Emma Kelly was born on Dec. 17, 1918  in Statesboro, Georgia. Under her mother’s tutelage she started playing the piano at age four. As a young mother of several children she started playing for money in nightclubs even though she was a tea toting Baptist. She became known as the "Lady of 6,000 Songs" after Johnny Mercer, who, after challenging her to play numerous songs, estimated she knew 6,000 songs from memory. She was made famous by the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" authored by John Berendt. He devoted an entire chapter to the singer and pianist. Later when a movie of the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was made the director Clint Eastwood asked her to play herself in the movie. This recognition made her Savannah nightclub act a must-see for tourists. She played weekly at Ben Tucker’s Hard Hearted Hannahs.  Ben Tucker, who performed with Kelly for years, called her "The Library of Congress" because she knew so many tunes.
Emma Kelly at Georgia Music Hall of Fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vAiCv_CcOA

        Berendt writes of her notoriety "Most of the highway patrolmen knew Emma's car, and when it zoomed past them late at night doing 80 or 90, they generally let it go," Berendt writes. "Emma had the greatest compassion for the occasional rookie cop who would unknowingly pull her over, siren blaring, blue lights flashing. She would roll down the window and say softly, 'You must be new.' "In 1998 she was   inducted in the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame along with the Allman Brothers Band. Today a theater in Statesboro is named after her. She died on Jan. 17, 2001
At her funeral reception at a country club a celebration of Emma's life was held. Ben Tucker thumped the strings of his bass in a up-tempo tribute to Emma Kelly. Talking over the music, one guest said she was impressed that she lost her composure only once during the service.  Lucile Lansing caught the red-eye flight from Seattle when she heard of her friend's death."I felt I could tell her anything," Lansing said. "When you were around her, you knew she loved you. ... Music poured out of every pore in her body. I'd like to leave one-hundredth of the legacy she lived." ('The Lady of 6,000 Songs' dies by Gene Downs Savannah Morning News).
      To bring Savannah’s story closer to contemporary times we have been home to two well-known rappers.  Camoflauge (i.e, Jason Johnson) was born December 9, 1981 in Savannah’s Hitch Village a low income government housing. Camoflauge probably misspelt his stage name to avoid confusion with the notorious New Orleans rapper Mac the Camouflage Assassin. His first album Crime Pays sold 20,000 copies. This was an album he released with the hip-hop group Crime Affiliates. His first solo album When I Represent, sold over 50,000 copies. He was offered a major deal with Universal Music Group after these successes. But because he was arrested for drug possession they took the offer back. The charges were later dropped. During his career he opened for rap acts such as Master P, Ice-T, Pastor Troy, Birdman, Trick Daddy, and Ludacris.  His life served as inspiration for his art. He had a police record that included drug violations and a murder charge. He was held for three months in the Chatham County Jail in 2000 in connection with the shooting of Kenneth "Boo" Capers, but he was not indicted. During that period he wrote most of his first major release album, Strictly 4 da Streets: Drugs Sex and Violence, Vol. 1. He said of this album: "This is really from my heart to the pen. I was trying to write all about my life, all about me, all about the streets. Everything I know about the streets and everything I've been through." (http://www.last.fm/music/Camoflauge/+wiki).His last album, Keepin It Real, was released in August 2002. After being shot he moved to the surburbs in Bryan County to escape the environs of Savannah and raise his children. He was gunned down outside of Pure Pain Recording Studio (a studio in Savannah) in May 2003 while walking his toddler son. He was twenty-one years old. The police have never found his murderer\s.
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Camoflauge's Music Video: ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef1r4pxRQjc

            Big Boi (i.e,Antwan André Patton) was born on February 1, 1975 in Savannah where spent his childhood. He attended Jenkins High School here in Savannah. He moved to Atlanta where he was to become an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and actor. He is one of the two parts of of American hip hop duo Outkast alongside André 3000Patton. He met André "3000" Benjamin while attending Tri Cities High School a visual and arts magnet in the early-1990s. OutKast  has released six studio-albums and won six Grammy Awards. They have won Grammys for hit songs “Hey Ya!” and “Ms. Jackson”. After fifteen years the groups broke up in 2007.
          Since the breakup of OutKast Big Boi has been involved in artistic and entrepreneurial activities such as the following: a collaboration on a new show with the Atlanta Ballet. The show, entitled big, premiered at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, April 10–13, 2008 and in 2010, Big Boi launched a Chuck Taylor sneaker with Converse with such features as the title of his solo album debut: "Sir Lucious Left Foot" on the left, and "Son of Chico Dusty" on the right and also included was a Big Boi logo on the tongue of the shoe.
        In 2006, Big Boi founded the Big Kidz Foundation a nonprofit organization to help youth started in Atlanta The organization’s mission is to support youth developmental projects and encourage cultural, musical, and literary expression.  In January 2010, Big Boi launched the Big Kidz Foundation in Savannah, Georgia.

