Roland Hayes

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Roland Hayes bigraphy, stories - African American singer

Roland Hayes : biography

June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977

Roland Hayes (June 3, 1887 – January 1, 1977) was an American lyric tenor. He is considered the first African-American male concert artist to receive wide acclaim both at home and internationally. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills with songs in French, German and Italian.

Early years and family

Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, near Calhoun, on June 3, 1887, to Fanny 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 eleven 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 Côte d’Ivoire. Aba Ougi was captured and shipped to America in 1790.The University of North Carolina library extension publication, Volumes 10-11 (1944), p. 25. At Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Curryville (Founded by Roland’s mother[www.bso.org/media/15174/WhoIsRolandHayeswResKit.pdf]) 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.

At the age of twelve Roland discovered a recording of the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. Hearing the renowned tenor revealed a world of European classical music. Hayes trained with Arthur Calhoun, an organist and choir director, in Chattanooga. Roland began studying music at Fisk University in Nashville in 1905 although he only had a 6th grade education. Hayes’s mother thought he was wasting money because she believed that African-Americans could not make a living from singing. As a student he began publicly performing, touring with the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1911. He furthered his studies in Boston with Arthur Hubbard, who agreed to give him lessons only if Hayes came to his house instead of his studio. He did not want Roland to embarrass him by appearing at his studio with his white students. During his period studying with Hubbard he worked as a messenger for the Hancock Life Insurance Company to support himself.

Late career

Hayes finally secured professional management with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Company. He was reportedly making $100,000 a year at this point in his career. In Boston he also worked as a voice teacher. One of his pupils was the Canadian soprano Frances James. He published musical scores for a collection of spirituals in 1948 as My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted.

In 1932, while in Los Angeles for a Hollywood Bowl performance, he married Alzada Mann. One year later they had a daughter, Afrika.http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/942_afrika_hayes.html The family moved into a home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Hayes continued to perform until the age of eighty-five when he gave his last concert at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died five years later on January 1, 1977.

Early career

Hayes performed his own musical arrangements in recitals from 1916–1919, touring from coast to coast. For his first recital he was unable to find a sponsor so he used two hundred dollars of his own money to rent Jordan Hall for his classical recital. To earn money he went on a tour of black churches and colleges in the South. In 1917 he announced his second concert, which would be held in Boston’s Symphony Hall. On November 15, 1917, every seat in the hall was sold and Hayes’s concert was a success both musically and financially but the music industry was still not considering him a top classical performerLost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 By Tim Brooks, Richard Keith. He sang at Walter Craig’s Pre-Lenten Recitals and several Carnegie Hall concerts. He performed with the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, and at the Atlanta Colored Music Festivals and at the Washington Conservatory concerts. In 1917, he toured with the Hayes Trio which he formed with baritone William Richardson and pianist William Lawrence.