Teacher, Pianist, and Accompanist to Concert Artists: William Duncan AllenIntroduction by Dr. Ruth LoveInterviews Conducted by Caroline Crawford in 1995The Bancroft Library
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Project Description
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.
Use Restrictions
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and William Duncan Allen dated July 19, 1995. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with William Duncan Allen requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
William Duncan Allen, Teacher, Pianist, and Accompanist to Concert Artists, an oral history conducted in 1995 by Caroline Crawford, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1996.
Copy no. _____
Cataloging information
ALLEN, William Duncan (b. 1906)
Musician
Teacher, Pianist, and Accompanist to Concert Artists, 1996, iv, 135 pp.
Family history and early childhood in Portland, Oregon; music in the churches and the Church of Christ, Scientist; studies at Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School of Music in the 1920s; teaching at Howard University, Washington, D.C., and Fisk University, Nashville, and studying with Egon Petri in Poland in the 1930s; segregation in the United States; segregated unions for musicians; accompanying American baritone Todd Duncan, 1943-1953, and Paul Robeson, Adele Addison, William Warfield, Betty Allen, William Parker, George Shirley, Camilla Williams; performances at Carnegie Hall and the White House; working as columnist for the San Francisco Sun-Reporter and the Oakland Post; thoughts on black composers William Grant Still, Robert Nathaniel Dett, Howard Swanson, singers, performers and music management; directing the Berkeley Junior Bach Festival and the East Bay Music Center; Minister of Music at South Berkeley Community Church; a visiting professorship at Talladega College in the 1980s.
Introduction by Dr. Ruth Love, former Superintendent of Schools, Oakland.
Interviewed 1995 by Caroline Crawford. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Acknowledgements
The Regional Oral History Office, on behalf of future researchers, would like to express its thanks to two individuals whose support have made possible this oral history:
Ruth Teiser, 1915-1994, writer and Regional Oral History Office interviewer from 1965 to 1994, who donated the funds for this interview in memory of her friend Robert Beck.
Robert E. Beck, 1924-1992, teacher and author of textbooks for English literature and drama at the secondary school level, and instructor in English teaching methods in Jiang Nan University, China, in 1990. Robert Beck was a longtime friend and supporter of the work of the Regional Oral History Office, and a supporter of classical music.
Introduction—by Dr. Ruth Love
It is said that music is a universal language. Indeed, the music played by William Duncan Allen communicates depth and breath to all who hear him. As a pianist, he plays with skill, talent, love, and joy. Whether in small auditoriums or in a grand cathedral, Mr. Allen gives voice to the piano. With magnificent talent, he engages the audience in a journey of ecstasy.
For some eighty-four years, this man of music has been a companion to the piano. He has won the hearts of multitudes. Beginning piano lessons at age five he, like his beloved mother, took to the instrument naturally. Considered a child prodigy, his rise in music was meteoric.
William Duncan Allen is a serious, delightful pianist. Serious, in that he continues to practice for two hours daily. Delightful, in that he loves his profession. While growing up and attending public school in Oregon, piano was his interest. Later, at Oberlin College, piano became his passion. To this day, at age eighty-nine and one-half, he accompanies artists in concerts.
This oral history comes a few months before his ninetieth birthday. It is a marvelous testament to the extraordinarily gifted man. Whether playing as an accompanist or soloist, he exemplifies a rare devotion to the instrument and the music. Whether classical, jazz, or spirituals, Mr. Allen remarkably plays accompaniments from memory.
After years of teaching at Howard University, he joined (for a decade) the celebrated baritone Todd Duncan. Their concerts, nationally and internationally, were thrilling. Both the performers and the audiences found much pleasure. From school auditoriums to Carnegie Hall, Mr. Allen gives his best as he accompanies vocalists or instrumentalists; he remains a perfectionist.
For those who love music, and those who have an emerging interest, Mr. Allen's legacy will continue. It may light the path of a striving youth, or inspire a discouraged artist. Unquestionably, his life and legacy provide sheer pleasure for the masses. His honors and citations are numerous. During his annual birthday celebrations, the musical and the nonmusical express profound appreciation for his considerable energy and talent.
Teacher, mentor, performing artist William Duncan Allen remains a piano prodigy.
Former Superintendent of Schools, Oakland
Interview History—William Duncan Allen
William Duncan Allen at age eighty-nine sits at the concert grand onstage, wrapping his facile fingers around Robert Nathaniel Dett's longlined, cheerful Juba Dance, a piece that appeared on concert programs around the world when he accompanied the great American baritone, Todd Duncan, on tour. Dr. Allen needs no music—his memory is as keen as when he played the piece from Brazil to New Zealand in the 1940s and 1950s, and it is a memory that extends back in time to the smallest details of his childhood, as well as to people and places he has known and worked with over many decades.
Known as "the consummate collaborator," William Duncan Allen was born into a black family in Portland, Oregon, in 1906, and has been at the piano for roughly eighty-five of his nearly ninety years. He has been accompanist, soloist, teacher, and writer on music, a subject about which he is as passionate as it is possible to be.
Dr. Allen—the honorary doctorate was given by Berkeley's Center for Urban Black Studies—was recommended for an oral history by Professor Olly Wilson, composer and chairman of the music department at UC Berkeley. Others whom he inspired within and outside the black community joined the chorus before we got started: Madi Bacon, founder of the San Francisco Boys Chorus; Lorice Stevens, an Oakland singer with whom Dr. Allen performed at Carnegie Hall (and with whom he works often today); and Patricia Freeman, who organized the grand eighty-fifth birthday celebration at Oakland's Calvin Simmons Theater in 1991. Mr. Allen agreed to the interviews immediately, and we arranged to meet at The Bancroft Library in May of 1995.
Dr. Allen arrived at the initial interview with an armory of memorabilia. Scrapbooks filled with family photographs, concert programs, music columns, family recipes submitted by Mr. Allen to (and printed in) Gourmet magazine, even a cookbook written by two young women related by marriage to an aunt and published by Doubleday entitled Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine. At each of our four recording sessions, Mr. Allen talked vigorously for more than two hours, each time arriving with his briefcase charged with new materials. On one occasion he showed me a framed portion of the White House roof, ca. 1817, the gift of Franklin Delano Roosevelt following a piano program he performed at the White House in 1939.
Dr. Allen reviewed his oral history transcript early this year and proved the ideal oral history subject by approving almost verbatim the natural flow of our conversations as they were tape recorded. Changes were minimal and devoted to inaccuracies of spelling and fact; additions were miniatures of people and places: the exact address of a Harlem cafe from the forties, an anecdote about his hasty retreat from Poland in 1939,
Several themes run through in the oral history: Dr. Allen's appreciation of his rich early years in Portland; his experiences with segregation in the United States and the effects of segregation on artists; the black composers he championed; the importance of family; the generosity of friends. To one such friend, Ruth Love, former Superintendent of Oakland Schools, I am grateful for her introduction to this history. Dr. Allen's thoroughgoing enthusiasm and positive spirit must account in good part for his excellent health and exuberant attitude, and his love of music, all of which are reflected in his oral history.
Interviewer/Editor
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Biographical Information
Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)
Your full name WILLIAM DUNCAN ALLEN, JR.
Date of birth DECEMBER 15, 1906
Birthplace PORTLAND, OREGON
Father's full name WILLIAM DUNCAN ALLEN, SR.
Occupation OWNER, GOLDEN WEST HOTEL
Birthplace NASHVILLE, TN.
Mother's full name LILLIAN MEDLEY (DECEASED AUGUST 9, 1924
Occupation TRAINED NURSE, PROVIDENT HOSPITAL, CHICAGO
Birthplace QUEBEC, CANADA
Your spouse NONE
Occupation_____
Birthplace_____
Your children NONE
Where did you grow up? FERNWOOD GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1920 PORTLAND, OREGON THROUGH JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL 1924
Present community HILLTOP BAYVIEW, RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA
Education MUS.B 1928 & MUS.M, 1936, OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO HONORARY DOCTOR OF MUSIC, 1978, from CENTER FOR URBAN BLACK STUDIES, BERKELEY
Occupation(s)_____
Areas of expertise PIANIST - ORGANIST - COLUMNIST WRITER
Other interests or activities WAS MUSIC COLUMNIST FOR SAN FRANCISCO SUN-REPORTER AND OAKLAND POST
Organizations in which you are active MUSIC TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEGRO MUSICIANS CENTER FOR BLACK MUSIC RESEARCH
I Early Years: 1906-1924
This symbol (##) indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.
Home and Family in Portland, Oregon
CrawfordPerhaps you can start talking about when and where you were born, and tell me something about your parents.
Allen
I was born December 15, 1906, in Portland, Oregon. My mother was a Canadian, one of five sisters, five girls, and three boys. Their mother was Scotch-Irish from the old country. How she got to Canada, I've never been able to find out.
Crawford
She was French-speaking, from Quebec?
Allen
They all spoke it—my mother used to help me with my French when I was in high school, because they had French in grade school. I have three or four cousins still in Montreal. They're sort of fiercely English-speaking, you know. But they can speak and understand French, because all the street signs, as I remember, are bilingual. And of course, Quebec is still talking about getting out of the Dominion.
Crawford
Always. But your family are true Canadians?
Allen
Yes, right. I've tried to find out about my Grandfather Medley. His name was William Medley. But he evidently came from Baltimore, and must have been mulatto. He was a barber, evidently, and he was drowned when my mother was twelve, so she could never tell me much about him. I've never been able to find much about him.
My father was one of nine born in Nashville, Tennessee. He used to go to Canada in the summer to work on the railroads, and he was putting through college his youngest sister. I meant to bring you a family picture; I will sometime. Her name was Lizzy, but she changed it to Lillian, because she didn't like Lizzy. She was the youngest of six boys and three girls. So he put her through Fisk.
When he went up to Canada, he met my mother. He used to work on the railroads all the way out to Vancouver. It was his intention to eventually get to California. He got to Portland, and he learned that there was no decent stopping place for blacks, either on the railroad or otherwise. So this property came to his attention, a hundred-room hotel which was on the corner of Broadway and Everett, across from the U.S. Customs House.
Crawford
He was William Duncan Allen, Sr.?
Allen
Sr., yes.
Crawford
And what was your mother's full name?
Allen
Lillian Medley. Her father had two names. I asked my Grandmother Allen once about it, because each of them only had one name. There was Robert Allen, the grandfather was Charles, and the grandmother was Sarah. And there was Robert, William, Louis, Edward, Nell, Lizzy or Lillian, and Sadie, whom I never knew.
So my grandmother said, "Child, we didn't give him a middle name. There was some man in Nashville whom he admired whose name was Duncan, and he just took it." My father never told me this fact.
Crawford
Oh, it's a nice story.
Allen
[laughs] Yes. So he and my mother married in Chicago. She was a nurse, and she came to Providence Hospital in Chicago to take nurse training, and it was there that she met this Mrs. Dorsey, also from Canada who was taking nurse training, and a third person she met was Deborah Williams. When I was born in December 15, 1906, Aunt Deb, as we called her, came out. My parents' anniversary was December 19, and her birthday was December 19. I was supposed to have arrived on December 19, but I came four days early. This godmother, Aunt Deb, said, "Medley, he wanted a day of his own. He didn't want your anniversary, he didn't want my birthday. So he popped out four days early."
That's close to Beethoven's birthday, isn't it?
Allen
Yes, Beethoven's is the 16th.
Crawford
I know; you didn't want Beethoven's birthday either!
Allen
Right. And sometimes when people ask me how old I am, I say, "I'm one day older than Beethoven."
So I was the oldest of four. I had a brother who was named Henry Roth Allen. Roth was my grandmother's maiden name, [spells].
Crawford
Maternal?
Allen
Maternal. He passed away at the age of two and a half, caught pneumonia, and he passed away. I remember him, I remember the funeral. My mother had a lock of his hair. His hair was probably more golden than yours.
Then my sister was born January 20, 1910, and a younger brother was born January 30, 1913. So we grew up in Portland. My father opened this Golden West Hotel. It was on Broadway and Everett, about six blocks from the railway station.
Crawford
Well, you're still in touch with your community, then.
Allen
Yes, it's very interesting. After my father lost everything in the crash of 1929, including the hotel, the hotel was taken over by whites, and it was called the Broadway Central. Then in 1990—no, it was called the Broadmore Hotel. In 1990, the city took it over, renovated it as a home for the elderly, and renamed it the Golden West, and my sister and I were invited to come up and be at the ceremonies.
I remember I told them the one thing that they had omitted, and I put it down here; they omitted the fact that the restaurant was operated by a Chinese family, the Wo Gongs, who became personal friends, often taking us to banquets in Chinatown, especially for the Chinese New Year. I still have a dozen and a half pairs of chopsticks given to me by Geneva, the daughter, who was a year ahead of me in high school. I tried to trace what happened to the brother, King Gong, but I think the parents and the boy went back to China. The girl, Geneva, came to California, married. I've never been able to trace them.
But when we used to have parties, she and her company would come, and there was a family of Moys, Helen and Pearl Moy, I remember very well used to come to the parties with their
Crawford
What was it like? What are your early memories of the hotel and your parents' life there?
Allen
We lived three miles from the hotel. My father was the owner/manager, and once in a while we had dinner in the restaurant, owned by the Chinese.
Oh, I have memories—[laughs]. In the days after alcohol came back, there was a bar on the corner, and we couldn't enter the bar as children, but we could come to the corner and the bartenders would give us a soft drink or something. I went to Fernwood Grammar School at 33rd and Hancock in Portland, and so I think I was in about the fifth or sixth grade, and the teacher had us write what we wanted to be when we grew up. When I brought my composition home, my mother could have gone in the—I wanted to be a bartender in my father's hotel!
She said, "Couldn't you aim to be anything but that?" We weren't even allowed to go in it, and I guess that's what made it fascinating to me.
Music Education
CrawfordThat's right. And your mother was musical, I know.
Allen
Yes, she played the piano and organ. She played for the Episcopal church. She found a wonderful teacher for me. I was five and a half, and this teacher, I remember her name, Mrs. Bertram. Her husband was a double bass player in the Portland Symphony—[sneezes]
Crawford
Should I close this?
Allen
No, I'm allergic to everything. I had tests once, twenty pricks on my left arm. I was allergic to seventeen fall pollens. And then I had tests, and I was allergic to all twenty spring pollens, plus dog hair, cat hair, and dust. So I said to the woman physician, "Maybe I'm allergic to myself." She said, "You just could be."
Crawford
[laughs] Oh, that's awful.
This Mrs. Bertram had—oh, there were ten or twelve youngsters in this class, five, six years old. She had tables with the keyboard, and we sat at the tables, and we had buttons. We built up scales and chords before we ever touched the piano.
Then one day she said, "Now, Duncan, you go to the piano and play." I hadn't touched the piano. I must have played a C-E-G, or C-D-E-F-G, and then we started lessons at piano.
Crawford
What an interesting approach.
Allen
Yes. And then I had one or two teachers. My godmother, Deborah Williams, had wanted me to be in the Episcopal church, she wanted me to be a choirboy. But for some reason or other, after she left, we didn't—we went to Sunday School in a Methodist church, a black Methodist church. One day, my father came home and said, "Dear, I want you to put the children in a Christian Science Sunday school." She said, "Why?" He said, "Well, I have business associates, and I find that those I admire are all members of the Christian Science church, so there must be something to it."
And the three of us cried the day she took us to the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, in Portland, and entered us. I think I was around twelve, and my sister was nine, my brother was ten. At that time, they had Sunday school for the younger children during the church hour. We'd be in Sunday school while my mother attended the regular service. My father didn't go to church.
Crawford
But your mother went?
Allen
My mother went.
Crawford
Was she playing there?
Allen
No. She just attended the church. She'd leave us in the Sunday school and then meet us afterwards.
Crawford
How long did you attend that church?
Allen
Oh, I became a member through the years in Washington. Then I realized how much prejudice there was. They listed practitioners as "colored," and I knew that wasn't according to Mary Baker Eddy. So I resigned from the church.
In Portland I started organ and piano lessons with Frederick Feringer. He was the organist of Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Portland. Then, for some reason or other, I
Crawford
I see that you did some recitals at that time, and were considered a prodigy.
Allen
That's what they said.
Then later on, when my mother found out that she couldn't go east to Boston [because of diabetes], she asked me wouldn't I go to Oberlin instead of Harvard. She passed away on August 9, and as I say, my father insisted I go to college and called Clarence Cameron White, who was a very outstanding black violinist and composer and whom my mother had heard in concert in Portland. Mr. White then called back and he said, "Yes, send your son."
So I arrived, went to Omaha with Aunt Deb, and then she called her brother and sister-in-law in Cleveland. I can't remember whether I saw them first or went on to Oberlin from Cleveland by the trolley car then. This Clarence Cameron White met me. It was too late to get into the dormitories, but he had a son. Do you have the Black Perspective in Music? I think you have that in the library, because I think I asked Olly Wilson once.
Crawford
Yes, we do.
Allen
In one of the volumes is an article all about Clarence Cameron White. He had two boys. One was William, William Warwick White. So when I arrived, he said, "It's too late to get in the dormitories, but you and my son are going to room at a residence of the Theodore Phillips on Vine Street." This son of the Whites was very handsome. He was a senior in high school and studying the cello at the conservatory.
Well, he was a playboy. There was a show, a black show, running in Detroit and Cleveland, "Running Wild." Well, he ran wild with the chorus girls. I'd come home and he would say, "I hope you don't mind, I borrowed a white shirt from you." I would be so angry he had gone through my drawers and taken a shirt! Finally, his parents had to send for him to come down to West Virginia, where his father was head of the music department. I was so glad to get rid of him.
Did your father know Mr. White?
Allen
He didn't know him. My mother had heard him in recital in Portland, and he told her about Oberlin College Conservatory. Because she wouldn't be able to go with me to Boston where I had been accepted at Harvard, she asked me to consider Oberlin. I had also been accepted at Yale, the alma mater of my high school principal, Mr. Hopkin Jenkins.
First Assignment as an Accompanist
CrawfordI know that you were an accompanist in high school. Could you talk about that?
Allen
Yes. I went to Fernwood Grammar School, and then I chose, for some reason or other, to go to Jefferson High School. Washington was nearer, and I can't remember what attracted me to Jefferson. I used to have to go by streetcar and make two transfers to get there.
The first assembly—they had assembly on Monday. The girl who played for the assembly wasn't there that day, and Charles Boyer, I remember his name, was superintendent of music in the schools.
Crawford
What a memory you have!
Allen
They opened up with "The Star-Spangled Banner." He saw me sitting in the front row. The girl wasn't there. He said, "Hey, Fernwood, get to the piano. Get to the piano." So I played "The Star-Spangled Banner." I had wanted to join the glee club, and afterwards, there was a fellow, Lauren Sykes. He came up and he said, "Glee club meets at such-and-such a day, and I'm not going to be able to accompany anymore, so you must come. I'll introduce you, because they need an accompanist."
Well, I had wanted to be in the glee club to sing. The director of the glee club was George Wilbur Reed. So I became the accompanist. I couldn't sing. I was accompanist the whole four years I was there.
Crawford
You showed me something Mr. Reed wrote after the first concert.
Allen
Yes, here it is. It says, "My dear William, herewith please find enclosed the program which you desired. I was delighted with the way you accompanied, also with the manner which you
Crawford
That endorsement must have helped. Well, what was your exposure to classical music at that time? I suppose the Portland Symphony. Did you attend concerts?
Allen
Oh, yes. In fact, my brother took violin lessons from the conductor of the Portland Symphony.
Crawford
Who was that?
