John William "Blind" Boone made his first on-stage appearance at the Mallory Opera Hall in Chariton during December of 1881 at the age of 18, just as his career was beginning, and his farewell performance --- a benefit concert at First Christian Church --- during January of 1923, four years before his death at age 63.
Blind Boone's first appearance in Chariton had come only a year after the final performance here of the pianist and composer he was often compared to --- Blind Tom Wiggins. But unlike Wiggins --- thought in retrospect to have been a savant and most likely autistic --- Boone's talents were paired with a friendly and relatable personality that endeared him to his audiences.
That would have been one of the reasons he continued to attract packed houses for his performances here for more than 40 years.
Blind Boone's death of a heart attack on Oct. 4, 1927, at the home of his brother in Warrensburg, Mo., was not noted in the Chariton newspapers, but nine months later --- on July 24, 1928 --- The Leader paid tribute with a very long article that commenced on the front page and spilled over into two inside columns. Headlined, "A musical genius who was glad he was blind," the piece was attributed only to "a staff writer."
It's possible to date some of the incidents included in the article. The interaction with Chariton dentist W. L. Anderson, for example, occurred during a performance at the Temple Theater on Jan. 24, 1912. He performed in Russell during December of 1890, but the visit reported upon in the 1928 article probably was earlier.
In any case, here's the text of the 1928 article --- and it is very long!
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| John Lange & John Boone |
Probably not many of the younger set have ever seen, or really heard about, this distinguished member of the African race, but there are few of the elderly or middle aged who are not well acquainted with the career of Blind Boone, even though they did not get to hear him during one of his visits to this section. And while this sketch may not have the dignified bearing that a thesis over the achievements of some soldier hero, or the eulogy of a master in oratory, would produce, yet it is treating with genius never-the-less.
Long years ago the town and surrounding community of Russell was stirred, somewhat like a twig thrown into the still waters, producing waving ringlets, by the announcement that Blind Boone was coming. Few had ever heard of Blind Boone, but the mere fact that a sightless Negro would perform on the piano at a concert caused a flutter. At that time even an approaching Negro might have created mild excitement, as few only had ever beheld a Negro outside of Civil War veterans although one had previously worked briefly at the R. T. Huston livery barn. But with this announcement there was a ripple of excitement and about everyone secured a ticket to the concert. Mr. Lang was with him and an octoroon with a sweet voice who sang as though late from the ethereal realms. And everyone was carried away in ecstasy. Boone put on a wonderful performance, imitating the thunder storm and sang "Shortenin' Bread," a sort of Negro doggerel timed to the notes. Boone never presented great variety in his concerts and 20 years afterwards the writer heard the same "two favorites" in one of his appearances.
During his career he visited Chariton a number of times. If ever he heard a piece of music rendered, no difference if he had never heard it before, he could perfectly reproduce it. At one time while he was in Chariton, Dr. W. L. Anderson, the dentist, thought to stall him. The doctor was a good musician, and put up a job on Boone, but failed. He knew that Boone would make the challenge, so composed a piece especially for the occasion with three touches at once in it. Boone, of course, could not see the performance, but Dr. Anderson was working on the music with both hands, and touching the keys with his long aquiline nose in the "triple tragedy." Anderson was always full of pranks and must have enjoyed his part of the program immensely. Boone was seen to smile, and as soon as Doc Anderson had finished his stunt he was up and at the piano as though doubly inspired by the spirit of the muses. Both hands played out over the keys in perfect imitation, and then, when it came to the difficult third part down went Boone's proboscis with a melodious chug, keeping perfect rhythm with deft fingers on either hand. The house roared with laughter and applause and Doc. Anderson acknowledged that Boone was the hero of the occasion.