OutKast Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JfEJq56IwI

        Savannah Music Festival will have its 27th season this year. According to the festival’s website ‘it is Georgia’s largest musical arts event and one of the most distinctive cross-genre music festivals in the world. As a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to inspiring and growing audiences of all ages through engagement with the musical arts, we advance our vision through an array of musical performances that include dance, film, and narrative programs.’ Gramophone Magazine‘s has said it is one of the “Best Events Worldwide” in March 2010. Travel and Leisure has said ‘……..Programs showcase the world’s best performers, some making American debuts, at intimate venues throughout the city’s historic district. You won’t feel closer to the music-making than in Savannah.” The festival not only brings new and old accomplished performers alike to Savannah it has three of the world’s respected musicians as Associate Artistic Director Daniel Hope, Associate Artistic Director of Jazz Music Marcus Roberts and Acoustic Music Seminar Director Mike Marshall. It is appropriate that the Savannah Music Festival is acting as a synergetic place for artists and original works as Savannah’s history of music is broad and wide.

Savannah Music Festival Radio Show: http://www.savannahmusicfestival.org/category/radio/
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       With these last examples I conclude a look at our wonderful heritage of music. Of course Savannah’s history of music is broader and deeper than I have gone into here. For instance I have not mentioned the Voice Festival led by world famous baritone Sherrill Milnes and Maria Zouves, Stopover Music Festival, and the Savannah Philharmonic to name three. But hey that is a story for another day.

   We continue to look at some of Savannah’s contributions to the world of music. We begin by looking at three musicians and conclude with one music festival.  
 
​       Trummy Young was born January 12, 1912 here in Savannah, Georgia. Young was originally a trumpeter, but showed his diversity when he played a trombone for his professional debut in 1928, Young early on joined Jimmie Lunceford's orchestra, in which he played from 1937 to 1943. With Sy Oliver, he wrote "T'ain't What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)", a hit for Ella Fitzgerald in 1939.] He had many other noted compositions even one that Savannahian Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to "Trav'lin' Light". In 1945 he joined Benny Goodman’s band. He soloed on the number 2 hit of the day "Gotta Be This or That".  In 1952 he joined the Louis Armstrong All-Stars and stayed a dozen years even preforming in the 1956 musical High Society. Trummy Young on his trombone challenged Armstrong. One of their best pieces together was a 1954 recording of "St. Louis Blues”. After a long and masterful career he died at 72 years of age in Honolulu.

Trummy Young on trombone with Louis Armstrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o1EcbVxMR0

        Johnny Mercer is probably Savannah’s best and most prolific musician.  He has a theater named after him, a statue made of him, a bench in Johnson Square in his honor, and a historical marker for his childhood home. He was born in Savannah on Nov 18, 1909 - Jun 25, 1976 (age 66), His song Moon River is the unofficial anthem of Savannah. He wrote the lyrics to more than 1500 songs, including ninety compositions for movies and six Broadway shows, He wrote songs as Accentuate the Positive, That Old Black Magic, One For My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine, Lazy Bones and Skylark with Hoagy Carmichael; I'm an Old Cowhand, I Remember You, Jeepers Creepers, When a Woman Loves a Man, and Fools Rush In. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations, he won for such songs as In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening also done with Hoagy Carmichael, in 1951; Moon River in 1961 with Henry Mancini; and Days of Wine and Roses again with Mancini, in 1962. On the radio he sang with Benny Goodman and had his own shows, including Johnny Mercer's Music Shop.  As if this was not enough to ensure his mention among the great American musicians, he also founded Capitol Records. He helped in the early careers of stars such as Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole.  He was buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.
Johnny Mercer in one of his television shows: ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOVgCB_AnYE
           