Allen
I don't remember. Seems to me like his name was William Hogstratten. Dutch, as I remember. My sister took piano from a lady named Miss Graves. I don't know why we never took from the same teachers. I used to be excused from minor subjects like drawing, writing etc.
Mr. Boone was a registered music teacher, and if one took lessons from him, one could get off in the afternoon for practice, which was terrible because my father was a beautiful penman, my mother was also, and my sister and I write like the devil.
Crawford
You didn't have penmanship?
Allen
No. We had penmanship in school, though, and you used your arm, so that you wrote this way. I could bring you letters from my father and mother, and it was beautiful. Well, I just succeed in writing my signature, but nothing else. I use a typewriter all the time.
Crawford
Your signature is very nice.
Allen
If I don't use a typewriter, I print, because I can't read my own writing.
Crawford
Were you exposed to any jazz or blues when you were growing up?
Allen
No, not really. I used to play popular music, [singing] "Somebody loves me, I wonder who"—Gershwin—but I never was able to really play jazz. I used to have pupils that could play
Crawford
Do you remember what recordings you had at home?
Allen
Oh, yes. My mother had Red Seal records when they were [recorded] only on one side. She had Galli-Curci, Caruso, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. I have a program in which she took me to hear Schumann-Heink once. Then I heard Joseph Hoffman, pianist. I heard Alfred Cortot, soprano Alma Gluck with her husband, violinist Efrem Zimbalist, and the black soprano Florence Cole Talbert. She would take me to all the concerts like that.
Then when it came time to go to college, my principal, Hopkin Jenkins, wanted me to go to Yale, his alma mater. I had these three older cousins in medicine, law, and dentistry at Harvard. They suggested I come there and take piano on the side at the New England Conservatory, but as I said, when my mother was practically on her deathbed she said, "Why don't you go to Oberlin?" So I went to Oberlin.
Crawford
Did your mother work as a nurse when you were growing up?
Allen
Oh, yes. Not when we were growing up, but I have a pin, Providence Hospital pin, I think it was 1903. They married in 1905 in Chicago, and then came west because my father had already established himself.
Crawford
What was he doing in Chicago then?
Allen
I don't know why they—well, I guess they married in Chicago because that's where she took her nurse's training.
Crawford
You said they met in Canada—
Allen
They had met in Montreal, when he went up to work on the railroads.
The Golden West Hotel; Music in the Churches
CrawfordAnd you said that he wanted to establish a hotel in Portland specifically for black people.
Allen
Right.
Was there segregation in every area?
Allen
Oh, yes, yes. You can read back, Seattle and Portland both had segregation. That's why he established this first-class hotel on Broadway and Everett, which was across from the Custom House, and about four or five blocks from the station. People like Bojangles Robinson used to stay there, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers used to stay there.
Crawford
Could you expand some about what the hotel looked like, and the neighborhood?
Allen
We lived in a neighborhood where we were the only black children in the school. The hotel was five stories high, and as I remember, one room with private bath on each floor.
Crawford
Do you remember Bojangles?
Allen
Yes, yes. I remember meeting him. And when the Fisk Jubilee Singers came, of course, my father, being from Nashville, knew the singers who came out from there. There was Mr. and Mrs. Myers. He was a bass and she was a contralto. They used to stay with us, and then the other singers would stay at the hotel. That's how I was interested in jubilee songs, because we'd go to the concerts at the white church, where they sang. So that I learned the jubilee songs at an early age.
Crawford
Talk about those jubilee concerts.
Allen
Well, they were always at white churches. When I went to Howard to teach in 1929, the choir would sing on Sundays, sing an anthem, and then they'd sing a spiritual. Well, I'd already heard many of the spirituals as a child in Portland through the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Then later, when I went to Fisk to teach, that was the cradle of spirituals—Jubilee Hall, of course, is famous because it was built by the jubilee singers who went to Europe [in 1872], sang before Queen Victoria, raised a lot of money, and built Jubilee Hall.
Crawford
What was the music like in your churches, the two churches that you attended, first Episcopalian and then Methodist?
Allen
Oh, it was orthodox. I don't remember hearing spirituals even in the black church, the African Methodist church. They may have, but it didn't make an impression on me. And I went there for such a short time.
Crawford
You had wanted to be a bartender, but I imagine your parents were pleased when you decided to be a musician?
[laughs] Right. Well, that's what I say, after my mother passed, my father insisted that I come to Oberlin, and this Clarence Cameron White arranged for it. I remember in my freshman year, he gave a recital at Toledo. I played for him, and I recall the church, it was an upright piano. The church was practically empty. And just after he began playing, the doors opened and in came many lodge members, marching as into a meeting, filling the church.
##
It was a very interesting thing. He went to be the head of the music department at West Virginia State College in Charleston. After that, he went to Hampton. He succeeded Robert Nathaniel Dett, who had the first black chorus that went to Radio City Music Hall. Then I learned that William Grant Still and Robert Nathaniel Dett were both graduates of Oberlin College.
Later, the Whites went to Hampton. There, whom should I meet but my former roommate and his wife, Miriam. The marriage didn't last very long, and later, when I went to New York City, I found she was the wife of my cousin, Dr. Farrow Allen, who was one of these cousins who had attended Harvard who was older than I, and here she was married to him.
Crawford
What a coincidence! Well, could I ask you about your grandparents?
The Allen Grandparents and a Summer Home in Washington
AllenMy [Allen] grandparents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1918. I was twelve, and my sister was nine, and my brother was six. The railroads then had drawing rooms, and my parents slept in the lower berth, and my brother and I were in the upper berth, and my sister slept in the couch, so all five of us. [laughs]
I think children up to five didn't have to pay. The conductor came through, and I think he said, "How old are you?" to my brother, and he said, "Six." My father said, "You are five." The conductor said, "I find out that sometimes, the children know their ages better than parents." But he had said he was five to keep from paying for him, because it was quite a sum, traveling first class from Portland to Chicago, and then to Nashville.
I remember—well, we went to the fiftieth wedding anniversary, and there was quite a celebration, because everybody was there, and my Aunt Nell lived in a big house next door to the smaller house where my grandparents lived. Everybody was there to celebrate the occasion.
This was December. I think we stayed out of school; my father had gotten permission. We stayed out of school. He came back, but we did some traveling in the East before we returned. But I think my sister skipped a grade in school, so then she was put in a course she would be in normally, and I didn't lose out. We all kept to our classes.
Crawford
So then how long did you stay?
Allen
Oh, it seems to me like my mother and I didn't get back for some time. As I recall, we went east and up to her home, Montreal.
Crawford
Oh, a long trip.
Allen
Yes. So we didn't come back until later, and my father had already returned.
Crawford
What did your family do during summers?
Allen
We had our summer home in Seaview, Washington, near Long Beach. My father got driftwood off the beach, and that supplied a stove in the living room and a kitchen stove, and all he burnt was wood. We'd go up in the morning, up the beach for miles, and dig clams, razorback clams. If there was a north wind, we took a bamboo rake, and we would rake out a dozen and a half crabs, if it was a north wind. We'd throw the females back, keep the males. My mother had a wash boiler, and we'd clean clams all day, and boil the crabs, and she'd take the inside of clams, which was tender, and keep that to fry. The other parts we'd grind up for clam chowder.
Crawford
What years did you go up there?
Allen
We went during high school. We had a home there. We must have gone 1920 to 1924. About that time we moved into a bigger home. There was a monkey tree we had when we moved to this bigger home. It's the only tree a monkey can't climb.
I'll never forget when we moved to this house—there was a porch in front, and then the car was in the back. There was a long latticed porch.
My mother and father had made a vow that they would never part angry. And I remember one day, my father got mad and jumped up from the breakfast table, and he went out and he had a little Ford Jitney. He backed out, and my mother went to the back door, and she just did this [gesturing]. He was about ready to back out on the street, and he looked at her. Finally, he parked and went back and kissed her goodbye.
Crawford
That's lovely. They kept their bargain. Well, who was the major influence on you, your mother or father, or someone else, in the early years?
Allen
Well, my mother was musical, my father wasn't. But it was she who wanted me to continue music. That's how I did when I went to Oberlin after she had passed.
II The Twenties: Music Studies: 1924-1930
Oberlin College: 1924-1928
CrawfordWell, let's talk about Oberlin.
Allen
I had been accepted at Harvard and Yale. I had three cousins in law, medicine, and dentistry at Harvard, and I thought I'd go there. And then I told you my mother had diabetes and on her death bed she asked me to go to a school nearer home, and Ohio was somewhat closer to home than Massachusetts. After her passing, my father got in touch with Clarence Cameron White, as I said. He arranged for me to get in Oberlin, even though it was already September.
I went to Oberlin in 1924. My piano teacher was George Hastings. He was supposed to be the finest piano teacher there. Theodore Phillips had also graduated under Hastings in 1924, and I was staying in his parents' home. He had gone to West Virginia to teach. And then there was a girl, Jessie Covington from Texas, who was supposed to be a brilliant student. She was a pupil of George Hastings.
Well, he was ill—I didn't realize [until] later what made him so crabby and everything, but he was very severe. One day I came in, and I didn't do what he told me. He took my music, he flung it at the door, he said, "Don't come back until you do what I told you!" I picked the music up and went out, and I had tears in my eye. There was a student of his and she said, "Whenever you think you know what he wanted you to do, go back."
So a couple of days later, I opened the door. He said, "Come in." There was a pupil at the piano. He had the pupil get up, I went over, and did whatever it was, supposedly. "Okay, come to your lesson Friday."
Well, he died May 1. He had stomach cancer. Then his wife also taught piano, and there were only about four or five more weeks of school. I had her for a few lessons, and then I had Frank Shaw. He was a graduate of Oberlin, but he had come from some college in Iowa, I believe, to become the director the same year I entered.
So I went in his office, and he said to me, "Well, William, I think next year you'll have Mr. Breckenridge." He taught piano, organ, and harp even. I said, "No, I won't have him, Mr. Shaw." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "If I have another teacher, it will be at some other school than Oberlin."
Well, Shaw had come from this school in Iowa, and he had brought three pupils with him. One was a senior, one was a junior, and one was a sophomore. They were his prize students he brought with him. Then there were three of us who had entered in '24 and needed a teacher. I heard that he preferred to have girl students. But anyhow, when I told him this, he kept three of us, and I was the only fellow he kept.
I graduated under him in 1928. Miss Helen Engel, she graduated, and the teachers then could choose one student to play a concerto with the orchestra. He chose Helen Engel to play the Saint-Saens concerto with the orchestra.
Then there was Marion Davies, who lives in Denver—her name is Marion Lichty—that I've kept in touch with. She gave a recital and I gave a recital, and Shaw wanted me to play a trio. Well, I didn't want to play a trio. If I wasn't going to play with the orchestra, I didn't want to play a trio. So I did a straight piano program.
Crawford
Were there other black students there?
Allen
Yes. Jessie Covington went and Theodore Phillips graduated in 1924, and Leota Henderson, mother of Natalie Hinderas.
Juilliard School of Music, and Life in New York: 1929-1930
Then in 1929, I went to New York, and I studied with Gordon Stanley, and later James Friskin.
CrawfordWas it difficult for you to get admitted at Juilliard?
Allen
Yes. This was the Institute of Musical Art, whose building was on the corner, and Juilliard was next to it. Juilliard took
Crawford
What happened to your father?
Allen
He had lost everything, everything.
Crawford
Lost the hotel?
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
What did your father do after he lost the hotel?
Allen
He had remarried, a white, red-headed Texan. They opened a small hotel on the east side, and named it Hotel Medley after my mother's maiden name.
Crawford
You managed to stay in New York?
Allen
I managed to stay in New York that one year, '28 to '29. Then when we had taken the trip in '28 when I graduated, my father and brother came east to Detroit, picked up a Cadillac, drove down to Oberlin, and then from there after the graduation, my aunt, his youngest sister, had come up from Petersburg. My mother's sister Ethel and her husband, who was a doctor, came from Atlantic City, but then they went back.
Then my father took my Aunt Lil, Mrs. Darden, my sister, brother, and me, down through Nashville, his home, where he saw his parents, and then we went down to Chattanooga, where his brother Robert lived and had two drugstores. Took Farrow, one son—he had his mother's maiden name, Farrow Allen. We went on down to Tuskegee. There I remember we met George Washington Carver, the man who found out all the ways to use the peanut and the sweet potato. I remember him, he had a high voice, and he was doing some embroidery. All on the shelves were the products of the peanut and the products of the sweet potato.
Then we went on over to Petersburg, Virginia, where my aunt lived, and continued on up to Atlantic City, where my mother's sister and husband lived, Dr. Stanley Lucas. As I recall, we went to New York. In fact, that's where my father saw Bojangles Robinson. He went to Harlem, and he had the address. So he asked a policeman the address, and he was directed to it. So we went to the address, and Mrs. Robinson was there, and she was so
[laughs] My father made a wrong turn, and a policeman stopped him with a whistle. She said, "I'm Mrs. Robinson, and Mr. Allen didn't know. We're going after my husband." "Go ahead, Mr. Allen, just drive. Yes, Mrs. Robinson, it's okay." [laughter] Anyhow, we found Mr. Robinson.
Crawford
How did your father know Mr. Robinson's address?
Allen
Mr. Robinson had given it to him when he stayed at the Golden West Hotel in Portland, telling him to look him up whenever he came east to New York.
Crawford
Where did you live in New York that year?
Allen
Well, I lived at the International House when I came, and that was up on Riverside Drive. My father had a few friends, and I'd go to Harlem occasionally. My cousin then, Dr. Farrow Allen, had an office on 139th Street. There were beautiful homes in there, and that was called Striver's Row. The blacks who had residences there kept them up, and it was one of the nice streets in Harlem. So I used to go over there sometimes, but I lived at the International House all year.
I had a tower room. On the men's side, there were two tower rooms. I had one with a piano, and the other was occupied by William Scheide. William Scheide later founded the Bach Aria Group that went all over the country concertizing. Later when they came to Berkeley, when I was music director of the Junior Bach Festival Association, they gave a concert on the community series. It was at the Berkeley High School auditorium.
So I invited them all to come up to my sister's home afterwards, and he said, "Well, I don't know that many of them will want to come, but I will be there." Well, they all showed up. I have a picture of them. They all showed up—
Crawford
Nice. How many?
Allen
There were six or eight. I have a picture, I'll bring that picture to show you. And Mrs. Mailkoff, who had founded the Junior Bach Festival, was there, and she had a Bach cake made. They have pictures showing us all behind this Bach cake, and all the Bach Aria Group.
Crawford
You mean, there was a piece of Bach music on the cake?
No, no, there was the shield of Bach. You know, he made a diagram, JSB, both ways, and it made a shield which was always on his music. I'll show you that.
Crawford
How nice. So when you went to Juilliard, you studied with James Friskin.
Allen
I studied piano, and I finally studied with James Friskin. He was a Bach expert. He used to give recitals in the Town Hall, all Bach preludes and fugues. One of his students was Irwin Freundlich. Lillian Lefkofsky, who later married Irwin Freundlich, was a student at Oberlin of Shaw's. I think she graduated in '33, five years behind me. Well, I became very friendly with them—they had married and lived in New York. She later studied with Josef Lhévinne.
And she married Irwin, and so I came to know them, and became very friendly with them. Irwin used to come west to judge different contests, and one was in Spokane. One year, he couldn't come out and he called me and he said, "Listen, I've recommended you to go."
So I went that year to this contest in Spokane, and there was Sokol, not William Sokol, but Vilem. He played first violin in the orchestra at Oberlin when I got my master's degree in '36. So he was glad to see me, and he said, "Look, you're going to stay up here," I think [I had] an extra day for piano, "so when you come through Seattle, I want you to stop and visit us."
I said, "You told me you had eight children." He said, "We've got a big house, and I'll have my wife meet you." Her name was Agatha. So she met me, and first took me by the school where his orchestra was rehearsing.
Then I had wanted to see Miss Alice M. Grass. She was one of the white teachers who had gone from Oberlin to Fisk to teach. In the 1890s, all the teachers in the music department at Fisk were either from Oberlin or New England. She was one of the teachers who went to Fisk, stayed there all her life. My aunt graduated from Fisk under her in 1907.
In fact, she was the cause of my going to Fisk in 1936. She was at Oberlin studying the summer of '35. I had gone back for a masters degree, and I was preparing my masters concert. She said, "William, you must come to Fisk." I said, "Oh, Miss Grass, I couldn't go to Fisk." "Why?" "Oh, I couldn't go South." She said, "Your roots are there, your father was born there. Fisk is like an island. You don't realize you're in the South until you leave that district. Because we all live together, eat together."
At the university?
Allen
Yes. The faculty was mixed, and the students were largely black. The white students were children of professors who taught there. But more than half of the teachers were white.
So I went there in 1936. Then later, when Miss Grass had retired and was out in Seattle, this Agatha took me to this tall building, where she was retired, in a suburb. She was blind then, and she was in a wheelchair. She said, "William, I have twenty things to ask you about. She said, "I can take as much time as you want. But I would like [Agatha] to take down what I say, so that I can have it later." So I went down and got Agatha. She came and she was introduced to Miss Grass.
Miss Grass had twenty questions to ask. She wanted to know about my Aunt Lil, and she wanted to know about other things at Fisk, and Agatha made copies of all that I said. Then she said, "Listen, Miss Grass, this isn't legible. I will type it out and bring or send you a copy," which she did. And this was the last time I saw Miss Grass, and she was way up in her nineties.
Crawford
Well, talk about New York a bit more. Did you go to music a lot while you were there in 1929?
Allen
Oh, yes. Because students would get coupons, and they would be able to go sometimes free and sometimes pay twenty-five, fifty cents a ticket. I remember hearing Horowitz and his father-in-law.
Crawford
Toscanini.
Allen
Yes, Toscanini.
Crawford
And the NBC Symphony?
Allen
Yes, I heard the NBC Symphony. Heard concerts then at a fraction of the cost, because students would get coupons to hear them.
Memories of Marian Anderson
CrawfordI believe you met Marian Anderson sometime in the twenties?
Allen
Yes. Last week we had this concert honoring the memory of Marian Anderson. I played a Brahms Rhapsody. I told the [audience] about my memories of Marian Anderson. We had met her
We drove up there, and he took us out, and we had our first airplane ride. Then we heard Marian Anderson, and then when I went to Oberlin, she was on the concert series the first two years. Then I heard her at the Easter Sunday when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial after the DAR had refused to let her sing in Constitution Hall.
Crawford
What year was that, do you remember?
Allen
That was 1939, Easter Sunday. And of course, they did her a great favor, because she became world-famous. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR, and she and Secretary Ickes arranged for her to sing in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Crawford
She was the first African American allowed to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Did you hear her there?
Allen
I heard her debut at the Met in 1955. My aunt Lillian came up from Petersburg, Virginia—she used to come out here every other year to see us, but back then she said, "Look, I want to hear Marian Anderson. You send and get tickets, and then you get your plane ticket and meet me." She sent me the money for the plane ticket.
So we met in New York, stayed at her favorite hotel, the Taft, which I think is an old folks' residence now, and we attended it. We sat right next to Dr. Paul Lang, whom I'd had a musicology class with in Columbia. So of course, that was a great occasion.
Crawford
Could you remember some impressions of each of those performances?
Allen
Thrilling. When the curtain went up on her, the applause lasted for many minutes before she was able to start singing.
Crawford
Was she musical, your aunt?
Allen
Oh, yes. She had graduated in piano under Miss Grass.
Crawford
Did she become a professional?