"I would not give a dime to see a mile," cried Blind Boone, turning upon someone in his audience who said, "It is a pity he is so blind, he is so gifted." John W. Boone did not consider his blindness an affliction but rather a blessing. He believed he owned his genius to it. Boone was a Negro, born under none too auspicious circumstances in a military camp during the Civil War, we are told, and at the age of 6 he lost his sight; but by some apparently miraculous act of compensation his other faculties became proportionately sharpened, so that when he died in Warrensburg, Mo., he left behind him a unique accomplishment as a musician.
Boone was a piano playing marvel, as a correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reminds us. By virtue of an inborn mimetic gift, plus a patiently cultivated esthetic sense, he could reproduce the most difficult piano compositions with flawless technique and rare emotional coloring. The same writer continues:
Under the name of "Blind Boone," he traveled all over the earth giving concerts. He made and lost a small fortune, but he never lost a friend. No one has ever heard him make a bitter or cynical remark, and he was apparently incapable of doing an unkind act.
Unlike that other blind prodigy of his race, "Blind Tom," Boone had a fully developed mentality and a philosophic grasp of the world as he knew it. Life to him was not a terrifying excursion in the dark. It was an experience made up of pleasant and friendly touches.
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Blind Boone's mother was a cook for the soldiery and his father a bugler in the Seventh Missouri Militia when he was born at Miami in Saline County. After the war the family settled down in Warrensburg.
If the boy's mother and father had any thoughts of making him a musician, those thoughts were dispelled when he suffered an attack of brain fever and lost his sight. The only practical thing they could do was have him taught a trade. With that end he was sent to the St. Louis School for the Blind, and was told that with patience he could acquire enough mechanical proficiency to become a broom maker.
The boy, however, had all sorts of inarticulate longings and an obvious musical gift. As a ragged urchin around Warrensburg he had wandered about the streets making tunes on a tin whistle. Sometimes they were original, but often they were the popular airs of the day, any one of which he could reproduce after one hearing. The white people of the town were fond of the lad, both because of his cheerful disposition and his music-making abilities. They would often call him in from the streets, give him cakes and jam, and talk to him. On one occasion he touched a piano for the first time.
That was the turning point in the boy's life. As he afterwards described it, the moment was one shot through with magnificent and determining emotions. Through all the rest of his life, he never forgot how he had felt when the vibrations from the piano strings ran up his fingers and arms, and re-echoed in his ears. These sensations kept recurring to him at his work bench in the St. Louis school until finally he could stand the broom-making apprenticeship no longer and ran away, becoming a derelict in the city streets. The Post-Dispatch writer goes on to tell how he found himself.
Feeling his way around with a hickory cane, he wandered into a musical institution and asked to play the piano. He played for a long time --- but, while the astonished pupil who had admitted him left the room to tell her instructors about the strange and gifted Negro urchin, he became self-conscious and left.
Later, he met a conductor of a railroad train who agreed to take him back to Warrensburg. Back in his home town he organized a company of three, composed of himself and two companions of slight musical gifts but with the wanderlust. These three started out to become modern troubadours, but after knocking around Missouri and enduring many hardships they were forced to return to Warrensburg, where they could at least be certain to eat fairly regularly.
But Boone was by no means cured of his desire to became a great musician and to travel. A few years later, when he was a growing youth, he again took to the road, but under better circumstances this time. He arranged dates at churches and country schools and gave a number of piano concerts.
While at Fayette, Mo., his reputation reached the ears of John Lang, a Negro contractor of Columbia. Lang was a prominent member of the Second Baptist Church. It was near Christmas and the church was planning on an entertainment. Lang went to Fayette and brought Boone to Columbia with him as the feature attraction of the entertainment.
Impressed by the boy's abilities --- Boone was then 17 --- Lang broached the idea of their entering a partnership, Lang to handle all the business of an extended road tour. Boone readily agreed, but since it involved the necessity of Lang's giving up a profitable business in Columbia for what seemed a dubious gamble, Lang's friends black and white advised him against it. He stuck to the plan, however, and as a preliminary step had a professor from a girls college at Columbia take Boone in and give him a few months' technical instruction. It was during that period of study that Boone came in contact with the compositions of the masters of the piano. After that experience, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, or some other composed of approximately equal rank, was always represented on his programs.
