Perry's Musical Magazine [partial] (September, 1929)

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48th YEAR Perry’s Musical Magazine. Issued Monthly on the Ist of Each Month. A. W. PERRY'S SONS, Publishers. Entered as Second Class matter, at the Post Office at Sedalia, Mo., under the act March 3, 1879. Change of address should reach this office before the LOth of the month. Where change of address Is desired, the old and new address should be mentioned. Subscriptions may commence with any moarth de LIVES OF GREAT PIANISTS BLIND BOONE A MUSICAL GENIUS WHO WAS GLAD HE WAS BLIND “T would not give a dime to see a mile,” cried Blind Boone, turning upon someone in his audience who said: “It is a pity he is blind, he is so gifted.” John W. Boone did not consider his blindness an affliction, but rather a blessing. He believed that he owed his genius to it. Boone was a negro. Born “under none too auspicious circumstances” in a militia camp, during the Civil War, we are told, and at the age of six he lost his sight; but by some apparently miraculous act of compensation his other faculties be- came proportionately sharpened, so_ that when he died a few months ago in Warrens- burg, Missouri, he left behind him a unique accomplishment as a musician. Boone was a piano-playing marvel, as a correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reminds us. By virtue of an inborn mim- etic gift, plus a patiently cultivated esthetic sense, he could reproduce the most difficult piano compositions with flawless technique and rare motional coloring. The same writ- er continues: Under the name of “Blind Boone,” he traveled all over the earth giving concerts. He made and lost a small fortune, but he never lost a friend. No one ever heard him make a bitter or cynical remark, and he was apparently incapdble of doing an un- kind act. Unlike that other blind prodigy of his race, “Blind Tom,” Boone had a fully de- veloped mentality and a philosophic grasp of the world as he knew it. Life to him was not a terrifying excursion in the dark. It was an experience made up of pleasant sounds and friendly touches. Blind Boone’s mother was a cook for the soldiery and his father a bugler in the Seventh Missouri Militia, when he was born at. Miami; in Saline County. After the war the family settled down in Warrensburg. If the boy’s mother and father had any thoughts of making him a musician, those AN HACER. AUR, WEI NE ods yk Dlatay as WTR tis ch, AR Ma ai Ce i (RRS ee cme Er >, PERRY'S - MUSICAL - MAGAZINE NE ERLE NT TS RENIN EMER TS ie ANSE TS FEAL EA CRORE Sea aS SMENL patie cae ree SEDALIA, MO., SEPTEMBER 1929 thoughts were dispelled when he suffered an attack of brain fever and lost his sight. The only practical thing they could do was to have him taught a trade. With that end in view he was sent to the St. Louis School for the Blind, and was told that with pati- ence he could acquire enough mechanical proficiency to become a broom maker. The boy, however, had all sorts of in- articulate longings and an obvious musical gift. As a ragged urchin around Warrens- burg he had wandered about the _ streets making tunes on a tin whistle. Sometimes they were original, but often they were the popular airs of the day, any one of which he could reproduce after one hearing. The white: people of the town were fond of the lad, both because of his cheerful disposition and his music-making abilities. They would often call him in from the streets, give him cakes and jam, and talk to him, On one occasion he touched a piano for the first time. \ That was the turning-point in the boy’s life. As he afterward described it, the mo- ment was one shot through with magnifi- cent and determining emotions. Through all the rest of his life, he never forgot how he had felt when the vibrations from the piano strings ran up his fingers and arms, and reechoed in his ears. These sensations kept recurring to him at his work-bench in the St. Louis school, until finally he could stand the broom-making apprenticeship no longer, and ran away, becoming a derelict in the city streets. The Post-Dispatch writ- er goes on to tell how he found himself: Feeling his way around with a hickory cane, he wandered into a musical institution and asked to play the piano. He played for a long time—but, while the astonished pupil who had admitted him left the room to tell her instructors about the strange and gifted negro urchin, he became self-con- scious and left. Later he met a conductor of a railroad train who agreed to take him back to War- rensburg. Back in his home town he or- ganized a company of three, composed of himself and two companions of slight musi- cal gifts, but with the wanderlust. These three started out to become modern troubadours, but after knocking around Mis- souri, and enduring many hardships, they were forced to return to Warrensburg, where they would at least be certain of eating fairly regular. But Boone was by no means cured of his desire to become a great musician and to travel. A, few years later, when he was a growing youth, he again took to the road, . but under better circumstances this time. He arranged dates at churches and country schools, and gave a number of piano con- certs. While at Fayette, Missouri, his reputa- tion reached the ears of John Lang, a negro (£4 / \ A} L f ag ae NUMBER 6 contractor of Columbia. Lang was a prom- inent member of the Second Baptist church. [t was near Christmas and the church was plunning an entertainment. Lang went to Fayette and brought Boone to Columbia with him as the feature attraction of. th entertainment. Me Imprest by the boy’s abilities—Boone was then seventeen—Lang broached the idea of their entering a partnership, Lang to handle all the business of an extended road tour. Boone readily agreed, but, since it involved the necessity of Lang’s giving up a profit- able business in Columbia for what seemed a dubious gamble, Lang’s friends, black and white, advised him against it. He stuck to the. plan, however, and as a preliminary step had a professor from a girl’s college at Columbia take Boone in and give him a few mouths’ technical instruction. It was dur- ing that period of study that Boone came in contact with the compositions cf the mas- tls of the piano. After that experience, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, or some com- poser of approximately equal rank, was al- ways represented on his programs. He assimilated these compositions with the same ease as the more popular ones. After one or two hearings he could always reproduce the most difficult cadenza or the most involved series of chords. instructor he picked up a few valuable hints on phrasing and pedaling. He then fared forth to conquer his public. The partnership between the two negroes, the records show, lasted more than forty years, and made both Lang and Boone wealthy, Lang died in Kansas City about eight years ago, and his estate was valued at $110,000. The narrative continues: Before his death Lang wrote a biography of Blind. Boone. Lang knew Boone better than any one else, and after forty years of association he was able to pay him a high tribute. “T have known Boone since he was a boy,” he wrote, “and I can truthfully say that he has not an enemy in the world. As an entertainer I believe him to be the greatest man living today. This is a broad statement, but we can prove this by facts. He has been on the road over forty years, and has given more piano recitals than any other living man. He has never been in a town or city that he did not have a re- turn date to a paying business. . : “Our record shows a continuous period of thirty-nine years of ten months each and usually six concerts a week, making an actual total of 8,650 concerts that he has given. nee “The distance we traveled would average twenty miles a day, or 216,000 miles travel- ed. In the same period we slept in 8,250 beds. We paid to churches, halls, and char- ity an average of $25 a day, or a total of $216,000. From his . (Boone later estimated that —