She married this doctor, James Darden, and she used to give piano lessons in Petersburg. Because I remember the piano studio was off in the kitchen, and sometimes she'd be in the kitchen and she'd say, "Play that again, now, you didn't do that right." She'd tell the student. She taught piano.
So then, later, when I was traveling with Todd Duncan, we did a concert at Danbury, Connecticut, which was Miss Anderson's home. She invited us to be her guests. When we arrived in Danbury, we were met by her husband, Orpheus Fisher. He said, "My wife had to leave this morning on a concert tour. So she left me to take charge of you. I'll be your host." I think we stayed there two or three nights, and he was an excellent host.
He showed us her practice room where she worked—it was separate from the house—he was an architect, and it was separate from the house. There she had her piano and recordings and just a lovely place. We worked—I had known two of his married sisters in Wilmington, where I often stopped with friends of mine. So we were royally entertained by him.
Crawford
What good memories. Well, did you compose when you were at Juilliard?
Allen
When people ask me that—I composed my high school class song, at Jefferson. There were 287 in the class, as I remember, and there were seven who gave words to popular songs. Well, I composed the music and the words, and 270 people voted for mine, which meant that each of the others had voted for his or her song. [laughs] That was the end of my composing days.
III The Thirties: Washington, D.C., New York City, Nashville and a Fellowship in Poland
Working at Howard University, 1929-1935 and Performing at the White House
CrawfordHow did the Depression affect your life? I know your father had a bad time, but was it difficult for you personally during the Depression years?
Allen
Oh, yes. That's why I got a job at Howard. The reason I got the job at Howard was the head of the piano department, Roy Tibbs, had been a classmate of my aunt's at Fisk before he went to Oberlin. So on this trip, we met him, and the second year after I finished Oberlin, he gave me a job in the piano department. I was only—'29 to '35; I was twenty-three years old, I guess.
Crawford
So how long did you work there?
Allen
I worked there six years.
##
Crawford
While in Washington, D.C., you played a couple of times at the White House?
Allen
Oh. Well, I played at the White House for Lillian Evanti in 1933 or 1934. This was a luncheon. I remember that when she married Roy Tibbs she italianized her name, Evans, by adding the "ti" from his name.
Then a couple of years later, the Howard University glee club and Todd Duncan sang at the White House. Also Dorothy Maynor. She had her accompanist, but I played for the glee club and Todd Duncan.
Lillian Evanti is said to have been the first black woman to sing opera abroad—the '20s, in France? Well, a good number of years of your career were devoted to the great singer. Would you talk about Todd Duncan?
Allen
Well, he called me up recently, and I told him that it was a good thing I was impressed with him or he might not have gotten to Howard University and gotten all this fame. Because I had gone to Howard to teach in '29, and he made this application.
He was studying at Columbia. So Miss Lula Vere Childers, who was the head of the music department at Howard, said, "William, when you go up to take your lesson next week, this Robert Todd Duncan has applied. He's doing graduate work at Columbia. So we'll tell him to meet you at the International House, and you tell us how you feel about him."
So I went back and I said, "Well, I think he's very nice."
Crawford
You heard him sing?
Allen
I don't recall hearing him sing. But he told me about—he was really taking music education; singing was a side. So I went back and I said, "Yes," and he was brought there to teach music education. Miss Childers taught most of the voice pupils, and then there was a Caroline Grant taught voice pupils, but gradually, they found out that he had a fine voice, and I guess he had choral classes. Gradually he started teaching a few voice students.
I'll never forget, Camille Nickerson was head of the junior department, one of three teachers teaching youngsters. She and Todd and I had tickets to hear the Philadelphia Symphony under [Leopold] Stowkowski. He had a principle that after the concert began, the doors weren't opened until intermission. Gabrilowitsch, who was a pianist from Detroit, I think, was going to play the Schumann Concerto.
So we had these three tickets, and just as we got almost there, Todd said, "Camille, you have the tickets?" "Oh, I left them in my desk drawer." We had to drive back to the university, and when we got there, the concert had begun. The Schumann Concerto was just before the intermission, and we could hardly hear.
But the invitation came to the university for the glee club to sing [at the White House]. I remember the glee club and Todd Duncan, we went down, and we were in a lower room of the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt came down, escorted by—I don't know, a
Years later, after he passed and she lived in an apartment in Washington Square, there was a Dutchman who had written a suite of songs memorializing Franklin Roosevelt. So he got Todd Duncan to sing them. So we were ushered up to her apartment, and the whole family was there, Mrs. Roosevelt, Franklin D., Jr., and his wife, Fay Emerson, and the daughter—the whole family. And Mrs. Roosevelt graciously said, "Oh, I remember when you were at the White House." So we appeared there.
Crawford
Was the president at the White House concert?
Allen
In the White House? Oh, sure, sure.
Crawford
And did he greet you?
Allen
Yes, he greeted us. Oh, he was a wonderful man, wonderful man. You know, when they showed the pictures of Roosevelt recently, fifty years and everything, it brought back memories of how gracious he was, and how he was elected the fourth time. I said afterwards the Republicans tricked themselves by getting in the two-term limit, because Eisenhower would have had a chance to have been president more than two terms.
Crawford
Was it after the second concert that you were sent these photographs?
Allen
Yes, about three days afterwards they arrived.
Crawford
In frames?
Allen
Yes, in those frames.
Crawford
I'm going to read what it says here. It says it's from the president: "To William Allen from Franklin Roosevelt." And then at the bottom of this wood frame, it says, "This wood was part of the White House roof erected about 1817 and removed in 1927." And a second picture, smaller, from Eleanor Roosevelt. It says, "To Mr. William Allen with good wishes."
Well, that was a wonderful memory. And what about the first time you played in the White House?
Allen
It was a funny thing. The first time, I got only his picture, I don't know why. It had "To William Allen." I gave it to my father because we had the same name. He used to fool people:
Crawford
Oh, yes, he married again.
Allen
Married again. He married a white woman from Texas. She was very kind, we knew her and everything, and when they lost everything, I bought a home for them. Then after he passed, I wrote to her and I said, "Sell the home, come down to San Francisco and we'll buy a two- or three-apartment thing, you have one, I have one, we'll rent the third out." And I didn't hear from her. I don't know whether you remember the lawyer Charles Gary?
Crawford
Oh, yes.
Allen
Well, Charles Gary I had met when I first came here, and I told him, and he found out that she had sold the home. When I bought it, I said to my father, "Put it in my name." Well, he didn't do it. He said, "Oh, you know Mom will do the right thing by you." Well, Mom didn't do the right thing by me, and when I told Charles Gary and he found out, he said, "Do you want me to sue her?" And I said, "No. She stood by him during his illness, and if she felt that that's the way she needed to be compensated, just forget it."
Crawford
What was the illness, and when did he die?
Allen
Let's see. I was traveling with Todd Duncan. He must have died about —I traveled with Todd Duncan '43 to '53. I think he died about '51.
Crawford
Well, you were at Howard University for six years?
Allen
Yes. The seventh year was a sabbatic.
Crawford
Oh, that was a sabbatical. And what was your course schedule like?
Bringing a Brother to Howard in 1934 and Segregation in Washington, D.C.
AllenI taught piano, I had a couple of organ students, and I taught music appreciation. I brought my brother there. He entered in, let's see, my sister graduated in '31—he entered in '34. He used to say, although he had learned the violin and everything, he said, "I'm going into some other profession than
He had, I don't know whether you know these people—you know Ralph Bunche—that was one of his teachers. Sterling Brown, very well-known author. And a Spanish teacher, Valaurez Spratlin. And then his major teacher was Gus Auzene. That was his business teacher.
Ralph Bunche was in sociology, and Sterling Brown was English, a very well-known writer. And his Spanish teacher, Dr. Valaurez Spratlin. His sister, I'm in contact with her in Los Angeles. My brother graduated magna cum laude, and Ralph Bunche said he was the finest student he'd ever had.
Crawford
Isn't that something? And then what did he do?
Allen
Well, he married, his first marriage went on the rocks, and then he married again. His widow lives in Los Angeles. They had one son. My nephew Tony [Anthony Rodgers Allen] and his family live in Beaverton, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. My brother died of a heart attack on Thanksgiving eve, 1949, I believe. But he went into real estate, and he also tried to open up a hotel, the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Well, this was after things opened up, and there wasn't any more segregation.
Last week I went to a luncheon of the Commonwealth Club and I was telling Belva Davis about this black lawyer, Lani Guinier. I said, "Belva, when I lived in Washington in the 1930s, the only place where a black could eat was at the Union Station." She said, "And you know, there's a wonderful restaurant there now owned by blacks." I said, "Well, of course it changed."
But I remember when I went to Howard, there was a Catholic family in Portland with whom we were very friendly, the Sheasgreens. They had a summer home at Seaview, Washington, where we had a summer home. And oh, there must have been about nine in the family. One or two of them would come up, and the grandparents stayed there with the grandchildren. One or two of them would come up every weekend, and my father would often come up. So we got to know them very well.
Walter, one of the sons, [had lost] his wife and he had two children, Kathleen and Barry. They both lived in Portland. But Walter called up my father and said, "Mr. Allen, I'm going to take Kathleen to Washington. I wish you'd give us Duncan's phone number, because we'd like to call him up." So he called me and he said, "Duncan, Kathleen and I are at the Willard
So when they arrived, I was very friendly with Mrs. Hackney and Mrs. Gilbert who ran the dining room. The dining room was above the reservoir, and the Howard University school song is, "Far above the lake so blue stands old Howard firm and true." And the lake is the reservoir.
So when they came out, I said, "Walter, the only place where a Negro can eat in Washington is at the Union Station." He said, "I don't believe it." I said, "That's true." And I said, "That's why I had you come out here." Mrs. Hackney and Mrs. Gilbert had prepared a wonderful lunch. He said, "This is the capital of our country, and you can't eat anywhere downtown?" I said, "No. Nowhere downtown."
He said, "I can't believe it." So when I told Belva that, she said, "Oh, it's different now." I said, "Well, I know. I have been to Washington many times since then and stayed with white friends of mine, and we've eaten all over. But that was the situation then."
I heard that segregation came to Washington through the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. I haven't been able to verify this, but you know, she practically ran the country, because he was ill.
Crawford
How would she do that? Just by proclaiming it?
Allen
Evidently.
Crawford
Were all the facilities segregated, barber shops, everything?
Allen
Oh, yes. When Porgy and Bess came to the theater there, they were going to put blacks in the balcony, whites downstairs. And Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, the first Bess, said, "No, we won't appear." The union threatened to fine them. He said, "I don't care whether you fine me or not, we're not going to appear." "Well, then we'll split it down the middle." "No."
Crawford
What theater, and when?
Allen
That had to be—well, Porgy and Bess opened up in '35, and I was going to Europe then. It had to be in the forties. And not until they opened it up did they—regardless of the union threatening to fine Todd Duncan and Anne Brown, they said, "We won't appear."
American Federation of Musicians, Local 802
CrawfordWere you a union member?
Allen
Let me tell you how I got in the union. Todd Duncan was going to make an album of records. The recording studio was across from the old Metropolitan Opera House down on 39th. We went all through, made ten, twelve recordings. I still have the old 78s. Got through, and the man said, "What is your union number?" I said, "Union number?" He said, "You're in the union." I said, "No." He turned around and said, "Mr. Duncan, you have to do it with a union accompanist, you'll have to do it all over again."
He said, "Do you have any reason for not being in the union?" I said, "I am not in the union because I had no reason to be in one." "Would you be in it?" I said, "Yes, sure." This was then December. He said, "Well, we'll hold it up, get in the union as soon as you can." And I happened to have a friend, Everett Lee, who was staying with a black man who had power in the union, and they got me in within a week, Local 802.
I came out here to San Francisco, and they had segregated unions.
Crawford
They didn't back East?
Allen
No, they didn't. In New York, I was in 802. I said, "Well, to hell with you. I'll keep my union membership in New York."
Crawford
Isn't that peculiar. How do you explain that?
Allen
I don't know.
Crawford
I knew there were double unions out here.
Allen
Well, I think it was the blacks' fault. They wanted power, and to get power by having a separate unions.
Crawford
Perhaps better for black musicians.
Allen
Yes. And then later on, I kept my membership up for some time, but then later on, I didn't have any need to be in the union, so I just dropped it.
Crawford
But as an accompanist, you did need to be, didn't you?
Allen
Yes. To do these records with Todd Duncan, I needed to.
Records, but not tours?
Allen
Yes.
Going to Fisk University, 1936-1943, and A Year with Egon Petri in Poland ##
CrawfordWhat made you decide to leave Washington D.C.?
Allen
Miss Grass told me about Fisk, in Nashville, and Dr. Jones, who was the last white president of Fisk, Dr. Thomas Jones, he came through Oberlin and he offered me the job. I was low man on the totem pole at Howard, I got $1,500 a year. The children of professors could have free tuition, but when I applied for a free tuition, they said, "No, he's your brother, not your son." My brother said, "You ought to adopt me." Years later, he said, "If you adopted me," he was working for Western Airlines, "you could have had free transportation!"
At Fisk, where I went in 1936, I got $2,500 a year, so that was $1,000 more.
Crawford
It was more, so that's why you left to go to Fisk?
Allen
Yes. I went to Fisk to teach from '36 to '43, and during that time I got this fellowship—in '38-'39. And it's a funny thing, I went to Poland, where I had been once before, to study with Egon Petri, in 1935.
Crawford
He was German?
Allen
No, he was Dutch. He was born in Germany but of Dutch parents, and he always carried a Dutch passport. So I got this fellowship to be in Poland for a year. I went over on the Polish boat the Pilsudski. Before I left New York, I got a Polish grammar and a Polish word book, and I told my steward, cabin boy, that I was going to be in Poland all year, and I wanted to learn some basic words. He said, "Well, I'll bring your breakfast to you every morning."
So he would bring breakfast to me, and I had these books. Then on the sixth day, he said to me in Polish, what do I want? I learned to count in Polish up to ten, I learned phrases like dzień dobry, good day, dobry wieczór, good evening, dziękuyę bardzo, thank you very much.
So when I got there, I knew how to count to ten. I had basic phrases. The pensione I stayed in, there was a young Polish boy who was trying to learn English. We both had a smattering of German. He was my age. So I helped him with English, he helped me with Polish, through German.
This fellow, Edmund Kulczick, and I went one Sunday to the other side of a mountain where the peasants used to have festivities. So we watched them. Then we came down into the main part of the village, and I started to go into a bakery. This fellow said, "No pano, Yidda, Yidda." ("Don't go in there, it's Jewish"). I pulled away. I couldn't say it in Polish, but I said, "You have a hell of a lot of nerve. You just came from your church worshipping a Jewish Christ, and you don't want me to go in here because it's Jewish?" I pulled away from him and went into the bakery.
When we had to leave Poland, Dr. Petri was called up in about the middle of August, 1939, by his consul in Krakow, who said, "You and your students had better leave, because it's very dangerous." So we arranged to leave on the 25th of August. There were two Jewish girls studying, Joan and Louise Leschin. I'm so sorry that I lost contact with them. The two girls and I left on a morning train going to Krakow, because we had to get German transit visas. When we went into the German Consulate, we were greeted with Heil Hitler. We got the transit visas.
We had all of these zlotys which wouldn't be any good once we left Poland, so we got this carriage, and we told the driver to take us to the finest restaurant. We went to this restaurant, and I remember it was a hot day. The first course was a cold fruit soup with sour cream. We had already gone to the station and gotten railway tickets to Berlin and Utrecht, Holland. The Petris and their daughter and Miss Claire James, an English woman who was studying, were coming up too.
They came up on the evening train, and we had the tickets and everything. We all got on a night train for Berlin. [When we] arrived in Berlin the next morning, it was as if nothing was happening. Then we went to Utrecht, and I cabled my committee to see if I could go on to England to study with Petri, because they were going. I got this terse message back: "You come home. You will have a passage on the New Amsterdam leaving Rotterdam on September 15. Go to such-and-such a bank, and they will give you money."
So I was in a pensione. The people must have lived in Dutch East India once. The son spoke pretty good English; the
On September 3, I came down from the third floor, where they used to send me breakfast every morning. I had never drunk coffee; I'd pour the coffee down the sink. But on Sunday the 3rd, England and France declared war on Germany. I came down to hear the English news, and she comes in, the maid behind her with this big tray, and she pours this coffee and cream and sends it to me. I tasted it and it was glorious.
Crawford
Why had you never had coffee?
Allen
My mother was Canadian, we had tea. But I had never drunk coffee. So then I said, "My goodness, I've been pouring this down the sink."
So finally, I got my ticket and I got the Dutch money to pay for the ticket. I remember I went to the office, and they said, "Yes, we have your ticket," but the money hadn't come through the bank yet. In a couple of days, it came through and I went and got my ticket, because they wouldn't let me go to England with the Petris.
Crawford
This was your committee who wouldn't—
Allen
Yes. I had a general education fellowship.
Crawford
From the Department of Education?
Allen
Yes, I think so. [The General Education Board]
Crawford
Didn't you have three summers with Petri?
Allen
No. I had studied with Petri on my own one year, but I got this fellowship for the whole year of '39.
Crawford
Had you felt in danger in Poland?
Allen
Not really. But I remember when we left Poland, the Polish said, "We can defend ourselves from the Germans and the Russians." There was an American couple that stayed there, and I saw them later. They had only potatoes to eat the whole year, and they got out [of Poland] by walking to Italy and then coming back.
Crawford
Did you perform in Poland?
Allen
No, just studied. The Petris had a villa, Wantule. We'd have private lessons a couple, three times a week. Petri had lived
Crawford
Is that a picture of Petri?
Allen
Yes. And that's his wife. That's the old man who owned the house.
Crawford
You're very dashing.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Did you see the effects of Nazism in Europe?
Allen
Yes. When I went to London in 1935, I met a German chap, Hans Knoll. When I visited him in Stuttgart, Germany, the hotel was full of Nazis. They were all in convention. He said to me, "I'm going to get out of this country, because I am absolutely against it.
The Petris went on to England, and there were two or three of his students in New York when I got back. I got recitals for him at Howard University and Fisk University, and the other students—they were from the Midwest, and they got about six or seven concerts. So the Petris came over, fulfilled these concerts, and went to Syracuse, where he got an appointment at Cornell. Claire James came with him and was his assistant.
Then, after being there for some time, he got the appointment at Mills College. Claire James came out and taught at the Conservatory. She was head of the piano department until she retired.] Material in brackets added to this section for amplification.
Crawford
How about the master's degree at Oberlin?
Allen
Well, I came back to Oberlin in January after I had been abroad studying with Petri. I stayed, got my master's in June of '36.
Crawford
Petri was a student of Busoni, is that right?
Allen
He was a student of Ferrucio Busoni. It's very interesting, when I first met Harald Logan, who was a leading piano teacher in Berkeley, I had been recommended by Tirzah Mailkoff to be music director of Junior Bach. We met at the restaurant over
Crawford
You were all very mobile.
Allen
Oh, yes. It was Hazel Harrison who heard me play in Chicago on the way to Oberlin. She said, "Oh, you must study with my teacher one day, Egon Petri."
Crawford
And how did she get connected with Petri?
Allen
She had gone to study with Busoni in the twenties, and Petri was his assistant.
Crawford
Were there a lot of such exchanges between this country and England?
Allen
Oh, I think so, before the war.
Crawford
What do you remember of Petri's teaching?
Allen
I remember he was a very progressive man. He'd say to me, "Forget everything I told you last week, I've been working over it, and I have some new ideas." And he didn't practice necessarily scales and everything. He practiced technical things that came up in pieces. Then he'd make exercises and do them. But he didn't necessarily play scales by the hour.