He assimilated these compositions with the same ease as the more popular ones. After one or two hearigs he could always reproduce the most difficult cadenza or the most involved series of chords. From his instructor he picked up a few valuable hints on phrasing and pedaling. He then fared forth to conquer his public.
The partnership between the two men, the records show, lasted more than 40 years and made both wealthy. Before his death, Lang wrote a biography of Blind Boone. Lang knew Boone better than anyone else, and after 40 years of association he was able to pay him a high tribune.
"I have known Boone since he was a boy," he wrote, "and I can truthfully way that he has not an enemy in the world. As an entertainer I believe him to be the greatest man living today. This is a broad statement, but we can prove this by facts. He has been on the road over 40 years and has given more piano recitals than any other living man. He has never been in a town or city that he did not have a return date to a paying business.
"Our records show a continuous period of 39 years of 10 months each and usually six concerts a week, making an actual total of 8,650 concerts that he has given. The distance we traveled would average 20 miles a day, or 316,000 miles traveled. In the same period we slept in 8,250 beds. We paid to churches, halls and charity an average of $25 a day, or a total of $216,000. (Boone later estimated that churches and charity had profited a half million dollars from his concerts.)
"I am asked many times," continues Lang in his biography, " 'how does Boone keep so well posted on music?' Ever since there have been self-playing pianos, Boone has had one. He has at last succeeded in securing a Cecilian that plays 88 notes. He also has a large musical library --- Beethoven's works, Liszt's, Chopin's, and all of theold masters. He puts in day and night with these. He masters the most difficult pieces in a few hours, and he can produce any ordinary piece of music after hearing it played once. Boone has had more eminent artists play for him than any living man, and he never forgets a voice or the shake of a hand.
"Boone never sulks as did his predecessor, Blind Tom, nor does he allow anyone around him to sulk. His favorite saying is, 'Just as you live, just so you die.' He says time is too short and sweet to please the devil for even one moment. He is always charitable, and many times he has authorized me when I see a deserving person in need to assist that person in his name."
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Retirement did not stop the flood of requests from every section of the country for concerts by the blind pieanist. After a few weeks at home, under pressure of hundreds of letters weekly, he expressed a desire to return to the road, and only the insistence of the physician kept him from doing this. He died suddenly while on a vist to his brother in Warrensburg.
Blind Boone's career took him over Europe twice, we are told, and to all sections of the United States and Canada five times. He closed his 47th annual tour at Virdin, Illinois, May 31, 1917, and then, because of ill health retired to his home in Columbia, Mo. We read further:
Boone was fond of telling stories about himself. One of his favorite stories concerned a trip made by his manager and himself through Nebraska 35 years ago. At that time the Blind Concert Company consisted of Boone and John Lang. They carried their own piano and moved it from town to town in a wagon with a team of horses, Lang doing the driving. Crossing a Nebraska prairie one evening about dusk, the tongue of the wagon broke in two. Lang mounted one of the horses and rode to a town several miles distant to purchase a new tongue for the wagon. Boone was left alone. As the day faded into dusk, bats began to fly against the canvas covering of the piano and somewhere, away off, Boone heard the song of a whippoorwill. "It was the only solacing incident of the lonely evening," he declared, and from his experience that night he wrote a song, "I Heard a Whippoorwill."
Blind Boone wrote many compositions, the most famous of which was his "Marshfield Tornado." His last three compositions were: "The Last Dream Waltz," "Love Feast," a waltz, and "I Can Weep," a spiritual. Among his instrumental compositions are: "The Spring," "Echoes of the Forest" and "Humming Bird." His transcriptions with variations included "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home" and "Nicodemus."
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Their permanent home was in Columbia, Missouri, and that's where funeral services and burial took place during October of 1927. Eugenia died during 1931 and was buried by his side. There were no children.
Today, the restored Blind Boone home in Columbia is a museum. Its web site is located here.
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