​        Ben Tucker was born December 13, 1930 in Brentwood, Tennessee. Tucker played the upright bass and was an accomplished jazz musician. He regularly played with some of the most accomplished of his day Quincy Jones, Buddy Rich and Peggy Lee to name some. He was also the composer of Coming Home Baby a song that Mel Torme would sing and it his version landed on the top 40. But Tucker’s contribution to Savannah was instrumental to the local Jazz scene. He moved to Savannah when he learned of the chance to buy two radio stations there in 1972. The two stations would become the radio space for Jazz. WSOK attracting at its peak over 400,000 listeners to become the number one station in Savannah. He also was owner and was found playing for eight years at the heralded nightclub Hard Hearted Hannah. Tucker and his two hundred year old Bass he called Bertha would continue to play in Savannah and becoming an icon in the Jazz music scene. Tucker became an activist in Savannah and the United States serving on the Advisory Committee of the Arts for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performance Art and on the Georgia Fair Employment Practices Advisory Board from 1979-1983. Because of his music and activism he became one of Savannah’s most revered citizens. ‘One of the most interesting things about playing with Ben was he was so beloved by so many people in Savannah who had met him at his club or whose weddings he had played,’ said Howard Paul, a jazz guitarist and president/CEO of Benedetto Guitars who played and recorded with Mr. Tucker for more than 20 years. ‘You could count on being interrupted at least three times in a song because Savannahians would walk up and shake his hand while we were playing.’ He died on June 4, 2013 when his golf cart was hit by a speeding car On Hutchinson Island. His funeral was held in high Jazz Style as ‘the crowd spilled out of the air-conditioned church and into a muggy, steamy Bull Street at Wright Square. It followed a jazz band playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” and the hearse carrying Mr. Tucker’s flag-draped casket in a street procession to Ellis Square — a jazz funeral in its truest form.’(SMN 12-15-15). Tucker was indeed a Savannah Great.

Ben Tucke Jazz Funeral:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbFToH0s4FU 
David Sanborn playing Tucker's 'Coming Home Baby': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1wFO09oCEw

      Savannah is known for its festival so it is no surprise that they have great musical festivals. One of the most prestigious is the American Traditions Competition established to provide a forum for showcasing tomorrow's vocal talents and superstars, and to celebrate the diverse repertoire of standard, classic American music. The American Traditions Competition, in 2011,  became an independent, nonprofit organization, and we continue to attract new talent celebrating the best of classic American Music. With prize money of $12,000 for first place and Prizes for other prizes of $14,000. There are prizes for the best performance of a Johnny Mercer song in the Quarter or Semi finals or the Ben Tucker Jazz Award for best performance of a Jazz song in either Quarter or Semi finals. This competition has been going for twenty-four years.
Stephen Dobson one of the cast of the Savannah Theater Group in performance at American Traditions Competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1IrylD5PAw&feature=youtu.be

We will conclude next time by bringing us to the contemporary era as we continue to see the development of Savannah’s contributions to the world of music.

​Savannah: Music to My Ears
      Savannah may not be Motown but it still has plenty of music history in the next two or three editions of historical rumninations of this blog I hope to help people remember or discover Savannah’s contributions to the music world. Savannah and music have had a diverse and bountiful relationship. We start with Tom Turpin one of the more influential yet lesser known musical leaders. Turpin was born in Savannah November 18, 1871 where he taught himself the piano. He probably spent many a day and night on what is now Martin Luther King Jr but back in the day it was West Broad Street home of the Savannah’s African-American business and entertainment district. He would leave Savannah sometime near his tenth year with his father a Reconstruction politician fleeing the Deep South. He would become the first African-American to publish a rag at age twenty-six: “Harlem Rag” in 1897.
​      He had written “Harlem Rag” in 1892 soon after he left Savannah and opened a saloon in St. Louis. This rag was written a year before the introduction of rag to the World at the 1893 World’s Fair. Turpin was a huge man at least six feet weighing over three hundred pounds and it is said they raised the piano on blocks so he could play standing and avoid his protruding stomach. His influence on the local music scene and his published “St. Louis Rag” led him to become known as the ‘Father of St. Louis Ragtime’. His Rosebud Café was the gathering place for ragtime musicians passing through St. Louis. He would write several other rags but with his brother Charles he became a major presence in St. Louis opening gambling houses, dance halls, sporting houses and other entertainment establishments.  He even served as a constable.
​      Scott Joplin the most recognized ragtime musician settled in St. Louis and met Turpin and they played together presumably rag. The only remnants of Turpin a leader of the ragtime musical style in Savannah is a street that is named after him (a street I could not find, if you know where it is let me know).

