a teacher and mentor to other ragtime musicians. He published his first piano rag, “Original Rags,” in the late 1890s, but was made to share credit with another arranger. Joplin then worked with a lawyer to ensure that he would receive a one-cent royalty of every sheet-music copy sold of his next composition, “The Maple Leaf Rag.” In 1899, Joplin partnered with publisher John Stark to push the tune. Though sales were initially slight, it went on to become the biggest ragtime song ever, eventually selling more than a million copies.
Joplin focused on composing more ragtime works, with the genre taking the country by storm and Joplin earning acclaim for his artistry. Some of Joplin’s published compositions over the years included “The Entertainer,” “Peacherine Rag,” “Cleopha,” “The Chrysanthemum,” “The Ragtime Dance,” “Heliotrope Bouquet,” “Solace” and “Euphonic Sounds.”
Opera Ambitions
Joplin was intensely concerned with making sure the genre received its proper due, taking note of the disparaging comments made by some white critics due to the music’s African American origins and radical form. As such, he published a 1908 series that broke down the complexities of ragtime form for students: The School of Ragtime: Six Exercises for Piano.
Joplin also aspired to produce long-form works. He published the ballet Rag Time Dance in 1902 and created his first opera, A Guest of Honor, for a Midwestern tour in 1903. The production was shut down due partially to the theft of box-office receipts, with Joplin ultimately dealing with great financial losses.
He died on April 1, 1917, in New York City—broke and afflicted with tertiary syphilis. He is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in East Elmhurst, Queens, where a small ceremony is held for him each year.
This 12-minute Polyphonic video takes a close look at the roots of ragtime and syncopation, as well as Joplin’s life and career.
While a film reviewer and I agree that the 1977 Scott Joplin biopic starring Billy Dee Williams is a pass, there is one great scene:
I wonder if there is anyone who has never heard some version of Joplin’s “The Entertainer”?
Our next piano legend is the great swing-era pianist, conductor, composer, and arranger Teddy Wilson. Roger Kimmel Smith at The Syncopated Times, details his beginnings:
Theodore Shaw Wilson, born November 24, 1912, in Austin, Texas, was the child of two accomplished educators. When he was six, the family moved to Alabama, where his father had been hired to head the English department at the famous Tuskegee Institute. Tuskegee’s longtime leader, Booker T. Washington, had died just a few years earlier. Wilson’s mother also taught at the school and later became head librarian. Teaching basic literacy to adult blacks “required a great deal of tact and insight on the part of the teacher,” Wilson recalls in his memoir, Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz, “but my mother fortunately possessed these qualities in ample measure.”
Wilson received his elementary and secondary education at Tuskegee, and began music lessons around age seven, along with older brother Gus. He learned piano first, then violin, oboe, and clarinet. Around 1927, when he was 14, he got his first exposure to jazz on gramophone records such as Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer’s “Singin’ the Blues.” That summer on vacation in Detroit, the brothers heard McKinney’s Cotton Pickers at the Graystone Ballroom. They were both hooked and became dead set on musical careers.
Pearl Wilson demanded her younger son give college a try first, so Teddy dutifully matriculated at Talladega College in Alabama. After one year studying music theory, he got his mother’s blessing to join Gus in Detroit. Soon they were both members of Speed Webb’s territory band, Gus on trombone, Teddy on piano.
This 10-minute video, which opens with a rousing version of “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” teases that “While on European concert tour with the Dutch Swing College Band in 1972, Teddy Wilson talks about his piano playing and which piano players inspired him the most: Handful of keys – Fats Waller, Rosetta – Earl Hines, Tea for two – Art Tatum.”
AllAboutJazz continues his story:
He traveled to New York in 1933 to join Benny Carter’s orchestra, the Chocolate Dandies. After Carter disbanded the following year to take a position as arranger with Goodman’s band Wilson worked with an all-star group led by Red Norvo in 1934 and with Willie Bryant’s band during 1934 and 1935. He met Goodman in 1935 and in 1936 was asked to join the bandleader’s trio, which also included drummer Gene Krupa. Lionel Hampton joined soon after, making it a quartet. Wilson became the first African-American publicly featured in Goodman’s line-up.
During his time with Goodman, Wilson put together several small groups for recording sessions, and began a long career as a freelance recording artist that culminated in his marvelous series of discs with Billie Holiday. Other sessions featured such artists as Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Ward, and Harry James. Wilson left Goodman in 1939 to form his own big band, which included such top musicians as Doc Cheatham, Ben Webster, Rudy Powell, and Hal Baker. Thelma Carpenter was vocalist. Wilson’s subtle style failed to win over audiences, however, who often complained that his orchestra sounded ”too white.” He disbanded the group after only a year and formed a sextet that played regularly at the Cafe Society in New York from 1940 to 1946.