Crawford
Was he a Bach specialist?
Allen
Oh, yes.
I told you Claire James came over to Cornell and then came out to the Conservatory here and I used to keep up with her. I'd see her here in San Francisco, then when she retired and went back to England, twice when I went there, I visited her at her retirement home. Then I used to send her a birthday card; her birthday was August 15. When I sent it two years ago, I get this notice back, she had passed away.
She really didn't want to go back to England. She missed America. She lived way up into her nineties.
Crawford
And she was at the Conservatory when it was a much smaller institution.
She was at the Conservatory when it was on Sacramento Street on the next block from where I lived. I lived across from the theater over the drug store when I first came here. I can tell you something funny about that. Kyoka Oda was a Japanese girl who studied with Shaw, about ten years later than I. Well, I think she was there when I went back to my graduate year at Oberlin. I had lost track of her. Then I was looking in the Oberlin periodical and saw where Kyoka Oda lived at 3301 Sacramento. That was right across the street from me.
So I went over, saw her name, and I left a note. A couple of days later, she rang my bell. She said, "I work at the Bank of America downtown, I take a bus every morning, and I'd hear you practice, a classical pianist, and I wondered who it was. I certainly was glad to get your note." She and her mother had been with the Japanese that were put in an internment camp, and then they went back to Japan. Finally she had to return. She returned, and then married, married a widower, and she lives down in Santa Maria. I've seen her every once in a while.
Back in New York, 1939: Isabelle Vengerova and Mannes School
CrawfordWhen you returned you studied with Isabelle Vengerova?
Allen
Yes. When I had to come back in '39, I used the rest of my scholarship to—what was the school?
Crawford
Mannes?
Allen
Mannes, David Mannes School. So I was a year with her.
Crawford
What made you choose her?
Allen
Well, she was given to me. I didn't know much about her, but I have a friend, Eugene Haynes, who lives in east St. Louis, a fine pianist, and he had studied with her. She was very good, but I was only with her the year.
Crawford
Leonard Bernstein studied with her.
Allen
Yes, right.
Crawford
What was she like?
Well, I don't remember much about her. I remember I did a Chopin nocturne—C minor. [sings] She was different from anybody I had studied with.
Crawford
That was your audition piece for her?
Allen
Yes. She was nice. And I did my best to try to please her, but I wasn't too happy. I was so happy when Petri finally came out here and I used to take a few lessons from him.
Crawford
Was there just not the same chemistry between you?
Allen
Yes, right. And I guess too, I had gotten away from studying with women.
Crawford
You really preferred men teachers?
Allen
Yes. I really don't know why, just an unexplainable prejudice.
Crawford
What was Mannes like? What sort of an institution was that?
Allen
I didn't have much contact with it. I was glad to be with Friskin at Juilliard, and I only wish that I could have stayed at Juilliard and didn't have to go get a job, because he had offered me a full fellowship to Juilliard.
Career Aspirations
##
CrawfordI've been wanting to ask you when you first wanted to be an accompanist?
Allen
My aspiration was to be a pianist, but at the time I came along, black pianists weren't really succeeding as soloists. Of course, later, what's his name?
Crawford
Are you thinking of a black pianist? André Watts?
Allen
Yes, André Watts, and now they are coming up. There are several who are good now, but André Watts was really the first one who made it. Others had to be accompanists. Leontyne Price had a white accompanist all her life, which is fine. They were in Juilliard together. I hear that he passed recently.
Crawford
Is that David Garvey?
David Garvey, yes. But now André Watts was the first one.
Crawford
You are so fair, and were so fair. Did you ever just pass as a white person?
Allen
Oh, yes, but not purposely. But then, everyone knew my background, regardless of how I appeared.
Crawford
So it was racial considerations.
Allen
Yes. I think I told you that when I was in South America traveling with Todd Duncan, I went down to the barber shop. I think it was in Buenos Aires or Rio. I picked up a magazine while I was waiting, and they had "Hazel Powell, Negra." On the other page, they had "Lena Horne, Blanca." She was very fair.
Crawford
So you always were identified as African American.
Allen
You know, it's a funny thing. There were four in our family. I had a brother who was eighteen months younger, and his hair was about the color of yours, because he died when he was two and a half. My mother had a lock of his hair, and it was absolutely golden. And then, my sister is brown-skinned, my younger brother was brown-skinned. I remember that once I visited Kaiser Hospital, where my brother-in-law was. The doctor was there, and I came in, and my sister said, "Oh, doctor, I want you to meet my brother." "Your brother? Well, how can he be your brother?" So we had to bring him up on facts.
Crawford
Because your mother was half Scotch and Irish?
Allen
Well, her mother was Scotch-Irish. I had an aunt, and one of her sisters had four children. The oldest daughter was fair, the next brother was brown-skinned, the next daughter was brown-skinned, and the youngest son was fair. And didn't I tell you once that on Oprah Winfrey's show, there was a big audience, and everyone in there was black, but they were from your color to the color of your shoe, and they were speaking about prejudice within the race. Talking among African Americans of class consciousness, color consciousness.
Yes. Well, as I said, it was the whites, the plantation owners, who really bastardized the race, because they would go to bed with slaves.
Crawford
And that's how lighter and lighter skinned people came about.
Allen
Yes, right.
But you were trained for a concert career? In other words, there was no distinction in your training?
Allen
Yes.
Exposure to Jazz
CrawfordHad you been exposed to jazz?
Allen
I used to play—I could play popular music like, "Somebody loves me, I wonder who?" But I never was efficient at jazz. I've had pupils that I envy who could play jazz as well as classical, and I've had pupils who could play gospel as well as classical.
Crawford
Did you go to hear the big bands in the thirties?
Allen
No, I didn't. A friend of mine who knew Duke Ellington took me to hear him when he did a concert in a suburb here, and of course, we didn't have TV then. But then as radio and then TV, I listened to Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, so many of them.
Crawford
You appreciated their music.
Allen
Oh, yes, absolutely.
More about Fisk ##
CrawfordLet's see. You were in your late thirties when you were at Fisk.
Allen
Yes, I went there in thirty-six, so I was thirty years old.
Crawford
Were you thinking of settling there and raising a family?
Allen
No—well, as I said, I was married to my piano. And I did concerts in Southern black schools from Virginia State to Wiley in Texas. I would go off, and very often I come across programs that I had forgotten. My sister was teaching in Barber Scotia, a girl's school in North Carolina. This friend, Hans Knoll, came to America. When he came to America, he called me from New York. He said, "Bill, I am in your country,
He got in and he drove down to Nashville in twenty-four hours. When he showed up, the trustees were meeting at Fisk, and they were having a reception up at Jubilee Hall. So I took him up there, and the girls were in their party dresses serving punch. They went crazy over this blond German, and he went crazy over them.
So then we left the next morning for Knoxville and through the Great Smoky National Park, and went to North Carolina, where my sister was teaching—what was the name of the town? It was Barber Scotia College, I think a two-year college for girls. Then we went to Livingston, a few miles north, and I gave a concert there. Then we came to Washington.
I was giving a concert in this Presbyterian church, the 15th Street Presbyterian Church, so we stayed with the Todd Duncans. The church was sort of dark. When we got back to the Duncans' afterwards, Gladys, Todd's wife, was getting supper for us. He said, "Bill, why weren't any of your people at the concert tonight?" Well, this is a church where most of the congregation were white, fair. I said, "Hans, everyone there was colored except you and the critic." He looked in the mirror and he said, "Well, maybe I have Negro blood in me, too." [laughter]
Crawford
Where did you stay when you toured outside of Nashville? What hotels and—
Allen
I played at Negro colleges, and I stayed on the campus, president's home or, I remember I went to Wylie College in Texas, I stayed at the president's home. One of his daughters had been to Oberlin, studied there, and she was responsible for bringing me. My sister was teaching at the other college in Bishop, Texas. Then that was where she first taught, and my aunt, Lillian, had taught at that college when she finished Fisk in 1907. She taught there for one or two years.
Crawford
Music?
Allen
Yes, piano, and then she came and got married, and went to Petersburg.
Crawford
Had you gotten a degree in piano teaching specifically, or just keyboard?
No, just at that time, they didn't have pedagogy. Just a degree in piano, bachelor of music, piano major. And then in '36, a master of music.
Crawford
From Oberlin.
Allen
Yes. Now they have pedagogy and accompanying and so forth.
Crawford
All specialized, like everything.
Allen
Right.
IV The Forties: Touring with Todd Duncan
Todd Duncan, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess
CrawfordWell, let's talk about your tour with Todd Duncan.
Allen
Oh, Todd Duncan called me, phoned me in—oh, I don't know, I guess it was around '42, and he said, "Bill, I'm going to leave Porgy and Bess, I'm going to start concertizing." He was the first Porgy.
Crawford
How do you like the work?
Allen
Oh, I enjoy it very much. I enjoy it. You see, I didn't see it in '35, because I was on my way to Europe. I didn't see it until I came back in December or January. As I told you, I was on my way back to Oberlin, and I get a cable or telegram from Mrs. Paul Robeson saying, "Will you be our guest for Porgy and Bess on a certain night?"
When I showed up they had a box. Paul Robeson wasn't there, but she was there. I didn't meet him until '57, '58, when I accompanied him.
Crawford
Was that at the Metropolitan?
Allen
No, no. It didn't go to the Metropolitan until a few years ago when the Met did it. They had a hard time because the Gershwins had said that all the roles must be filled by Negroes.
Crawford
I didn't know that about the Gershwins.
Allen
Oh, yes. So the Met had to hire a lot of people, because the only whites were the sheriff and the detective.
But Duncan was the first Porgy. Abbie Mitchell, whom I had accompanied, told Gershwin about this black fellow down at
When he went up to New York and went to the Gershwins' apartment, the Gershwins said, "Well, didn't you bring your accompanist?" Todd said, "Don't you play the piano?" [laughs] And he said he had only sung a few notes, I don't know what, and Gershwin said, "You're my Porgy."
So Todd went back. He was a classical singer, and he wasn't very much enthusiastic about it. But Gershwin had him come up again and said, "I want you."
So he did the first tour in '35, then I think he did it again in '37. Then he left. We started concertizing in '43, and I concertized with him for ten years, '43 to '53. First, we did community concerts in the U.S. and Canada. We performed little in the South, because blacks didn't go on the community concert circuit then. They performed at black colleges mostly. Then we went to Australia and New Zealand twice, '45, '47, went to South America, we did the Caribbean Islands, and we went to Europe three times, '47, '49, and '51. The third time, we did Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and the third time we went all the way to Finland.
It was in Copenhagen that they said, "Oh, Mr. Duncan, can't you do a performance of Porgy and Bess?" He said, "Oh, I don't have the time, I haven't sung it for three years. And besides, our schedule is full." This was about Monday or Tuesday, and the Danes said, "We have it in our repertoire. We did it all through the war when the Germans threatened to bomb the opera house, we continued to do a work whose composer was Jewish and the cast was Negro."
Crawford
That's a great story!
Allen
So then, he gets a terse telegram from Prague saying, "Concert canceled Saturday." And the Danes said, "Now you can do Porgy." He said, "Well, get me a score so I can review it." He sang Porgy, I think it was Saturday night. The place was sold out. People could only buy a pair of tickets, and they were lined up for two or three blocks. All the artists, singers and actors, stood in the back. The leading lady, Elsa Brehms, learned the duet in English. Otherwise, it was all sung in Danish, except he sang in English, and the duet was sung in English. [sings] "Bess, you is my woman now."
And at the end, he received, oh, eighteen curtain calls. He would come out, and he'd look for his Bess and the others, they were all in the wings, clapping. Nobody came up on the stage, nobody.
Crawford
Did he record that?
Allen
No. He recorded some excerpts from it. You know, they had Lawrence Tibbett and I forget who the soprano was to come and listen to the rehearsals. They did recordings before the black cast did.
Crawford
They recorded it?
Allen
Yes, they did. Just excerpts of it. As somebody said, it was very Jewish of them. [laughter]
Crawford
Did you meet Gershwin?
Allen
I never met him.
Australia and New Zealand: 1945 and 1947
CrawfordIn your travels with Todd Duncan, did you dedicate yourself somewhat to African American composers such as William Grant Still?
Allen
No, not necessarily. I only did a group of piano solos after the intermission in Australia and New Zealand, where we went in 1945 and 1947. I would—oh, I did Chopin, Brahms. I would do some Robert Nathanial Dett—I would usually do Juba Dance. The Australians knew Juba Dance because it had been introduced years before by their famous Australian pianist, Percy Grainger.
So whenever I played Juba Dance, they knew it. But I would play varied things. I'd do about two or three numbers. I'd come out—at first, at that time, when the concert began, I had to come out alone and play "God Save the King."
And then he came out. I remember the concert halls at that time weren't heated. They had gas heaters in the artist's room. My hands would get absolutely cold, and I'd come and warm them each time before I went out so I could play. Women were sitting there with muffs, they had hot-water bottles in the muffs.
Crawford
How were the halls?
Oh, they were big auditoriums. I should have brought you some of those pictures. As I said, we did concerts Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, for three weeks. The first two or three were papered, and then when the critics came, the audience increased, and by the seventh, eighth, ninth concerts, the hall was packed, even sitting on the stage.
Crawford
Did they just love classical music and not have much of it?
Allen
Oh, yes. You see, they were doing concerts that way before there were planes, so that any concert artist came, they milked them, everything they knew, and they did several concerts. Nowadays, you go by plane so you may do two or three concerts. But you don't do nine in one city as we did in Melbourne and Sydney.
Crawford
And you packed the houses?
Allen
By the fifth, sixth concerts, they were packed. And one, I think the eighth or ninth concert, was a request. People would send in requests, so he would make a program up of things that they liked the best.
Crawford
What did they like the best?
Allen
Oh, they always liked things from Porgy and Bess. But then they had favorites, Brahms and Schubert, things that he did. He always did spirituals after intermission. White people thought no one could sing [those] like black people.
Crawford
Had they seen Porgy and Bess? Would they have seen it?
Allen
Oh, no. They had just heard about it.
Crawford
So touring in Australia and New Zealand, what do you remember of the people, the audiences?
Allen
Oh, they were wonderful. We made many friends, and because we were one month in a town, we were entertained at dinner and luncheons. And then coming back two years later, we had the friends we had made. So we were royally entertained.
Crawford
And did you stay in the cities?
Allen
Oh, yes, we stayed at what was then Hotel Australia. We were known. I remember a telephone operator in Hotel Australia in Sydney, Billie, and when we came back, she was oh so glad to see us again. The Australians were wonderful.
Just recently, Todd Duncan sent me a copy of a letter he had gotten from somebody there said, "Mr. Duncan, I heard your concerts when you sang there, and I'm coming to America, to New York, and if I could just see you briefly, I'd come down on the train. I know Mr. Allen doesn't live there, but please send him a copy of this letter and give him my greetings." So I'm going to write the person and tell them if he comes through the Bay Area, let me know.
Crawford
Oh, just now?
Allen
Yes, coming up. After all these years.
Crawford
You still could go to Australia and you'd have friends everywhere.
Allen
Yes, right. And in New Zealand, we made friends in so many towns, and when we came back two years later, we had made these friends, and they all looked forward to our coming.
I remember the Ballantynes in Christchurch. Mr. Ballantyne had a big department store there. They entertained us. His wife had studied piano in Germany and had brought back two—I think they were Bechsteins from Germany. They had a great big drawing room and a little platform, and they used to give musicals there. They always entertained us. We kept in touch with them. When I sent him a Christmas greeting two years ago, he told me that his wife passed.
But he had a department store, and I needed a new dress shirt. He sent it over to me, and with his compliments. He wouldn't take any money for it.
And then later, the department store burned down, and there were deaths and everything. So he never went back into it. But he went into the travel business, and he and his wife came to San Francisco once and were staying at a hotel in San Francisco. It was at the time of the Junior Bach Festival, when I was music director. I remember I had them come over, and they went to Hertz Hall and attended a concert.
Crawford
So you kept up with a lot of these folks. You went to Australia and New Zealand twice, and you told me before about going to Fiji. Where else did you tour with Todd Duncan?
Touring in South America and the Caribbean: 1951
AllenWe went to Australia and New Zealand twice, '45 and '47. Then we did South America—
Crawford
What was that like?
Allen
Oh, it was wonderful. We did concerts in Guatemala and El Salvador and Panama, places where you couldn't get them today.
Crawford
Did you travel by train?
Allen
No, plane.
Crawford
Plane everywhere?
Allen
Plane, yes. And then we did concerts in Colombia, Bogotá, and then we went on to Buenos Aires and Rio, and then came up to Caracas and over from Caracas to the Caribbean. We did concerts in Aruba, Curacao, Haiti, Jamaica.
Crawford
Who sponsored that? Was that a State Department tour?
Allen
No. It was all done under concert managers. Columbia Concerts, Inc., in New York, was Todd's management.
Crawford
That was a very lengthy tour.
Allen
Columbia must have made arrangements with them.
Crawford
How was it in Brazil at the time? Did you get out to hear other music when you toured?
Allen
No, not really. You see, we'd do a couple of concerts, and we'd be entertained by the management at restaurants, but we really didn't stay long enough to get a feeling for the citizens.
Crawford
So you'd fly into a city and probably go straight to the hotel?
Allen
Go to the hotel.
Crawford
And then were the instruments good for you, the pianos?
Allen
Oh, yes. Yes. Very seldom—the pianos were for the most part very good. Todd never got up until noon. I would get up early and go to see the piano, and I'd come back and say, "Oh, the piano's terrible for tonight." He'd say, "Well, you've got to play on it." But the instruments were pretty good.
In South America?
Allen
Yes, right.
Crawford
And that was one tour that you made of all those countries, or were those separate tours, to Bogotá and Rio and so on?
Allen
That was one tour.
Crawford
Were you ever in any danger?
Allen
No, I don't ever recall that we felt any danger.
Crawford
And you must have liked to fly.
Allen
Yes. The first time, we went to Australia by ship, and came back by plane, '45. The second time, we went by plane, and came back by ship. We were to come on the Aorangi.
Crawford
That must be a Maori word.
Allen
Yes. And Todd Duncan was asked to come back early to do Lost in the Stars. He got the book Cry the Beloved Country, read it, liked it. So he canceled a concert in Perth, and we never got to western Australia. He came ahead, while his wife and I, she didn't like to fly anyhow, and so we came on this Aorangi. Sydney, Auckland, Honolulu, where there was a strike and we couldn't go in, Vancouver. I think it was twenty-three days, and I loved it.
I went on back to Fisk University, the first black president, Dr. Charles Johnson, invited me to come back to Fisk. That was in '51, '50, '51. He wanted me to stay, but I promised to go back to Todd, so I only stayed the one year.
Touring and Segregation
CrawfordWhen you were touring abroad, did you find discrimination in Australia or in South America?
Allen
No. In Caracas, we stayed at the Hollywood Hotel. The committee met us and took us there, and told us, I think, that another hotel had refused us, and the government fined that hotel and said they must never discriminate again.
There was one place, Colorado Springs, where we were met and the committee said, "Mr. Duncan, you're going to stay here, and Mr.
Crawford
In Colorado.
Allen
In Colorado Springs.
Crawford
Did you find that tiring when you were on tour, to fly in and—
Allen
No, I enjoyed it. Then we had two programs under our belt, and we would do one or the other. For instance, if we'd come the next season to a town near another town, so we did another program. But we usually had two programs ready.
Crawford
Who else did you work with in those ten years, '43 to '53? Was it fairly exclusively with Todd Duncan?
