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452 lost sounds formed a capella as on his haunting 1939 Columbia. A copy in my collection plays at 78 rpm but is pressed in vinyl, like an LP. The Angel-Mo’ disc had very limited distribution, perhaps at only one store in Boston, and is unknown to most collectors .29 In 1948 Hayes published a book of his arrangements of spirituals, titled My Songs: AfroAmerican Religious Folk Songs. In 1950 he was appointed to the music faculty of Boston University. Hayes resumed recording on a larger scale during the 1950s, producing several LPs. In 1953 he recorded A Roland Hayes Recital at Telavix which was issued on the small A-440 label (later renamed Heritage). Once again Reginald Boardman was his accompanist. This led to a contract with the larger Vanguard label, which in 1954 commissioned an ambitious double-LP set called Six Centuries of Song. As suggested by the title, the repertoire ranged from the work of fourteenth-century French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut to African American spirituals, as well as oddities such as the aforementioned “Xango.” Another Vanguard LP followed in 1955, The Life of Christ in Folksongs, and a third in 1956, My Songs. Despite his advancing age Hayes continued to perform, touring England, Holland , and Denmark in 1954. In 1955 he began an association with Boston record collector and audio engineer Stephen Fassett, who recorded many of his concerts during the next twelve years. A few selections from these tapes were released on CD in the 1990s.30 A major concert was staged at Carnegie Hall in 1962 to benefit black colleges. In the mid-1960s Hayes sometimes appeared with his daughter, Afrika, a soprano. Roland Hayes gave his last concert in 1973 at the age of eighty-five, at the Longly School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was singing the familiar “Lit’l Boy” but when he reached the middle verse, he forgot the words. His longtime accompanist Reginald Boardman tried to call the words to him, but Hayes could not hear. Then Afrika whispered them to him, and he smiled and went on with the lyric: “Lit’l boy, how old are you?” It was time to retire.31 Roland Hayes passed away on January 1, 1977, in Boston, at the age of eightynine .32 He had spent his long life opening doors, and breaking down the barriers that lesser-minded people placed in his path and the paths of others of his race. His historic 1917–18 Columbias, the first recordings of concert music by an African American , are a landmark in the history of music in the United States. 31 The Four Harmony Kings Male quartets specializing in close harmony were quite popular at the turn of the twentieth century. Today we think of this style of singing as “barbershop,” but there were many variations at the time and almost every type of music was performed by quartets. African Americans were well represented in the field. As one early study commented, “Pick up four colored boys or young men anywhere and the chances are ninety out of a hundred that you have a quartet. Let one of them sing the melody 05.335-496_Broo 12/22/03, 1:43 PM 452 453 and the others will naturally find the parts. Indeed it may be said that all male Negro youth of the United States is divided into quartets.”1 By the 1920s the vogue for popular quartets was beginning to subside, but that is when one particular black quartet achieved its greatest fame. The Four Harmony Kings, an outgrowth of a gospel group, hit the big time in the Broadway musical Shuffle Along in 1921, and enjoyed a long career thereafter, performing in Europe and America. They also recorded for several labels. Little is known about the early life of the group’s founder, William A. Hann, other than that he was born about 1881.2 A basso profundo, he was by the early 1910s touring the Midwest on a chautauqua circuit managed by Edward Thomas. Based on the scraps of information that can be found, it appears that he originally sang with a group called the Midland Jubilee Singers, which later became known as Hann’s Jubilee Singers. This was the group that gave a young Indianapolis boy named Noble Sissle his first professional experience around 1911 or 1912. Sissle recalled that the group traveled from Denver to New York City. An undated photo of...

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