Hear Tom Turpin’s St. Louis Rag here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Ym69BvLY8
     
      Whereas Tom Turpin was born here James Pierpont would compose his most renowned work here. James was born on April 25, 1822 in Massachusetts. His father was the famed abolitionist Unitarian preacher John Pierpont. His older brother John Pierpont Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps but James became the family Black sheep. He married a woman named Millicent Cowee but left his wife and children with his father in Medford, Mass. in 1849 to pursue his fortune in San Francisco during the gold rush. Now to abandon your wife and children for the gold rush was not totally unheard of but after he went broke and returned east he did not head for Medford where his wife was but Savannah where his brother was the new minister of the Unitarian Church there. It was about this time he wrote , “The Returned Californian” which opens with the line "oh! i'm going far away from my creditors just now, i ain't the tin to pay 'em." In Savannah he became the Unitarian Church organist and taught singing lessons. It is here in Savannah missing the snow of New England he wrote one of the most famous Christmas songs, ‘The One Horse Open Sleigh’ or as it was later called ‘Jingle Bells’.
       His wife Millicent died in 1856 which was fortunate because as the rumors went one of his musical students Eliza Jane Purse became pregnant. This rumor would have been multiplied as an offense if he had still been married especially since she was the daughter of then mayor of Savannah Thomas Purse. They married in August of 1857. In that same month Jingle Bells was published. It was a good year for James. In 1859 the Unitarian church closed down because of the close connections Unitarianism had with abolitionism (only two southern Unitarian churches survived the Civil War in Charleston and New Orleans). His brother returned to New England James stayed. Surely much to the Chagrin of his abolitionist’s father, who was still the custodian of James and Millicent’s children, he would join the Confederate cause.
​       He joined the Confederate Army serving in the cavalier with the Georgia Lamar Rangers. He became the troubadour of the Confederate Army writing at least three songs for the Confederacy respectively ‘Our Battle Flag’, ‘Strike for the South’, and ‘We Conquer or Die’. All of this most of pleased his father who served the Union army as a chaplain. One can only imagine what his father thought if he ever heard one of his son’s ditties during the War.
​       James would become a prolific song writer of his day but he never learned how to manage his money and was always in financial trouble. James died on August 5, 1893 and per his request was buried beside his brother-in-law Thomas Purse who had died in the Battle of Bull Run. Today a historical marker in honor of his writing of Jingle Bells stands in front of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

​Excuse the flag but here is ‘We Conquer or Die’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U0MlNiCQg0
     
​       While James Pierpont sullied the name of organist everywhere Lowell Mason redeemed it. Lowell Mason was born in Medfield, Massachusetts on January 8, 1792. He grew up with an ardor for music. But that is not what led him to Savannah where he would live for fifteen years. He had a job as a bank clerk. But he continued his musical pursuits and took lessons from a local German teacher and composed his own music. Although he persistently submitted music to be published none of his compositions were accepted until 1822. While here he also served as choir leader and organist for the Independent Presbyterian Church. It is said while at Independent Presbyterian he started the first Sunday School for black children. His first published work was a collection of music which was published by the Handel and Hayden Society of Boston it would have over fifteen editions and sell 50,000 copies. It became a standard for choirs and singing schools in New England. He would have made a name for himself but it was published anonymously because he thought it unseemly for a banker to have a career in music.
​      Because of the success he left Savannah and headed to Boston. In Boston Mason became the first music teacher in an American public school, he co-founded the Boston Academy of Music, and became music superintendent for the Boston school system. He would write such popular hymns as ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’, and the hymn made even more famous when a musical group on the Titanic decided to play it while the ship sank ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’. He would when it was all said and done write 1,600 hymns and lay claim to the title ‘The Father of Church Music’. To think it was here in Savannah that he made the notorious journey from reputable banker to horrid musician. A historical marker stands in front of the Independent Presbyterian Church in his honor.

Nearer, My God, to Thee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaxrY1rxZKE

      King Oliver’s time in Savannah was one of Shakespearean tragic proportions. He was considered one of the Greats of Jazz tradition. His life started December 19, 1881 in Louisiana.  He would learn to play the cornet and start one of the first New Orleans Jazz band that was a precursor to the Jazz explosion in the 1920’s in Chicago and other places. He composed as well as being a bandleader and cornet player. He wrote such tunes as "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz".  He once refused the money offer from the Cotton Club to perform regularly there but Duke Ellington accepted the offer and became world renowned. He was always a step away from fame. In the end his hiring and mentoring of a trumpet player named Louis Armstrong made sure his name was not lost to history. Louis Armstrong once said of him "It was my ambition to play as he did. I still think that if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today. He was a creator in his own right."
​      Why he came to Savannah is not entirely clear, maybe a promised gig but his playing days were over because of gum disease when he came here.  Oliver became stranded here and had to pawn his trumpet and finest suits. He struggled to survive running a fruit stall and working as a janitor on West Broad Street. He died in a boarding home alone here on April 8, 1938. His body was brought to New York, where he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, W. C. Handy, and Max Roach, attended his funeral. Today a plaque on West Broad Street honors where he once lived.

Dippermouth Blues: https://my.mail.ru/mail/noskov-56/video/16895/26488.html
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     These are a few of the musicians who came or were born in Savannah in the 19th century. Next time we will pick up the story and look at the 20th century.