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Notes 57.1 (2000) 133-134



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Book Review

Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849-1908):
Continually Enslaved

Nineteenth Century


Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849-1908): Continually Enslaved. By Geneva Handy Southall. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999. [xvii, 214 p. ISBN 0-8108-3594-0. $35.]

Biographies of nineteenth-century American musicians have been surprisingly rare, given the plethora of remarkable characters that shaped that lively and eventful century. Black musicians have been largely omitted from even many general histories. In Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849-1908): Continually Enslaved, Geneva Handy Southall begins to address this lacuna in American music history.

Born into slavery on a Georgia plantation, Thomas Greene Wiggins was given the surname of his owner and "guardian," Bethune, but was best known by his stage name, Blind Tom. As perhaps the most famous African American musician of his time, he was for decades a ubiquitous presence in the concert life of the United States. His managers kept him on the road from the age of ten, and he was, in many ways, a product of the age of P. T. Barnum. Promoted as an "untaught child prodigy" or "idiot savant," he was offered up to local "experts" for testing, and reports of his eccentricities often overshadowed accounts of [End Page 133] his prodigious talents. For much of the twentieth century, he remained a curious footnote to his age.

This is the third volume in a biographical trilogy begun twenty years ago. It follows Blind Tom: The Post-Civil War Enslavement of a Black Musical Genius and The Continuing Enslavement of Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1865-1887) (Minneapolis: Challenge Productions, 1979-83). As the titles suggest, these are not critical biographies of the subject but denunciations of the society in which he lived. Southall's primary goal is to show how Blind Tom's owners and promoters exploited him for profit, misrepresented him as an "idiot," and misused his copious talents. In the current volume, she retraces the events of the pianist's early years, passes once again through the height of his career, and charts his decline into obscurity. In an important secondary thread, she discusses many of the era's other black concert musicians. She has examined a wealth of source material ranging from court records to concert reviews, and she writes with passion and considerable knowledge of the subject.

Southall presents her most convincing argument in her examination of how Tom's freedom was denied. She leaves little doubt of the Bethunes' readiness to fight to retain their legal rights over the man who had become their primary source of income. The author's refutation of the claims that Tom was an "idiot" is somewhat less assuring. His alleged idiocy was undoubtedly used to increase the public's interest in him as a phenomenon, but Southall weakens her own argument with numerous references to reports of his erratic, immature, and eccentric behavior. Her assertion that the pianist's ability to study with other musicians provided evidence of his mental competence proves only that he could communicate. The fact that the Bethunes did little but profit from their prodigy also weakens her claim, as it indicates that they worked to develop his talent, even if it was for their own purposes. Manipulative managers were probably not the exception during this time. To argue that Blind Tom would have accomplished more under other circumstances, one needs to compare his situation with that of his contemporaries; if white musicians with less talent were able to accomplish more, Southall should have discussed them. Her exclusion of the larger musical world is indeed regrettable. Southall excels on the rare occasions when she places Blind Tom's activities within the larger context of his time, as when she considers the effect of the economic crisis of 1893.

The reader might wonder whether Southall's new publisher, Scarecrow Press, provided all of the editorial assistance it might have. The illustrations are numerous but poorly reproduced and irregularly captioned. There are few typographical errors, but the prose...

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