Allen
When I toured with him '43 to '53, I toured with him all the time. It wasn't until I left him in '53 and came out to California, that artists who knew about me and would come to the Pacific Coast without accompanists would engage me. I was engaged first by Adele Addison and Lawrence Winters. I remember they were the first couple I toured with. And then Betty Allen. Who else? George Shirley, tenor.
Crawford
Wonderful singer.
Allen
Costie Bohannon was a white baritone. And then there was this John McCollum [spells]. He was a baritone. I had heard him when I came out here the first year, and a quartet sang the Bach Christmas Oratorio with the San Francisco Symphony, and Leontyne Price was the soprano. Leontyne came out, no book, anything. The other three had the books. So the contralto complained, she said, "You embarrassed the rest of us by not having your music," because at this time, they always had the music.
So the next performance, Leontyne came out, and she had it.
Crawford
Upside down!
Allen
In other words, saying, "Okay, I have it."
Then McCollum later was teaching at the University of Michigan, and my friend Tirzah Mailkoff who had founded the Junior Bach Festival and then had gone back to Michigan to teach, he told her that he was giving—he was a native of California—he was giving three concerts out there, and he said, "I need an accompanist." Tirzah said, "My friend, William Allen," so he
Just classical?
Allen
Yes.
A Family Album and a Family Cookbook ##
CrawfordWe're taking a break and looking at a family album. Say the name again so we don't lose it.
Allen
Darden, [spells]. And my aunt married Dr. James Darden. Then there was a Dr. John Darden in Alabama, and a Dr. Walter Darden traveled all through the country and compiled this cookbook, Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine.
And this is the copy they gave to Aunt Lillian. "To Aunt Lillian: we deeply appreciate the time, energy, and support that you gave us during the preparation of this book. Thank you so much for sharing your story and the Allen story with us. Love, Norma Jean and Carol." Here is [an invitation:] "Doubleday and Company requests the pleasure of your company at a reception in honor of Norma Jean Darden and Carol Darden on the publication of Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine, Thursday, November 16—" see here again, dates are left out. Well, it had to be—
Crawford
Let's see the publication date. [looking through book] Publication date 1978, it looks like.
Allen
1978. And when they went to Aunt Lil, Aunt Lil said, "Oh, dear, I don't cook any more."
Crawford
What a beauty!
Allen
Oh, yes, she was. She said, "I'll give you my recipes for natural beauty preparation. Cucumber, watermelon, tomato. Tomato juice is great for oily skin. Potato, peel and grate a little white potato, place under the eyes, good for relieving swollen bags and dark circles. Egg, egg whites, beat and apply to face, work as a tightening mask to draw up wrinkles. Peaches, cream, and honey.
Aunt Lil takes this one literally. Whip up a little heavy cream, mash one-half peach, and mix with one tablespoon full of
Crawford
Sounds delicious, doesn't it?
Allen
"Violet vanishing cream, a homemade perfume." Now, here is the Allen family. There is Uncle Louis, who came out to Portland and assisted my father in the hotel business. That was Nell, the mother of three. Charles and the twins, Robert and Allen—all went to Harvard (except Allen), in law, medicine, and dentistry. There is my father. And you notice—there's Sadie, I never knew her. Henry, grandmother, grandfather—Grandmother Sarah, Grandfather Charles. Robert. Edward, Clarence, and Aunt Lil. She was really named Lizzy, but she hated it, and she changed it to Lillian.
Crawford
She was a girl of her own mind.
Allen
That's Norma Jean. And there was the invitation to the party. You know, these girls went all over the country. They appeared on TV shows relative to this book.
Crawford
And these would be all family recipes.
Allen
They're all recipes that they gathered from the family. They wrote, "We are two sisters who love to cook, especially together. During a small party we were giving, the conversation drifted to talk of ethnic heritage. We mentioned that we were definitely homegrown, since our grandfather, Papa Darden, had been a slave, and a great-grandmother, whom we knew nothing about, had been a Cherokee, a Native American. A guest offhandedly remarked that we must have a lot of oldtime recipes. It seemed a strange statement at the time, for we had never viewed our genealogy in precisely that way. However, some place deep down in our imagination, a chord had been struck."
Crawford
And that's the genesis of the book.
Allen
Yes. Here they give the genealogy. Charles Darden and Diana Sampson. Now, you know a sad thing about the girls' family. Their father, Walter Darden, was married to Mamie Jean Sampson. He had a good practice in Newark, and they had a lovely home. The mother took the girls to school, and when they came home after school, they couldn't find their mother. The father came in. She didn't show up. The next morning, they found her murdered in the rose garden. It was never discovered what happened.
Crawford
Well, did you keep in touch with cousins and—
Oh, yes.
Crawford
You were very family-minded.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Well, let's talk about the early fifties when you came to San Francisco.
Allen
Yes, '53.
Crawford
Did Todd Duncan stop performing on tour?
Allen
No, he performed for a few more years. I got tired of living in a suitcase. He was surprised when I said I was going West. In fact, he gave a concert here, a joint concert with Georgia Lassiter at Herbst Theater, and I went to the concert. In the first piece, the accompanist made a little mistake. When I went back, Todd said, "He was so nervous because you were in the audience." I said, "Well, I wouldn't have come if I had thought I was going to upset him."
Crawford
Who was that, who was the accompanist?
Allen
I can't think of his name. When they gave Todd a seventy-fifth birthday party, I flew out, I surprised him. My successor was there, and I met him then. Some of the people from Columbia came down. It was quite a party.
Crawford
Where was the party?
Allen
It was in Washington, I forget where.
Crawford
So you decided to move to California because your sister was here.
Allen
My sister and her husband lived here. We never did a concert in San Francisco, but I always wanted to live there. So I did.
V The Fifties: Coming to California
##
Settling in San Francisco and Touring the Coast
CrawfordWe have more or less followed you to San Francisco, where you set up your studio and began a long list of associations.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Could you elaborate on the reasons you wanted to live in San Francisco?
Allen
I always wanted to—it's strange. We didn't do a concert in San Francisco. We did concerts in northern California, southern California, and around, but never in San Francisco when I was traveling with Todd Duncan. When I left him in '43, our last concert was in Pennsylvania near Wilmington, Delaware, and I was staying with good friends of mine, Dr. and Mrs. W. W. Goens. I had played for their wedding in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a very successful doctor, and eventually they built a beautiful home in the suburb of Wilmington. I used to stop over there when I was free from touring with Todd Duncan and stay a few days.
Then, when I decided I was tired of living in a suitcase, I told Todd Duncan that I was going to leave. He was surprised, but I had always wanted to live in San Francisco. So I came. First, I stayed with my sister and her husband in Berkeley. I had good friends, Dr. Carlton Goodlett, who was the editor of the Sun-Reporter, and his wife, Willette, and they had lived with me in Nashville at a home I occupied on the campus my last year. They married. She was a teacher of physical education at Tennessee State College. So they married, and they lived briefly with me before I left.
So when I came out to San Francisco, I naturally got in touch with them. He said, "Come on over and stay with us a while, and maybe Willette can find you some place to live." And every week, I would hunt, I would go with her and try to find an apartment. One Saturday, I had come over. We looked in many neighborhoods of San Francisco for a satisfactory apartment. I went back to my sister's. I had no sooner got back here and she called, she said, "Bill, come over immediately, I think I have found for you the place."
Crawford
This was Mrs. Goodlett?
Allen
Mrs. Goodlett. So I came back, and we went to this apartment over the drug store at the corner of Presidio and Sacramento. There was a young couple that had been living there, and they were going to move, I think it was to Montana, where neither one of them had been. They wanted to leave and leave their furniture; they were going to sell the furniture that they had for $500.
And I think the rent was fifty dollars a month. So I got it immediately, and I stayed there for, oh, I guess ten, fifteen years. Then other interests bought over the building, and the rent raised. So finally, some friends of mine said, "Why don't you come over? We're remodeling a house on upper Market Street." It was a couple blocks above the hospital there on Castro, where Castro goes up and changes its name. I lived there for two years.
Crawford
I read that you bought a Steinway for $1,000 in the '30s, and moved it to San Francisco. What did you find musically in San Francisco in 1953?
Allen
You see, many artists who had known that I had traveled with Todd Duncan for many years, when they found I was living in San Francisco and they needed an accompanist for their concerts on the Pacific Coast, they would engage me. I remember the first couple were a soprano, Adele Addison, and Lawrence Winters. Now, Lawrence Winters had been a pupil of Todd Duncan. In fact, he succeeded him in Porgy and Bess. He graduated from Dunbar High School. That was when there were segregated schools there, and Dunbar and Armstrong were the two high schools for blacks.
Crawford
Where?
Allen
In Washington. There was a lady who taught music, Mary Europe. If you look up in history, her brother, James Europe, was a very famous bandmaster. She fostered Lawrence Winters. When he went on to sing, he took lessons from Todd Duncan.
So he and Adele Addison were the first couple that I accompanied on the coast. We did concerts from, oh, north of Seattle on down to southern California. I remember one place in Washington we were staying in a hotel or motel, just two stories. After the concert, they entertained us, and we came home. We went to the second floor, where each of us had a room. Adele had her room, I had mine, Larry had his. We stopped to wait for Adele to go into her room. She had a bag with her keys and—like a woman has, junk. [laughs] She couldn't find her key, and he took and he threw everything down. "There, Adele, there's your key. Good night." [laughter]
Crawford
What a memory you have. So you kept pretty busy accompanying?
Allen
Oh, yes. Then I accompanied Betty Allen, a mezzo soprano down the coast.
Crawford
No relationship?
Allen
No, and when we would go out, she'd say, "I want to introduce you to my accompanist. He's not my brother, he's not my husband, he's not my cousin. We're in no ways related. We just happen to have the same name." She would do that at every concert.
Then I accompanied George Shirley, who was the first black tenor at the Metropolitan.
Crawford
He started around 1961, didn't he?
Allen
I think so. And he for years he sang there—he quit the Met because they were using him only as a substitute for other tenors who were sick, so he quit the Met. But he still went to Europe, to Holland and Germany for many years. I accompanied him over in Marin County at that—what's the school over there?
Crawford
Dominican?
Allen
Dominican, yes. It was a summer outdoors concert, and I accompanied William Warfield there once too. But then Shirley had an engagement in Hawaii in the Big Island. We went over there for the one concert, and then I said to him, "Well, if you're not in a hurry, let's stop by my friends in Kauai." We went to see them. I had known them for years, visited them. We went there and stayed a few days before we returned.
Remembering Leontyne Price and Paul Robeson
Then I think I told you that when I was the Minister of Music at South Berkeley Church, I would get my artist friends to sing there at Sunday morning service. Leontyne Price sang twice. The last time was Easter Sunday, 1970, I think.
CrawfordWould you talk about how you met Leontyne Price? I know you accompanied her on one occasion.
Allen
On one occasion, 1958. I asked her if she would do a concert for the benefit of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and she consented. It was a salon concert, it was up on Divisadero in a beautiful home, and it seems to me like the owner was in city politics somehow. So she did this recital, and I accompanied her. The San Francisco Boys Chorus were all there, with Madi Bacon. She said to them, "I understand that—" this was an encore "—I understand that you young boys sing `Jesus Walk This Lonely Garden.'" They said, "Yes." She said, "Well, I'm going to sing it as an encore, and I wish you would join me." And of course, they were very proud.
There was one young man who I became friendly with in summer camp, and he finally went over to Europe. He was studying to be a hotel manager. He was in Paris, and he went down to Italy for some reason or other. He came back to Paris and saw Leontyne Price was giving a concert, tickets all sold out, couldn't find one.
So he went back to the stage entrance, and when her limousine came up, she got out. "Miss Price, I was in the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and William Allen was a friend of mine." She said to Hubert Dilworth [her manager], "Hubert, take care of the boy." He said, "I had a seat in the seventh row."
Crawford
She cared a lot about promoting young musicians, and particularly black musicians, didn't she?
Allen
Yes, she did.
Crawford
Well, about that same year, you accompanied Paul Robeson, I think.
Allen
Fifty-seven-'58. I told you I was supposed to have met the Robesons when I went to Europe in '35, and I had a letter of introduction. I didn't meet him until '57-'58, when Dr. Goodlett called me up and said, "Paul Robeson is going to do a half-dozen concerts, and will you accompany him?" I said, "With great pleasure." So that's when I met him.
What were the qualities that made him so special?
Allen
He had an unusual voice. It wasn't particularly trained, but he had an unusual—just like Leontyne Price's voice is distinctive, you know it the minute you hear it. Well, the same way with him. The minute you heard his voice, you knew it was Paul Robeson. So of course, I said I'd accompany him with great pleasure. We did concerts at the Third Baptist Church, San Francisco, and then two churches in Oakland, and in San Jose, and Sacramento.
Crawford
What did he program?
Allen
He did folk songs of many nations. You know he was a great champion of the coal miners in Wales. So he did folk songs of people of many nations. He sang in many languages. So that his program was unusual in that way.
Crawford
What was he like personally?
Allen
A wonderful person, wonderful person. And I don't know whether I told you that Todd Duncan toured Australia and New Zealand '45-'47 and had a great success, but they would always ask me backstage, "When are we going to hear Paul Robeson?" Well, his passport had been taken away.
Crawford
Because of his supposed communist affiliation?
Allen
Yes. And he said he was never a card-carrying communist, but he believed in many of their ideas. So the reason I accompanied him in '57-'58 was that his accompanist, Lawrence Brown, was ill. So then the Supreme Court, I guess, made the government give him his passport back, and he immediately made arrangements to go to Australia. I said I'd love to go with him, but Lawrence Brown got well. [laughs]
Crawford
So he accompanied him.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
That must have been one of his last tours, '57 and '58, was it?
Allen
Yes. His voice was so distinctive, so low, and he spoke low. I remember once he went to the opera house to hear Leontyne Price, and he stood in the back, because he didn't want to embarrass her in any way. He stood in the back, or he finally got a seat in the back. At the San Francisco Opera House.
Crawford
He never sang at the Met?
Never sang. Of course, the thing is, people ask why didn't he do Otello? Well, Otello is a tenor role, he couldn't do it. He could only do it as a play. But the Met was integrated by Marian Anderson. She was past her prime.
Crawford
Jackie Robinson had been the first major league ball player in 1945, so things were opening somewhat?
Allen
Oh, yes, right. They had black baseball teams that played themselves, you know, and great players. But baseball, like everything else, was slow in integrating. Jackie Robinson was the first.
Crawford
You said New York City Opera engaged Todd Duncan before the Met?
Allen
Yes, he was known to be the first black to sing in white roles.
Crawford
What were his roles, do you remember? What were some of the first roles?
Allen
He did Cavalleria Rusticana, with Camilla Williams. Do you know, I remember waiting in that 55th Street Theater where they first did the New York City Opera.
Crawford
The Met isn't always first—I remember that Leontyne Price made her debut here before she went to the Met, three or four years later on.
Allen
Oh, yes. Every opera she did here, and she always sent my sister and her husband and myself complimentary tickets. She sent me every album that she did. I had at least two dozen albums, and all the soprano aria volumes. I sent them all to the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago.
Crawford
What were the special qualities of Leontyne Price's voice?
Allen
You turn on a record, and it's distinctive. You hear other sopranos, and you don't recognize who they are. But when you hear Leontyne Price, there's a distinctive quality in her voice that is individual.
Crawford
Have you stayed in touch with her?
Allen
Yes. My sister, since she's been a widow, and I get Christmas cards from her always. You know the book she wrote about Aida. She sent us that. Once—no, really twice—I had dinner at her home on 9 Van Dam Street [in New York City]. I'll never forget, I don't know whether I've told you this. But her former husband, William Warfield, had lived in a hotel where my sister and her husband had their honeymoon—I think it was '41. I was
Then later he had moved to 9 Van Dam, but after they separated, he left and left her the house. Lula, who had been his housekeeper in his apartment at the hotel, Lula stayed with Miss Price through the years. Once when Warfield was out in San Francisco and I was to accompany him in a concert, we were in my apartment in San Francisco. I had a wall phone in the kitchen. The phone rang, and it was Hubert Dilworth. He said, "Bill, we're trying to find Warfield." I said, "He's right here."
I heard him say, "Leontyne, he's in Bill's apartment." So he took the phone, and in a few minutes he had tears coming out of his eyes. He said, "Well, I'll be home Wednesday." Leontyne Price had come home, and she never took a key, [because] Lula always stayed up when she was out. There was no answer. Finally the police broke in and they found Lula on the downstairs floor, dead. She had a heart attack, I guess.
So then Warfield said, "I'll be home, I'll be back in New York Wednesday, I'll get in touch with you immediately." But Leontyne Price used to have Lula come out here to San Francisco and hear her at the opera, along with her parents when they were living.
Crawford
She is a great lady.
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
I interviewed her for the Adler history, because she was really part of San Francisco Opera. And she is not performing now so much, is she? She hasn't sung opera for a long time.
Allen
Oh, no. The last performance we heard was at Stanford University. A group of us went down there. Her accompanist of many years passed away. David Garvey.
##
James Levine from the Met accompanied her to the concert.
Crawford
She did a lot for African American artists generally, didn't she?
Allen
Yes. She said, "I was inspired by Marian Anderson, and I want to pass the mantle on."
A New Generation of Black Artists
CrawfordLet us pursue this a little bit, this upcoming generation of black artists. Kathleen Battle, for instance, Harolyn Blackwell—
Allen
Yes, the temperamental Kathleen Battle.
Crawford
Are they finding it much easier? They don't have to go to Europe to make careers and so on?
Allen
Oh, yes. When I get Opera News and hear the Saturday morning broadcasts, I don't know who the black ones are unless I know personally, because it's never mentioned. But there are several who appear. Reri Grist [is one]. I hear from her. She lives in Berlin now, and she commutes to Munich. She teaches in both Berlin and Munich.
Crawford
How about instrumentalists?
Allen
I think black singers were recognized first, because the spirituals attracted people. But finally Andre Watts made it, and now there are others. There's this young one that played here, a nineteen-year-old pianist that played in Herbst.
Crawford
There are many fine African American conductors, aren't they?
Allen
Oh, there are more and more conductors now.
Crawford
Do you know Henry Lewis?
Allen
Yes, Henry Lewis was one of the first. I remember meeting him and Marilyn Horne when they were married, staying with friends of mine. The last time she sang here, I went with Madi Bacon. Madi Bacon went backstage, and she was introducing. Marilyn Horne said, "Oh, I know William Allen very well. How are you?"
Then there is Denis De Coteau. In San Francisco. I saw one of his daughters recently, and she told me he was getting along pretty well. He has been very ill. He has three daughters, and they are all geniuses. Not in music.
Thoughts about Black Music Critics and Composers
CrawfordWe haven't talked very much about critics. You have been a critic for many years. But are there very many black critics?
No. There have been very few on the daily papers. There was one in Detroit for a while, and I don't know of any in the daily papers in New York or San Francisco. I wrote a column for the Sun-Reporter, and then also for the Post.
Crawford
Is the Post a black newspaper?
Allen
Oh, yes. It's owned by Tom Berkley.
Crawford
I know Janos Gereben writes for the Post about music.
Allen
He's not black. But I wrote for them ten years, and I wrote for the Sun-Reporter for ten years.
Crawford
Did you start doing that when you first came?
Allen
Yes, when I first came, I called the Goodletts up, and Carlton was publisher, editor, and owner, he said, "Well, you might as well write a music column." So I did, for ten years. He paid me five dollars a week. That wasn't gasoline money. He said, "Someday I'll be able to pay you what you're worth." Well, Berkley offered me $100 a month. So I went over to the Oakland Post. Goodlett became a millionaire.
