SAVANNAH: MUSIC TO MY EARS

​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.