The Late Great Roland Hayes

Information provided by Wikipedia Roland Hayes

Roland Hayes (June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977) was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French, German and Italian. Earlier African Americans concert artists were not recorded because in their day recording companies were only interested in a Vaudeville type of singer. Hayes was one of the first to break this barrier and in 1939 he recorded with Columbia. Earlier both Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson had recorded from the classical repertoire. Hayes' predecessors as well-known African Americans concert artists, though not recorded because their performances were not minstrelsy, include Sissieretta Jones and Marie Selika Early years and family Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, on June 3, 1887, to Fannie (née Mann) and William Hayes. Roland's parents were tenant farmers on the plantation where his mother had once been a slave. Roland's father, who was his first music teacher, often took him hunting and taught him to appreciate the musical sounds of nature. When Hayes was aged 11 his father died, and his mother moved the family to Chattanooga, Tennessee. William Hayes claimed to have some Cherokee ancestry, while his maternal great-grandfather, Aba Ougi (also known as Charles) was a chieftain from the Ivory Coast. Aba Ougi was captured and shipped to America in 1790. At Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Curryville (founded by Roland's mother) is where Roland first heard the music he would cherish forever, Negro Spirituals. It was Roland's job to learn new spirituals from the elders and teach them to the congregation. A quote of him talking about beginning his career with a pianist: I happened upon a new method for making iron sash-weights," he said, "and that got me a little raise in pay and a little free time. At that time I had never heard any real music, although I had had some lessons in rhetoric from a backwoods teacher in Georgia. But one day a pianist came to our church in Chattanooga, and I, as a choir member, was asked to sing a solo with him. The pianist liked my voice, and he took me in hand and introduced me to phonograph records by Caruso. That opened the heavens for me. The beauty of what could be done with the voice just overwhelmed me.

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