Crawford
What was the Oakland Post like?
Allen
It was better than it is today. Both the Sun-Reporter and the Post send me their papers. The woman who writes for the music column, Eleanor Olman, is white, for the Sun-Reporter. I send her things that she may not know of.
Crawford
What did you write?
Allen
I gave a music calendar every week, with an emphasis on black performers. I interviewed visiting black artists and commented on concerts. A weekly is different than a daily.
Crawford
I would like to put some of your columns in the history.
Allen
I think I brought you a column that I wrote about William Grant Still. I'm going to play a program [from his] Spirituals and Art Songs.
Crawford
This is for Still's hundredth anniversary?
Allen
Yes. William Grant Still was born May 11, 1895. His daughter will be up lecturing and giving slides about her father.
Crawford
That brings up something interesting, and that is the question of performance of black composers. Is it enough?
Well, now, I have performed not only William Grant Still, but Howard Swanson, and Ulysses Kay, who passed away recently, a couple of weeks ago I heard.
Crawford
I believe the New York Philharmonic commissioned a work from Swanson?
Allen
Yes, it was a concerto for orchestra, I think. They commissioned it. And I used to play his Cuckoo for piano, which is a delightful piece. And when I came out here, I played his Sonata. It was very difficult. I played it in the first concert I gave in San Francisco. George Walker has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as well. Then what other black composers?
Crawford
Well, there's Olly Wilson.
Allen
Oh, yes. But his music is far too difficult [laughing]—of course, the one who championed his music was Hinderas, Natalie Hinderas. She championed Olly Wilson's music, and she did the one for orchestra and tape, and I have the score of that. She was a wonderful pianist. Unfortunately passed away a few years ago. She substituted at the last minute with the San Francisco Symphony, playing a concerto by a South American composer.
Crawford
Are there major works that you think should be being performed more than they are?
Allen
No. There really aren't. There was a work by Averil Coleridge Taylor, daughter of Samuel Coleridge Taylor, but I don't think that's ever been done. She gave me a copy of the piece—I don't know whether there was one movement or what, and I gave it to the San Francisco Library.
Crawford
We didn't talk about Joplin, of course, who had a major revival.
Allen
Oh, yes, Scott Joplin.
Crawford
His opera Treemonisha has been done here, and I think New York City Opera did it.
Allen
Oh, yes, it was done at New York City. And it's been done in Atlanta. I remember that a lady violinist whom I used to accompany in San Francisco, she gave me the volume. I recall as a child—I don't recall my mother playing it, but evidently somebody gave her the "Maple Leaf Rag," because she was a Canadian. So when I went to Talladega College in '80-'82, I learned "A Breeze from Alabama." I used to play that, and I play it once in a while now.
But you never played much ragtime other than that?
Allen
No.
Teaching and Reviewing Music in San Francisco
CrawfordLet's see where we are. Let's talk about your establishing your studio here. It doesn't sound to me as if you had a lot of time to teach, really, when you first came.
Allen
No, I didn't, but I had a few pupils in my studio in San Francisco. Then I used to teach in my sister's home. One of them who is very prominent today, her name was Margaret Hughes. Her mother used to drive her up from Gustine two or three times a month.
Crawford
Where is Gustine?
Allen
Gustine, California. It's about 100 miles south of San Francisco. You look on the map, you'll see it. Mrs. Hughes was a music teacher and a member of the Music Teachers Association of California, which I joined soon after I came out here. So she used to bring Margaret up, oh, two or three times a month to Berkeley. She won a concerto contest down in Fresno, and she went to Northwestern. I'll never forget, she called me and said that she was going to come to San Francisco to get married, and asked if her fiancé—it was going to be a small wedding at her uncle's home up in the hills in San Francisco, would it be all right for him to sing at his own wedding?
I said, "Of course." She said, "Well, suggest something, not the orthodox thing." So I suggested Schumann's Devotion. He sang it, and it was an upright piano. Then she came down and they were married. I remember the minister's back was to the view of the bay and everything, but they were looking right over the bay. Unfortunately now they have divorced. They have a daughter who's, oh, twenty, twenty-one years old, and back at her mother's alma mater, Northwestern. Her mother has a doctorate from the University of Washington. She does a lot of playing up there, both solo and accompanying and chamber music. We keep in touch all the time.
Crawford
How many students did you take?
Allen
Oh, I had about a dozen or more. [laughs] One fellow who was one of my first pupils, I see him every once in a while, Alex Bagwell. He says, "Don't forget, I was your first student in
Crawford
Too difficult. Well, when we turned the tape over, I had wanted to ask you more about your approach to writing as a musician. Did that make you more positive, do you think?
Allen
Oh, I think so, yes.
Crawford
Because you know what it takes.
Allen
Right, right, absolutely.
Crawford
What did you cover mostly? And how many assignments did you have each week?
Allen
Just once.
Crawford
One column a week. And that would involve going to whatever was happening musically?
Meeting William Grant Still and Howard Swanson
AllenOh, yes. I have a column to show you or give you when I commented on William Grant Still's visit here.
You see, how I got introduced to him, there was a young lady that came up to Portland in 1924, just before I came to college. She heard me play and she said, "When I go back, I am going to send you the music of a friend and neighbor of ours." It was the Three Visions by William Grant Still. Well, I learned them, and I'd send her a program, she'd give it to the Stills, and I'd get a note from him thanking me.
This continued every time I'd give a program. She'd give it to him, I'd get a thank-you note. When I went to Poland in 1939, a package was delivered to me, and it was a copy of the manuscript of his new Suite Seven Traceries. I looked through it, and here number four, "Out of the Silence," was dedicated to William Allen. I thought it was quite the nicest piece. Here again, whenever I played it, he would send me a thank-you note.
Then in 1975, I went down—he had written his autobiography, and I went down to the University of Southern California, which was giving him an honorary doctorate. He signed my book.
Had you met him by then?
Allen
Oh, yes. Then after he passed, his wife wrote a book, and she would send me notes. The daughter, Judith Ann Still Headlee, too. It's very sad, I think I told you, the son, Duncan Alan Still, married white—his mother was white—and he didn't even come to his father's funeral.
Crawford
Why?
Allen
He was passing completely, just ignored it. Then the daughter, who kept up with her father, her husband I think drowned, and she has four children.
Crawford
When did he die?
Allen
He passed in—let's see—'78. Same year that Howard Swanson passed.
Crawford
Did you know Swanson?
Allen
I met Swanson, I had already performed his music, and I finally met him in New York one year when I was staying there. He came and we met. But I had played his music before I met him. He lived a long time in France. I was really introduced to his music by Helen Thigpen, soprano, who sang his songs at a recital, Town Hall, and her accompanist was David Allen, a white accompanist. When she came out here, I accompanied her, and they wanted to know if I was related to David Allen. We did a concert at San Francisco State. It was the first concert at the new San Francisco State out in the sticks, and people said, "They will never come out here to concerts."
Then I played for her at four or five junior colleges in the state, and later went down to Los Angeles, accompanied her at a concert at the University of California, Los Angeles. Later she passed. She had been in the Porgy and Bess that went to Moscow. She did—what role did she play? I forget what role she played. But she married over there, married the fellow who was doing Crown. But the marriage didn't last very long. It was written up in Life. The marriage took place in an American church over there. She was a fine singer, fine singer.
Crawford
Yes, I know her name. That's an interesting story.
Associations and Activities: The National Association of Negro Musicians
CrawfordYou toured and you taught some, and were active in lots of organizations.
Allen
Music Teachers Association of California, I was president of the Golden Gate Chapter, and also the National Association of Negro Musicians—Golden Gate Branch.
Crawford
Could you talk about NANM?
Allen
Well, it was founded in Chicago back in about 1913, I think. Many prominent musicians, I remember Camille Nickerson was president one year, one or two years. She later was the head of the junior piano department at Howard University when I taught there.
That's an interesting thing: in the junior piano department, one of her assistant teachers taught Frances and George Walker. Frances Walker became the first black woman professor at Oberlin College. She later went to Oberlin, and then she became the first black woman professor, turned out wonderful students, and her brother, George Walker, also a graduate of Oberlin, has written many compositions performed by the leading symphonies of the country. They were both youngsters in the junior piano department at Howard University.
I hear from Frances every once in a while, she'll send me programs. In fact, she's retired, but she still lives in Oberlin, and she sent me a program done by black students there, and she wanted to know the dates of Cecil Cohen, who was on the staff at Howard, and also graduated from Oberlin. Well, I had to look in the Dictionary of Black Musicians to see what his dates were, because I didn't know.
Crawford
I didn't know there was a dictionary for black musicians.
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
You mean to say that black musicians wouldn't be in Baker's dictionary?
Allen
Well, only the most prominent ones. But then there is a compilation of all black musicians, black—yes, I should have brought it to show it to you.
Crawford
I'll see if we have it here in the library. Does the National Association of Negro Musicians have meetings every year?
Yes. The seventy-fifth one met here in Oakland last year. The seventy-sixth will meet in August in Newark, New Jersey. William Warfield was the president for two years, including the year they met here. They're after him to please be president again. I don't know whether he's going to.
Crawford
The NANM has resisted changing its name, updating it to current practice, hasn't it?
Allen
Yes.
A Visit to Washington, D.C.
CrawfordYou've just been in Washington to talk about establishing a conservatory there.
Allen
Right, and I saw William Warfield there. And of course, I'll be seeing him in Yachats in July.
Crawford
You saw Todd Duncan?
Allen
Yes. And Warfield went to see him, too. It was very interesting. Warfield this time, you know, he doesn't have the voice he had once, but he recited three poems from Paul Lawrence Dunbar, including "When My Lindy Sings," and he did it so beautifully—
Crawford
Where was that?
Allen
It was at the Lincoln Congregational Church in Washington. When I was taken there, I said, "Oh, my goodness, this is the church where I accompanied Abbie Mitchell years ago." And Abbie Mitchell was one of the first two singers I accompanied in Washington. She was the former wife of Will Marion Cook. Will Marion Cook was a great bandleader and orchestra leader. He had married her when she was in her teens. They went to Europe, she sang before Queen Victoria. Then I accompanied her in many concerts down the East Coast, and when I saw this Lincoln Church where that concert was being held, I said, "This is where I accompanied Abbie Mitchell."
Crawford
That was this last weekend?
Allen
Yes, right.
Would you talk about the purpose of your visit; I find it so interesting that a new conservatory is being planned for the capital at this point.
Allen
Well, all great capitals have conservatories of music. Washington hasn't one, and the object of the Schiller Institute is to establish a national conservatory of music.
Crawford
What is the Schiller Institute?
Allen
Well, it's an establishment interested in returning to the original tuning which is lower than the tuning that has [traditionally] been used. There is a great group of them in Washington. They paid for my coming last year, and we stayed a whole week.
Crawford
And then you went to see Todd Duncan at his home, and maybe you would just tell that story, because we didn't have the tape recorder on when you were telling me.
Allen
Oh. [laughs] I went to see him, and they told me he was upstairs in his bedroom. He has glaucoma, and he's practically blind. He [had gone] out in his rose garden next to the house to pick roses, and going back, because of his glaucoma, he stumbled and fell into some kind of an opening. A neighbor saw him, got help, and the two of them carried him up to his bedroom. It was three or four days before he called a doctor, and the doctor came and he said, "You've fractured your leg."
[While I was there] he was up with his leg up, and Minnie, their housekeeper of nearly forty years, brought his two o'clock dinner up to him and brought up dinner for me also.
##
We had a couple of scotches, and then Minnie brought dinner up. Now, Minnie has been their housekeeper for nearly forty years. She does everything, drives, does all the shopping. Doesn't live there, but comes every day. She does have an assistant that helps her out when she can't come, this Mrs. Duncan, who is ninety-eight. Minnie told me this; I thought she was ninety-five, but Minnie told me she's ninety-eight. There is a woman who lives in the house who takes care of her, because as I say, she doesn't have Alzheimer's, but is a little bit on the senile side.
Crawford
So that was a nice reunion for you.
Allen
Yes, it really was. And we were reminiscing over times that we traveled together. He would remember some things and I would
Crawford
Yes. Well, you were a great part of his life, and vice versa, for such a long time.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
How old is Mr. Duncan?
Allen
Ninety-two. He was ninety-two on February 12. And I always call him on his birthday, and the last birthday he called me, he had Minnie call. Minnie said, "Mr. Allen, Mr. Duncan wants to speak to you." He said, "I just want you to know I remember your birthday." Then he said, "And do you remember what happened on June 23?" I said, "Yes, you got married." It was over in Virginia. The pastor, Arthur Gray, of Plymouth Church, married him. There were only Gladys, Todd, the minister, and myself.
When the minister said, "I plight thee my troth," he was so nervous he said, "I plough thee my truth." [laughter] And I kid him about that always.
Crawford
How many children did they have?
Allen
She had a son by her first marriage. Shortly after she divorced her husband, he passed. The son was only about five years old, and so he took his stepfather's name. He's Charles T. Duncan, Charles Tigner Duncan. He's just like his own son.
Crawford
A nice story. Well, the 1993 convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians organization honored you.
Allen
Oh, yes.
Elayne Jones and the San Francisco Symphony
CrawfordAnd Elayne Jones. Do you want to talk briefly about her situation, because I know that you feel that Seiji Ozawa could have helped her out?
Allen
Oh, absolutely. That's why Ozawa, I think, isn't conducting the San Francisco Symphony today, but the Boston, because here she won behind screens—and then after she appeared, the symphony committee, which has the power of awarding her permanency, they
Crawford
Why did they vote them down? They had to have grounds certainly.
Allen
They didn't have any grounds, they just didn't vote for them for permanent installation as players. Later, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ormandy, came out, and he was asked about the Philadelphia Symphony. He said, "I run the Philadelphia Symphony. No players committees tell me whom to hire and whom not."
Crawford
Is that better than to have an orchestral committee?
Allen
Well, it is with the San Francisco Symphony.
Crawford
But they didn't give any grounds? Why do you think they didn't give her tenure?
Allen
I think it was mere prejudice with Elayne.
Crawford
And then, of course, she went over to the opera.
Allen
Yes. Because Adler said, "They don't run my orchestra." And she will remain with the opera orchestra.
Crawford
Was she embittered by that?
Allen
Oh, yes, she was embittered, very embittered. But she became reconciled, and she became a part of the black community. I played with her pieces for percussion and piano three or four times.
Crawford
She's a wonderful player.
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
And what happened to the Japanese player?
Allen
I don't know. I don't know why that was that they didn't vote him in.
Crawford
And you think that Ozawa could have come to their defense?
Allen
Well, of course. Of course he should have. He supported her at first and then he backed down.
Crawford
And he left because of the trouble?
Well, he didn't leave, he was guest conducting the Boston Symphony, and they offered him a permanent post, and he accepted it. He decided to go to Boston and get out of the mess.
Crawford
But you think he might have stayed longer if—
Allen
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Minister of Music at South Berkeley Community Church: 1954-1979
CrawfordWell, let's talk about your work at the South Berkeley Community Church.
Allen
Yes, I was there for twenty-five years. And one time, William Grant Still came up and spoke on black music, black composers. I think the article that I have for you outside tells about that visit, and I'll give it to you.
Crawford
What were your assignments there at the church?
Allen
I was Minister of Music. I played the organ. They had an Allen organ; it was when the Allens first came out. It's a two-manual organ. They still have it today. I've gone to play once or twice at a funeral, and it's in such bad condition. The woman pastor who has been there for the past few years is leaving, and the church is run down.
Crawford
Do you go to a church regularly?
Allen
No. I don't go to any church. When people ask me what church I go to, I say, "Charles Kuralt, Sunday Morning. Charles Osgood now." [laughter] No, I really am an agnostic. When I listen to KQED and realize that this little world is just part of a universe that has been around for millions of years, and maybe there are other universes and everything, how can you believe in the Bible and Adam and Eve?
Crawford
You can't believe in an exclusive religion certainly.
Allen
No.
Crawford
Well, that work consumed a good amount of time, didn't it?
Allen
Twenty-five years I was there.
Crawford
Did you have a choir?
Yes, I had a choir, and when they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary last January, they had a morning service, and I attended that. Then they had a noon luncheon at His Lordship. They asked me to tell certain things of the past, which I did. It was quite a joyous occasion.
The Junior Bach Festival: 1956-1976
CrawfordYou were with the Junior Bach Festival nearly as long.
Allen
In '56 I saw where the Junior Bach Festival was having a concert one Sunday afternoon at the Berkeley Little Theater. I went to it, and the San Francisco Boys Chorus sang. I was impressed. Then later, the chorus sang on Lake Merritt at the old building there, right on Lake Merritt.
My sister and I went there to a luncheon given by the Music Teachers Association of California, and we sat at the same table as Janet Goodman and her mother. They were asking me about my past, and I said I traveled with Todd Duncan. They said, "Well, Todd Duncan came to our house for a reception we gave for the black woman pianist—" Adam Clayton Powell's wife, Hazel Scott. And I said, "Well, then I must have come to your house too. I remember going to the party." She said, "Well, we were giving it for her."
I said, "I recall that." So then I became the music director of Junior Bach in '56, and Janet had already played in I think the first and second festivals. I became music director in the fourth, and in the fifth, she played. When she played with Itzhak Perlman, I sent her a congratulation note and I recalled that. She said, "Oh, of course I remember that."
I've recently heard from her. She and her husband are going to move to Portland from El Cerrito. So she said, "I'll look forward to attending the concerts at Yachats."
Crawford
You might talk about Yachats, because I know that's a longtime interest of yours.
Allen
Yes. I think this is the fourteenth or fifteenth year. It's the weekend of concerts given by Today's Artists, now known as Four Seasons.
Crawford
Talk about Today's Artists.
Yes. Well, Today's Artists has been going for thirty-five years, and was established by Dr. W. Haziah Williams, the longest-running concert management since I've been here in the Bay Area. The previous two just lasted a few years.
Crawford
What do they do?
Allen
They present international artists. They started with Marian Anderson, but they've always had white, Oriental, black musicians through the years. Yachats is this little small town on the coast of Oregon. I think Barbara Bauer, who is on the staff of Today's Artists, I think her father lived there. When he passed, he left a legacy. He had suggested they come up for these weekend concerts. So they've continued in his memory. Now I think this is the fourteenth year. There will be two dozen artists there from all over the country, and even the world—white, black, Oriental.
We get there this year on July 6, Friday. We'll do concerts Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Then we leave Monday morning. I always get them to leave me a ticket a week later, and I spend a week in Portland with my nephew.
Crawford
That's wonderful. Portland being your native home town.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Could you talk more about the Junior Bach Festival, and about how you developed it?
Allen
Well, Tirzah Mailkoff started it in 1952. Then she just had her students in her home. One little girl heard about the Carmel Bach Festival and said, "Why can't we have a Bach festival?" Tirzah said, "Well, why can't we?" So she had her students learn a little piece by Bach, and they played in her studio. Other teachers heard about it and said, "Let's make it larger. We'd like to have our students appear."
So then in 1954, it became an institution in which teachers all over the Bay Area sent students to be judged and appear in the festival. They began playing behind screens, so that the judges did not know who was performing. The only ones they knew were the vocalists, because they knew whether it was a woman or a man. But otherwise, the pianists and the violinists, they didn't know whether they were male or female. Those chosen then appeared in a group of concerts.