After 1946 Wilson worked mostly as a soloist or in a trio. In 1946 he became a staff musician for CBS radio and operated his own music school, and produced a series of recordings, the “Teddy Wilson School for Pianists,” (reissued on Mosaic) to demonstrate various elements of jazz piano.
Listening to a 19-year-old Ella Fitzgerald sing with Wilson in 1936 is fascinating:
The following year, Wilson recorded with a 22-year-old Billie Holiday:
Jazz radio host Leigh Kammen interviewed Wilson, though the date this 14-minute program was recorded is unknown
Wilson’s life also had a lesser-known political element, as detailed in his Austin Jazz Society bio:
He was sometimes called the “Marxist Mozart,” due to his support for left-wing causes. He performed in benefit concerts for The New Masses journal and for Russian War Relief. Later, the FBI suspended Wilson’s performing activities on broadcast, radio, and social activities, alleging that he was involved in Communism.
One of my favorite albums features Wilson playing with the great Lester Young, who was known as “Pres.”
Our third pianist in today’s trio, Wild Bill Davis is probably more well-known for his work not on keyboards but on the manuals and the pedalboard of the organ
Boppinbob’s blog From The Vaults has a detailed bio:
Davis was born in Glasgow, Missouri but the Davis family moved to Parsons, Kansas, while Bill was still a baby. His mother was a piano teacher and she taught her son intermittently – he was never very interested – until an orphaned relative came to live with the Davises and brought a Victrola with him, along with some Fats Waller records.
In 1937 Davis won a music scholarship to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, after two years transferring to Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Davis originally played guitar and wrote arrangements for Milt Larkin’s Texas-based big band during 1939–1942, a band which included Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, and Tom Archia on horns. After leaving the Larkin orchestra, Davis worked in Chicago as a pianist, recording with Buster Bennett in 1945. He also wrote arrangements for Earl Hines and for Sarah Vaughan.
He played a crucial role as the pianist-arranger in Jordan’s Tympany Five (1945–1947) at the peak of their success. After leaving Jordan, he returned to Chicago for a time, recording again with Buster Bennett and working with Claude McLin. After switching from piano to organ, Davis moved to the East Coast. In 1950, he began leading an influential trio of organ, guitar, and drums, which recorded for OKeh Records. Davis led the way for Milt Buckner, Bill Doggett, Jimmy Smith and the multitude of pianists who switched allegiance. In the early days Davis suffered criticism from churchgoers who considered the instrument had sacred connections. “Who wants a church organist in a night club?” But the church organ is a mere wind instrument and the Hammond could achieve all-pervading power through the use of electricity.Bill Davis, paradoxically, was a quiet and gentle person who completely belied his nickname “Wild Bill”. But when it came to music Davis was transformed. He will best be remembered for his foundation- shattering arrangement of “April In Paris”, written for and recorded by the Count Basie band of the Fifties. The arrangement alone forced the band to swing, not that it needed any coercion, and the recording was probably Basie’s biggest ever hit, copied to this day by big bands across the world.
Here’s Duke Ellington introducing Davis, who orchestrated Count Basie’s 1955 rendition of “April in Paris” and performed it live in Berlin in 1969.
From Davis’ obit in The Independent:
“I finally joined Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five in 1945. He was about at his peak then. At first I worked for him as an arranger, writing all his things like ‘Choo, Choo, Ch’Boogie’ and ‘Don’t Worry ‘Bout That Mule’. One of the first engagements I played for him was at the club Zanzibar, in New York. We were there three months, on the same bill as Duke Ellington, and that was when I got to know Duke. ‘Love You Madly’ was one of two arrangements I remember doing for him.”
The Hammond Company had been engaged on war contracts and hadn’t been making organs: “When I ordered mine in 1945, I had to wait almost two years to get it. It cost me $2,290 and it was a gamble, absolutely. I was making $175 a week when I left Louis, and I started out on organ making $45 a week.” He rejoined Jordan, this time on organ, in 1950, but from 1951 onwards worked in the leading clubs with his own trio and later in Europe.
As the leading player of the Hammond, Davis became much in demand in the recording studios and made fine albums with Ella Fitzgerald (1963) and with another long-time friend, the Ellington alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, with whom he worked often during the Sixties. Hodges liked the freedom of working with the Davis trio as opposed to the more demanding surroundings of the Ellington orchestra. Davis played a prominent part in Ellington’s 1970 “Blues For New Orleans” which was a feature for Hodges and, since he died a few days later, his last recording for Ellington.
Relax and enjoy Davis and Johnny Hodges’ 1965 album “Con-Soul And Sax”:
It’s appropriate to close this birthday tribute with Davis’ cover of “That’s All.” But rest assured, there will be lots more music in the comments section below.