Then it grew and Tirzah Mailkoff said that she was no longer going to be the music director. I had this call from Harald Logan, who was one of the principal East Bay piano
He asked me if I would become the music director. I knew that Tirzah Mailkoff must have suggested me. When I met the first evening in the home of a dentist, Dr. Granger, there were seven there. I think they'd been listening to a ball game, and Oregon had won. I said, "Well, of course Oregon would win." They said, "What do you mean, Oregon of course?" I said, "Well, I was born in Portland." And Eldon Wolf, the president, said, "You were? Well, so was I." And the vice president, Van Waynen, said, "I wasn't born there, but I graduated from Jefferson High School." I said, "I was at Jefferson," and Eldon Wolf was too. Three of us, three of the seven, had all gone to the same high school at different times.
So that established a camaraderie between us which has remained through the years. Eldon is now married for a second time, and he and his second wife are very good friends of mine. He and his first wife had four children; I taught two of them piano. I am very friendly with him and his second wife.
The Junior Bach Festival has continued. I was music director for twenty years, from '56 to '76. It has continued, it's now in its forty-second year, I think, forty-third year.
Crawford
What did you do chiefly?
Allen
I planned the auditions and had charge of the judges. After they selected the students who were to appear, then I arranged the programs. They perform now only in Berkeley at the Congregational Church. But through the years, we performed at Hertz Hall. We had a Wednesday noon concert always and it was broadcast by KPFA. The auditions are still held in the same classroom [at UC Berkeley].
Crawford
Did you oversee rehearsals?
Allen
Yes. We had a dress rehearsal before each concert, and through the years, we held concerts even in San Francisco, out at San Francisco State, and at the Old First Church on Van Ness Street, and always the Wednesday noon concert. But now the concerts are confined to either the Congregational or the Presbyterian Church in Berkeley.
And whereas I was music director for twenty years, now the music directors only remain in the post for two years.
Why?
Allen
I don't know.
Crawford
Doesn't assure continuity, does it?
Allen
Yes, right.
Crawford
Were you the conductor while you were the director?
Allen
I only planned the concerts.
Crawford
How about fundraising?
Allen
Well, they have good fundraising. They have different classes according to how much you contribute.
Crawford
Was Madi Bacon involved with that?
Allen
No. She was never involved in it. But you see, I met Tirzah Mailkoff at the summer camps [of the Boys Chorus], where she taught the boys theory, and the theory of music. They loved her, because she had a way of presenting which was unique. I'd get up in the morning, we'd have breakfast at seven, get up at six, six-thirty, and half a dozen boys would be around her tent, talking about music, theory of music. She had a great fascination, they had a great fascination for her.
Crawford
What is the overall value to a young musician of something like the Junior Bach Festival?
Allen
They get a foundation in baroque music. Probably no composer is played more than Bach and Handel, and it will serve them well if they become musicians.
Crawford
We should talk about one young man in Madi's Boys Chorus who was so very special.
Allen
Calvin Simmons, yes. He was so talented. I remember one time at the campfire, we had campfire every night. He had gotten hold of one of Madi's jackets and a cap, and he put oranges or something in here. He came down and the boys just fell out, because he was imitating Madi. He had a way. He was such a jokester, you know. I remember hearing him accompany Beverly Sills at [the opera's] Fol de Rol, when the two of them had the audience in stitches.
Crawford
I remember that very well.
A natural talent. Absolutely. Well, Kurt Adler made him an assistant. He was the first one to go to Glyndebourne. He led opera at the Met. And he went to Curtis. He was just destined to become the greatest.
I'll never forget that funeral at Grace Cathedral. It was the saddest funeral. A quartet from the Oakland Symphony played, and then to see his mother and father come up behind that casket was just so sad.
Crawford
Everyone who ever knew him felt that.
Allen
Oh, yes. So many things are named for him, the Calvin Simmons Auditorium and Calvin Simmons rooms in the Park Oakland Hotel.
Crawford
Would he have stayed in Oakland?
Allen
Oh, I don't think so. He might have stayed a few more years, but he undoubtedly would have been conductor of greater orchestras. [tape interruption]
Crawford
How many summers were you at the Boys Chorus summer camp as a counselor?
Allen
I think about seven. At first they went for two weeks down to a place south of San Francisco, but in the last few years when I was with them, they went to Camp Alexander up on the Feather River, and that was quite a nice place.
Crawford
And do you still see Madi Bacon?
Allen
Oh, yes. And I see some of the boys, and whenever I see them, they remind me, "I don't know whether you remember me, Mr. Allen, but I was in the Boys Chorus."
Crawford
They remember you.
Allen
Right. And then I keep in touch with Tirzah Mailkoff. She and her friend Nancy Harvey went to Michigan. They left Berkeley. Nancy worked in the Department of Science. Tirzah taught all the children of the musicians of the Detroit Symphony, as well as the faculty members. Then they moved to the East for a while. Now they've both retired, but they live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I've been down there to visit them. They have a lovely, big, palatial home, which they were renting, and now they own it. They have a corps of helpers. The woman chef-housekeeper, her son does the driving for them, and Tirzah teaches a little, maybe one or two talented pupils. But practically none. I've been down to visit them, and it's just a beautiful place.
Involvement with the NAACP and the East Bay Music Center
CrawfordWell, we didn't talk about the NAACP, and I know you've been very active there.
Allen
Yes, I've been active.
Crawford
Were you involved with a scholarship committee?
Allen
Yes, it was the ACTSO, which was the group of the NAACP which gives scholarships to students in many fields, not only music, but photography and architecture and everything. I worked with them on a local committee for quite a few years, but I'm not active any more.
Crawford
It appears that the organization has fallen on hard times in terms of their leadership.
Allen
Yes. Well, you know, the new leader is Mrs. Medger Evers, and they feel that she's going to do a lot [for them].
##
Like all organizations, they are having trouble raising funds. Bill Cosby has given them a lot of money, but they are appealing all the time for more funds. They hope under Mrs. Medger Evers that they will be able to resume their place once more. But like everything else, I get every day appeals from organizations I don't know in all parts of the states, I don't know where they get my name. Now I get to the place where I don't answer any more, I just throw them away, and I still get them.
There was one time I'd get them, and they'd have stamps on them. I would just save them and put them all in one envelope and send them back to them.
Crawford
Are you a life member with the NAACP?
Allen
Yes, I'm a life member with the NAACP. I go to the annual banquets.
Crawford
Let's move on to the East Bay Music Center, because you were the director there.
Allen
Yes, I was a director of that for two years in the 1960s, and now they have quite a building right around the corner from the post office in Richmond. But it was just a smaller organization when I was music director.
What was it like?
Allen
Well, you had teachers of piano and violin and voice, and the students paid a minimum sum. Then they raised funds to try to promote teachers' salaries and so forth. I can't even remember what I got, but it wasn't much. The late Eugene Cash was a teacher of piano.
Crawford
Did you teach there as well?
Allen
Oh, I taught one or two students, but I was the director.
Crawford
Is it something like the Community Music Center?
Allen
Yes. And now they have a building, I think it's a four-story building. It's around the corner from the Richmond post office. I get appeals from them too. [laughs]
Crawford
But you're not active there now.
The Yachats Music Festival
AllenNo, I'm not active. I am playing this year, like I told you, the two concerts, the compositions of William Grant Still and accompanying two singers singing his art songs and his spiritual arrangements, because its the 100th anniversary of his birth, but that's all. Now, when I go to Yachats, I don't know yet whom I will be accompanying, but I'll send you a program.
Crawford
Where is that on the coast?
Allen
Well, if you look at the map of Oregon, it's a little town right in the middle. It's spelled Y-A-C-H-A-T-S, the C is not pronounced. There is a legend, and the word means dark waters at the foot of the mountain. Evidently, it was one of the Indian tribes. It's very interesting, when we give these recitals in the Presbyterian Church, quite a modern church, I don't think it seats over 200, and it's always sold out. The retired minister and his wife, Rev. and Mrs. Wendell Beck, have a home right on the ocean about, oh, a few hundred yards from the church. They always invite us to the first luncheon meeting. There are thirty or forty people, and they serve.
The winter population is 550, and in the summer, we stay at the Adobe, but there are different motels and everything, and they are crowded with summer tourists. You see the cars going down the coastal highway, and the vans, all summer long.
How nice a place. Well, that's about all I have for today, and I think we're close to the end of our two hours.
VI The Sixties and Onward
##
More about New York City: 1943-1953
CrawfordBefore we go further today, I want to explore a little your years in New York, where you headquartered while touring with Todd Duncan, 1943-1953. You mentioned that you knew W.E.B. Du Bois?
Allen
I knew W.E.B. Du Bois, I knew him and both of his wives. I first met him and his first wife, Nina, when I was living in New York with my Aunt Minnie Trotman. My aun't first husband was Henry Allen, and [her husband], my father's brother, was killed. He was a railway clerk in Tennessee, and he was killed in an accident. She had three children by him: Catherine Allen Latimer, who became the first black librarian in New York City. And then Marion Allen, who taught mathematics in high school in Brooklyn. And then there was a son, Henry.
That was back in the ten years I lived in New York when I was traveling with Todd Duncan, I preferred to live in New York, with my aunt.
Crawford
How did you meet W.E.B. Du Bois? What were your impressions?
Allen
I met him at my aunt's. After her husband was killed in a train accident she took the girls to Europe for a couple of years, and then she remarried, and bought a home on the Eastern Parkway—number 355.
She had a New Year's eggnog party every year, and he and his wife Nina were at the party. After his wife passed, he married a musician, Shirley Graham. He and Shirley used to come
Crawford
Was that still in the period of the Harlem Renaissance?
Allen
Oh, it was in full bloom. I had a cousin, Dr. Farrow Allen, whose office was up in Harlem, 137th Street. And I used to go over and meet my cousin, Catherine Allen Latimer, noontime, and we'd have lunch together, usually at the YMCA cafeteria. Later, she passed, and her husband married again, but she had one son, they had one son. I was in Europe, and came back, and found out that what she thought was stomach trouble was a baby boy. [laughs] She didn't realize she was pregnant.
Crawford
Your family and your relatives were all so outstanding—what motivated them to choose the paths they did?
Allen
Aunt Nell sent two sons to Harvard. They always wanted the best education for the children. My uncle Robert, who had two drugstores in Chattanooga, Tennessee, sent his son to Harvard Medical School. That was Farrow.
Crawford
What do you remember of Harlem during that period? I don't suppose you played at the Apollo Theater?
Allen
No, no. I attended the Apollo, and there was a restaurant in the next block that was very famous. All the people came to the restaurant. It was Frank's Restaurant, on 125th Street, close to the Apollo Theater, and at one time they served only whites, like the Cotton Club.
But my cousin was in the public library, as I say, the first black librarian, even before the Schomberg Center. She was in charge of the third floor, which [became] the Schomberg Library. On 135th Street.
Crawford
Is that open to the public?
Allen
Oh, yes. It's a beautiful new library, and you can see books which tell about the foundation of the library.
Crawford
That's about the best archives of black history that there is, isn't there?
Allen
Yes. I remember the head librarian was named Rose, I think Miss Ernestine Rose, I remember.
In those years, you were coming and going?
Allen
Right.
Performing at Carnegie Hall and Preparing for Recitals
CrawfordYou played in Carnegie Hall?
Allen
I played in Carnegie accompanying Todd Duncan way back in the '40s, and Town Hall. I don't know whether I brought programs—
Crawford
Talk about Town Hall and Carnegie Hall as performing spaces. They're so famous.
Allen
Town Hall was down on 44th Street, and of course, Carnegie Hall is still there at 57th and Seventh Avenue.
Crawford
Slightly revised now.
Allen
Yes, right.
Crawford
Were they special performing spaces?
Allen
Oh, yes. Of course, Carnegie is of historical significance, and the acoustics were excellent.
Crawford
You performed at Carnegie Hall in 1987?
Allen
Yes. In '87, I was playing for Today's Artists, accompanying Lorice Stevens.
Crawford
I'd like you to describe how you prepare for a recital.
Allen
Prepare? You mean as a pianist? Well, I'll tell you what: I think everyone uses music except me. I'm going to start using my music, because I remember [hearing] Myra Hess. I had heard her through the years, and then she came and played with San Francisco Symphony.
I think it was the Schumann Concerto, and she had the music, and somebody to turn pages. She knew it, but she said, "At my age," she was up in her eighties, I think, "at my age, I just need to be sure, and have the music there if I make a slip, I know." At this program, I needed my music for the second number.
Normally you wouldn't use music?
Allen
Not normally, but everyone else at this concert for William Grant Still used music. I needed to have my music, because that second piece, I sort of slipped.
Crawford
How many hours a day do you practice?
Allen
I practice an hour and a half, two hours, usually. I go to see my sister every day in the hospital.
Crawford
And is this all music that you know very well?
Allen
Oh, yes, yes.
Crawford
Do you get nervous before a performance, generally? You strike me as somebody who wouldn't.
Allen
Oh, yes. Of course, when I was traveling with Todd Duncan, when we were doing two and three concerts a week, we used to play cards [laughs] before the concert, because we didn't have anything to worry about. We had two programs under our belt each year, because if we appeared in a city that was near where we had appeared last year, then we would do a different program than we had done there. Of course, he was under the direction of Columbia Artists, 119 57th Street.
Crawford
Were you with Columbia?
Allen
Well, I was with him. Then I did a few solo concerts which they managed.
Music Management: Artists' Representatives
CrawfordLet's talk about artist representation, we didn't talk much about that. Who did represent you?
Allen
Well, of course, when I taught at Howard University and Fisk, I used to give concerts mostly at schools in the South. I did it myself. But then there was an organization, Musical Artists, which Harry and Gladys Edwards ran in New York.
Crawford
I remember, yes.
Allen
He had been an Olympic runner back in the 1920s, and he's passed now. I think she's still living. So they managed the few piano
Crawford
There was kind of a network.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
And then you were with Today's Artists.
Allen
Oh, I've been with Today's Artists ever since I've been here. I think they are in their thirty-eighth year—they are now the Four Seasons. I've been with them and accompanied, as you see, the annual summer concerts in Yachats, always the second week in July.
Crawford
Is it good representation?
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
They certainly have a fine slate of artists.
Allen
Here's a couple that's coming back from Poland, Ewa Podles and her husband. She's a mezzo soprano, very fine. And do you know, when they first, several years ago, when they came, [the agency] asked me," "Do you speak Polish?" I said, "Yes, about ten phrases." [laughs]
Crawford
From when you were there.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Was William Parker one of those artists?
Allen
Oh, William Parker I accompanied when he first came out here. I had met him in Washington. He was studying with a friend of mine, Frederick Wilkerson. So when he came out here, I played for his first two or three concerts in Vallejo and San Francisco. Very fine. His passing was so sad.
Crawford
I knew he had AIDS.
Allen
Yes, he had AIDS. When we were back in New York doing a concert at Alice Tully Hall, there was a poster announcing concerts by three or four, and it was for the benefit of AIDS, and before the concert happened, he had passed.
Crawford
He was very active in doing benefit performances.
Yes. I played for him here and in Vallejo. He did lieder beautifully. Schumann and Schubert.
Crawford
How did you prepare for a concert like that? Because you probably don't have those things at your fingertips. Does that take a lot of work?
Allen
Oh, yes, I practiced a lot alone and with him. He was very exacting. He knew exactly what he wanted.
Corresponding with Musicians and Friends
CrawfordWe've just been talking about Janet Williams, a young black soprano that you say has a big career in Germany and whom you correspond with. You must have an enormous correspondence, because you keep in touch with so many people.
Allen
[laughs] Well, people amuse me. Some people have said, "You get more on a postcard than anybody I know of." And when I send out—I get these letters, Christmas letters from people, one page is enough. When it's on both pages, I put it up and maybe I get to it. But I send—I should have brought you one—I send on a postcard every Christmas, just tell the main things I did. But some people tell about everything they do except when they go to the bathroom. [laughter]
Crawford
You can't finish it!
Allen
I know it.
Crawford
But do you write each one, or do you have it copied?
Allen
Oh, I have it copied. No, I have it copied at a Copymat near me. About—oh, now it's gone down to about 150, 200.
Crawford
How many people do you write individually?
Allen
Well, now, Todd Duncan, with his glaucoma, he can't read, but there's a lady who accompanies his pupils, and I write to her and tell her what to tell him. I write to my cousin's daughter, Dr. Marlene Kelly, in Washington. And you see, now as I get older, people have passed, I don't have so many people to write to any more.
Crawford
Not such a big circle of friends.
Yes. I used to keep in touch with my god-daughter, Jacqueline T. Reynolds, and her family. I write my nephew and his family. His mother, Dorothy, my brother's widow, I call her every once in a while. The telephone is so wonderful these days.
Crawford
But you still have 150 on your Christmas list?
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
I think that's pretty amazing.
Allen
I'll send you one.
A Visiting Professorship at Talladega College: 1980-1982
CrawfordThank you. I wanted to ask you about some things that you did in the eighties. One of those was Talladega College, where you were on the faculty. We didn't talk about that.
Allen
I had gone to the University of Alabama to help with rehearsals of Porgy and Bess, and as a result I was invited as visiting professor of piano at Talladega College in the '80s. It's about 100 miles west of Atlanta, in central Alabama. I was there for two years, '80 to '82. I should have brought you that program. My prize student there, Curtis Everett Powell, is now choral director of a university in Texas—Prairie View State University. He's choral director, he sent me a program, and I'm astonished, because he was a pianist, but now he's head of all the choral divisions there.
That was my sister's last post, she was pianist and organist. Then it was called Prairie View College. And it was one of the places where I did concerts.
And let me tell you who was on the faculty with my sister: Eileen Southern. She wrote a history, and now she is revising her history, Black Perspective of Music, and bringing it up to date. I just had a note from her recently saying that they had asked her to come back and revise it.
Crawford
Iteresting. Now, when you were teaching for instance at Talladega, were you teaching students to become accompanists? Or do you make that big a distinction?
Allen
No, piano. But now in all schools, even Oberlin and everything, they are teaching accompanying. But I remember when I was at
Crawford
How is the approach different?
Allen
One thing, I always read the text and knew what they were singing about, whether it was German or French. I knew French, Spanish, and I knew a little German, and I learned German from accompanying Schubert and Schumann and Wolf. So I would study the text.
Crawford
Oh, that would be very important. But how would you change your approach, say, for a French text?
Allen
For one thing, the French language is so soft.
Crawford
So, you change the color of your music? But in terms of your own teaching you always taught piano as piano, and then if they prepared for a career in accompanying, well, that's what happened.
Allen
Right.
Crawford
Did you say that you had been exposed to gospel there in a way that you had never been before?
Allen
Yes. Well, this young fellow, Curtis Everett Powell, that I wish I had brought the letter that he just wrote me, his choir had been on a tour of ten or twelve cities, all the way to Bermuda. He could play gospel, and I just envied him, because I couldn't play gospel.
Crawford
Is it a natural talent?
Allen
It is. I remember a student I had at Howard, I had him in organ, and later he was on the faculty, Thomas Kerr. He could play jazz, and I envied him. Oh, when I was young, I could play "Somebody Loves Me, I Wonder Who," Gershwin, but never had a real touch for jazz or popular music.
Crawford
Do you have to come up in the church with gospel to play it well?
Allen
Yes, right. I may have told you there was a Holy Rollers church in Oberlin on the other side of town. They did gospel, I'm sure, and it was the only show open on Sundays, we used to say. They had the blue laws. But it wasn't until I went to Talladega that I heard gospel music that pleased me.
Making a Gift to Howard University
CrawfordDid I read that you gave your papers to Howard University in the early eighties?
Allen
I gave all my columns to Howard. As I mentioned, I had written a music column for ten years for the Sun-Reporter, San Francisco—and I wrote for the Oakland Post. The editor of the Oakland Post, Tom Berkley, came up to me Sunday at a concert and spoke to me. Well, I wrote a column for the Post for ten years.
Crawford
Yes, I knew that, but you weren't reviewing this concert?
Allen
No, just enjoying it.
Crawford
Were your columns as much sociology as they were about music? Were you as much a sociologist as a musicologist?
Allen
Oh, no. I wasn't really a musicologist. I did a course in musicology at Columbia when I was doing graduate work, and the professor I had there was Dr. Paul Lang. I'll never forget, when my aunt and I attended the debut of Marian Anderson at the Met, here we were sitting right next to Dr. Paul Lang and his wife.
Crawford
Oh, right. So you kept copies of all those, and now they have those in their archives?
Allen
Yes, I think so.
Crawford
Did you ever think of donating anything to the Schomberg Center?
Allen
No.
An Eighty-Fifth Birthday Celebration: December 8, 1991
CrawfordWell, let's talk about your 1991 gala celebrating your eighty-fifth birthday, which was held at the Calvin Simmons Theatre in Oakland on December 8, 1991.
Allen
Do you have Robert Commanday's article?
Crawford
Yes, I do, and I have the program here. I believe that over 700 people came to this concert.
Yes, and I didn't have to perform. [laughter]
Crawford
Could you talk about some of the people who came to this three and a half hour musical feast?
Allen
Oh, the artists who came here. Leon Bates couldn't come, because he had an engagement. But Pierre D'Archambeau, the violinist, he came. He was living in the East then, now he lives in Portland.
George Shirley sang. Abraham Lind O'Quendo came. Harold Jones, a flutist from New York. Elvira Green came, the mezzo soprano from North Carolina. Jean Stark-Iocchmans was here. Lorice Stevens, a soprano I accompanied. And William Warfield. Of course, he was one of the M.C.s.—
Crawford
How was this all put together?
Allen
Well, it was really put together by Lorice Stevens. She's the soprano I played for. And she works with the Young Musicians Program here at Cal, with Patricia Freeman. She's having a barbecue Friday for them. And what they did—I was in Africa, and my sister had keys to my apartment. She went and got my address file and gave it to them, and that's how they [did it]—
Crawford
They got everybody to come.
Allen
And people sent money even though they couldn't come. My cousins in Canada sent a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope without insuring it or anything. [looking at program]
Crawford
Did that set up a scholarship fund?
Allen
I think after the program was printed and all the expenses paid, there was something like $5,000 left over, which they have given to the Golden Gate branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians to use.
Crawford
That's wonderful. Would you talk about the Young Musicians Program? I know you were very instrumental in that group.
Allen
Yes, I was at first. Then I told Olly Wilson I was not going to be in anything at Cal if they didn't provide parking. When I had to park as far as you do, and you're associated here, I said, "If you can't provide me with a parking place, just take me off."
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Merle Emerson's late husband, Dr. Ralph Emerson, was head of the biology department, and she still has a permit to park. She has a permit, and she has a little Bug, a Volkswagen Bug that she's had for years. So whenever I'm going to a concert with her, she says, "Come up and park at my place, and we'll go down in my car, because I have a parking permit."
Crawford
What are they doing now with the Young Musicians Program? What has that grown into?
Allen
It runs every summer for seven weeks. Oh, they do a wonderful thing. The young soprano, Jeanine Anderson, she was offered scholarships at about a half a dozen schools. She's chosen the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Crawford
Very fine.
Allen
She's just like a little Jessye Norman.
Crawford
Who are the students who come through the program, and how are they chosen?
Allen
They screen them—they are usually underprivileged minority students.
Crawford
And is that run through the music department here?
Allen
Yes. Runs every summer for seven weeks.
Crawford
And how is it funded?
Allen
Oh, they're funded by contributions, and they make appeals. They had a reception at the chancellor's house this spring. They raise money in that way.
Crawford
Well, they did such a wonderful job with the program for your party, and I notice that some of the tributes go all the way back to your childhood.
Allen
Yes. [looking at program] Now, here's Michael Morgan.
Crawford
Yes, I'd like to talk a little bit about him. He's an Oberlin graduate, with the Oakland East Bay Symphony?
Allen
Yes, and doing very well.
Now, that's my sister. And then [William] Warfield. Olly Wilson. Karen Hutchison. She and a little Jewish girl were both ten years old, and they played in the tenth annual music
Crawford
Karen Hutchinson is flamboyant. I heard her play with the Peninsula Symphony a couple of weeks ago.
Allen
Yes, oh, she's very flamboyant.
Crawford
Is she going for an international career?
Allen
Yes, I think she's doing very well. Now, Margaret Brink was a young student of mine—her mother used to bring her up from Gustine, California, Margaret Hughes, when she was about fifteen, sixteen. Then she went on to Northwestern University, and now she's got a doctorate from the University of Washington. I keep in touch with her, I hear from her very often.
Now, there is Pierre Archambeau, and he and Elwyn Adams came, and they played a duet which was wonderful. Eugene Gash passed away recently. It was very sad. Maya Angelou I knew when she was strumming a guitar at the Purple Onion.
Crawford
You didn't!
Allen
Well, that's when I first met her. I've known her through three or four husbands and boyfriends. [laughs]
Crawford
So she's had a colorful career that way, has she?
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
What sort of a person is she?
Allen
Oh, she's wonderful. She's wonderful. And it's fantastic, the way she has come out. Through her books, she's become world famous.
Harold Jones, he's a flutist from New York. Here are the two violinists. Elwin Adams teaches at one of the universities in Florida. He came out. Elvira Green is from North Carolina.
Crawford
The program book that they put together was outstanding. And there's a page here I wanted to draw your attention to, the one from Today's Artists, which seems to have everyone who's very well known as a performing artist. Starting with Teresa Berganza.
Allen
Well, those are the people who appeared on Today's Artists through the years.
Are they still working with you? Are they still finding concerts for you?
Allen
Oh, yes. Now it's Four Seasons. I'll probably accompany Warfield, and I have [others]—
Crawford
How is his voice?
Allen
Well, do you know, he's fantastic. His voice isn't what it was once, but he has a way of putting things over. He'll probably do a spiritual by Roland Hayes, and then one by Hall Johnson, "Ain't Got Time to Die." And when he puts that over, the crowd just—. He doesn't have to sing it, he just has to speak it.
Crawford
One of those things that just takes people over.
Allen
Yes, right. And he's such an actor.
Tributes and Awards and Thoughts on Accompanying
CrawfordOf all the tributes and awards, which has meant the most? You've had so many. I know you're a Ph.D.
Allen
Honorary Ph.D. Here at the Black Studies Program. The black theology school was one of the schools on—where the rest of the theological schools are. They're the ones that gave me an honorary degree.
Crawford
What was the ceremony like for that?
Allen
Oh, I wish I had a program, but I don't. But it was quite—oh, it lasted two or three hours, and those of us who were given degrees were given real doctor's hoods. I gave mine, I knew I wasn't going to be in any university any more, and I gave mine to Joyce Johnson, who had been a student of mine at Fisk for one year. She has a real doctorate and doesn't have [one]—and she plays the organ and piano, and I said, "Why don't you have a hood? I'm going to send you mine." So I sent mine to her.
Thomas Berkley of the Oakland Post was there, too.
Crawford
I wanted to ask you, which accompanists in your time do you most admire? Anybody who's a real inspiration?
Allen
Well, Jonathan Brice, who accompanied his sister, Carol Brice. She's passed now, and he is really an invalid. And oh, there
That's why Dr. Williams always lists—maybe some of us are doing mostly accompanying, but he lists all the pianists as pianists. You don't list Pierre d'Archambeau "at the violin."
Crawford
That's right. But when you accompanied Todd Duncan, you took a bow with him, didn't you?
Allen
Oh, sure. And Warfield, if you ever see him, before he bows, when he gets through, he backs off and he points to his accompanist. After you get up and bow, then he'll bow with you. He's always that way.
Crawford
Yes. Are most that way?
Allen
No, most of them aren't. It would be interesting to see what Marilyn Horne's accompanist does, because times have changed. As I say, it used to be "at the piano," but now you won't see ever "at the piano," you'll see—I don't know who's accompanying her now, but "pianist."
Crawford
That's fair.
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
So accompanists get more recognition today?
Allen
Oh, yes.
Crawford
They're not only considered pianists but they're more equally billed, is what you're saying?
Allen
Yes, right.
Crawford
Well, that's appropriate.
Allen
[laughs] I remember one time, Todd Duncan, he was having trouble. He'd had a cold or something. When he reached a high note, it wasn't his true high note, and I played louder. The reviewer said, "Mr. Allen was okay, but at times he overpowered the singer." Well, I did it on purpose! I used to tell Todd, for him to get the sore fingers, and I would get the colds.
[showing interviewer an album] There's the thing I went to Howard Thurman for, when they dedicated his birthplace, which was rebuilt. I went across country to Daytona.
Crawford
In Daytona, yes. He accomplished a great deal, didn't he?
Allen
Oh, yes. He was a great person.
Crawford
So he would be somebody that you would look to?
Allen
Yes. Do you know, I went to Africa once, and I had visas for the four African countries at the top of the globe. But they did not give me a visa to Lagos. It didn't come before I left San Francisco. I went to Washington, I went to the consulate, and they said, "Well, we don't have it, you should have gotten it in San Francisco." I said it hadn't arrived. They said, "Well, you better check with New York."
In New York they didn't have it, so I went all the way to London, and my hostess there said, "Well, you better go and see about it." I went to the [Nigerian] consulate, and I remember this big black woman with a thing on, and she was up on a platform. She was talking to a white couple. Then she got through, and she said, "And what do you want?"
I said, "I want a visa to Lagos." "Well, you should have gotten it in San Francisco." I said, "Well, it hadn't come." "Well, we're not going to give it to you." I was just about to tell her where she could stick Nigeria. [laughter]
Then there was a guard at the door, and I thought I'd better get out. I went to the American consulate, and an English woman there said, "You know, Mr. Allen, we used to have a black vice consul here, and he could work with them, but since he left, we can't get anything done from them. There's nothing I can do."
Crawford
That had been the embassy of Nigeria?
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Where you were treated rudely.
Allen
Yes. So then I wired my travel agent back here and I said, "Forget Africa; I want to—" I had a two-weeks Eurail, and I wanted a four-weeks Eurail, because I had a lot of friends in Europe, and I just spent the month in Europe.
Later, somebody said, "Well, they probably didn't give you a visa because they thought you were a communist." I said, "Why would they think I was a communist?" "Because they saw that you had accompanied Paul Robeson." I said, "Well, that was an honor. If that's why they didn't give me a visa, I don't want to go."
Crawford
Was that why?
Allen
Well, certainly he was on the bad list. I said, "Paul Robeson said he was never a card-carrying communist."
Crawford
He did win the Stalin Peace Prize, and that probably didn't do him any good.
Allen
Sure he did. When I went to England in 1935, I told you I had a letter of introduction to them. They had left and gone to Russia. So I never did catch up with him. But when I came back in January, I had a cable from Mrs. Paul Robeson saying, "Will you be our guest at Porgy and Bess on such-and-such a night." And when I went to the box, he wasn't there that night, so I did not meet him until '57-'58 when I accompanied him.
Crawford
Isn't that something? It was fate.
Allen
Yes.
Outstanding Musicians, Important Influences and Other Memories
CrawfordWho have been the most outstanding musicians that you've known, just as people and musicians?
Allen
Oh, Camilla Williams. Leontyne Price. That was the one concert, at a private home.
Crawford
You told me, but you didn't remember the name of the family.
Allen
Yes, I just thought of it, the Paul Bissingers. He was a police commissioner or something. They had a beautiful home on Divisadero. So we practiced, and she did the whole program. Then, as I told you, I said to her that the boys sang a spiritual, "Jesus Has Walked with Me," so at the end, she said, "I hear you boys know the spiritual, `Jesus Has Walked with Me.' So I'm going to do that as an encore, and I hope you will join me."
Did she do that without music?
Allen
Oh, yes. [sings]
Crawford
Beautiful. This lonesome valley, that's right.
Allen
And oh, the boys were so proud.
Crawford
Well, who do you think influenced you most in your life?
Allen
Artists?
Crawford
And family or friends.
Allen
Well, I guess certainly as I came out here, I accompanied other people, but traveling with Todd Duncan those ten years, going to Australia and New Zealand twice, and the Caribbean, and South America, Europe three times, particularly Scandinavia, and the third time all the way to Finland. We did Royal Albert Hall in London, did eight or ten concerts in England and Scotland. We were at the first Edinburgh Festival.
Crawford
When was that?
Allen
It was in '47, I think. It was in the forties. I'll never forget, we were at this hotel overlooking the whole city, it was so beautiful, and Eleanor Steber was there. She did a concert one night, and then afterwards, the editor of Musical America took Todd, me, and Eleanor to supper afterwards. See, the war hadn't been over very long, and England didn't have a full supply of things. We went to this place and got a scanty supper.
The editor—I can't think of his name, of Musical America—he takes out a bunch of greenbacks. "Look, my friends are hungry. Can't you do better than this?" And the waiter in a frayed tuxedo jacket said, "Sir, if we had it, we would be glad to give it to you." So Eleanor Steber said, "Come up to my room, I've got a couple of cans of Spam." We sat on her bed—
Crawford
It was that sparse?
Allen
Yes. [laughter] We sat on her bed and ate Spam and crackers. I wrote her once before she passed and I said, "I wonder if you remember when Todd Duncan and I joined you in your room with Spam," and she wrote a nice letter back, she said, "I certainly do."
Crawford
Did she sing with you at the festival?
No, she was doing a concert of her own.
Crawford
Isn't that a beautiful setting for a festival?
Allen
Oh, yes. And you see, we did a concert at Usher Hall, part of the festival, and then we came back and did another concert at Usher Hall under our management.
Crawford
And did you ever go back to the festival since?
Allen
No.
Crawford
Well, you've had all this travel in your life, that can't have been easy. But you've never mentioned being seriously ill.
Allen
No. I remember once—in Vienna, I got shingles. They were so painful that he thought I was going to have to cancel a concert. But I remember the manager's wife came and massaged me. Well, that didn't do very much good, but I did get through the concert.
Crawford
What caused that?
Allen
I don't know what caused it. [Shingles is related to a dormant chicken pox virus.] When we were in the Caribbean, I got jaundice. First the doctor in Jamaica—we had left Haiti, and in Haiti, I had friends there, a [friend who] had married a Haitian. She had us to dinner, and the first course was soup or something, and I took one taste, and then I took my napkin up, and I excused myself. I went into the next room. She came in, "What's wrong?" I said, "Caroline, I don't know, but I'm just sick." She said, "Lie down on the couch."
Then a little later, they sent me home by a taxi or something.
Crawford
You didn't eat?
Allen
I didn't eat, I couldn't eat. And on the plane the next day to Jamaica, I didn't want anything to eat. As Gladys [Duncan] said, "There's something wrong with him when he can't eat." We got to Jamaica and went to the Mayflower Hotel, which is no more there. An English doctor, Farquist, diagnosed it as malaria one day, and the next day he said, "No, you have jaundice."
Crawford
That was water, maybe bad water?
Allen
Yes. And so when I came home, we came home on a banana boat. Gladys was tired of flying. We found this banana boat was
So then the next morning, we left and we arrived in Tampa. We took a Pullman train to Washington, where the Duncans got off, and then I went on to Atlantic City. My aunt's husband, Dr. Stanley Lucas, was a native Jamaican. He said, "How did they let you out of my native land?" [laughing] I said, "Uncle Stanley, I had dark glasses on, and they were only concerned with the crew."
Crawford
But that's serious if it's hepatitis.
Allen
Oh, I lost twenty pounds, and I stayed there all summer, and gradually got [well].
Crawford
That was your most serious illness?
Allen
Yes.
Crawford
Where does your good health come from?
Allen
I don't know, just been lucky. I really have been lucky.
Crawford
You aren't a stressful person.
Allen
I told you that we were brought up in the Christian Science church. I'll never forget, when my father came home, I was about eleven or twelve, my sister nine, and my brother about five or six then. My father said to my mother, who had been a trained nurse, "Dear, I wish you would put the children in a Christian Science Sunday school." She said, "Why?" He said, "Well, whenever I am attracted to business associates, I find out that they're Christian Scientists. There must be something to it." He didn't go to any church then.
And we cried that day when she took us down to the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, in Portland. Then they had two sessions of Sunday school, one at nine forty-five and then one at eleven, while the others went to church, we were in Sunday school. So we got used to it, and when I went to Oberlin, I played for the Christian Science Society a couple of years. Then I even joined the church in Washington.
At that time, they had, which was very unscientific, they listed in the journals, "Twentieth Church of Christ, Scientist, New York, Colored." And they listed practitioners who were colored. And one of the hymns in the book, "In Christ there is
Crawford
On that account?
Allen
Yes. And then, of course, later I just became such a first-class agnostic.
Crawford
Well, isn't the Christian Science theory that you don't need medicine, you can pray for health?
Allen
Right. And the only paper I subscribe to is the Christian Science Monitor. It's one of the finest papers. And you know, as I told you, my father—after my mother's passing—married again. He married a red-headed white woman from Texas. And he became an usher in the church.
Crawford
Oh, she brought him into the church! Christian Science?
Allen
Yes. And when he died of colon cancer, and he had become so enmeshed in the church that he didn't have medical attention that he should have had.
Crawford
That's the negative part, because they might have treated it.
Allen
Yes.
Advice for Young Pianists
CrawfordWell, when you talk to an aspiring young pianist today, what would you say about the career and the training and so on?
Allen
Oh, I think it's a wonderful career. I've advised many people. As I told you, when I came up, there weren't any black pianists. You had to be an accompanist, because, you see, a singer had something special. They had the Negro spirituals. And you used to see criticism, "Oh, yes, he or she sang fine, but in the last group of spirituals, that's where he or she shone." You'd see that invariably. A black singer had to end a program with spirituals.
Crawford
That was what was expected?
Allen
Todd Duncan usually ended with a group of spirituals and things from Porgy and Bess. But a pianist didn't have anything
Crawford
I know that you did an orchestral survey once relating to the difficulty minority musicians have. Did we talk about that?
Allen
Yes, I had forgotten. I did an orchestral survey for the—I forgot for whom I did it. I think I surveyed a couple dozen orchestras, asked them how many blacks were in the orchestra, how many Native Americans, how many Orientals. Just a few of them, like the Philadelphia, the New York, had blacks. I think only one had a Native American, and there were more Orientals. But you look at the Boston Pops and so forth, you'll see more Orientals than blacks.
Crawford
So it's still true today.
Allen
Yes. There are five or six black colleges teaching music and everything, but you see, blacks found that it was impossible to get into the organizations, so they went to jazz mostly.
Crawford
But they were trained, they're out there, but they still cannot get into the symphonies?
Allen
They can't get into them.
Crawford
Don't most of the symphonies have blind auditions now?
Allen
I don't know whether they do or not. But Elayne Jones got in blind, and then when they found out what she was, then the players had the right to vote on permanency, they voted her down.
##
When I went to the dedication ceremonies of the Howard W. Thurman House in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1987, I was at the same hotel as Mrs. Thurman and Arthur Ashe. When he came down, he sat at a table next to me and I spoke to him. I told him I had read the book in which he brought this young South African black fellow back who was a tennis expert, and brought him back to this country.
The South African married a white American, and they live in North Carolina. And I complimented him [Ashe] and told him I had read the book. To think that he lived only fifty years, and died of AIDS. You noticed that one of the dedications is in his memory.
He took a big step in coming out about AIDS as he did, don't you think?
Allen
Oh, yes, right.
Crawford
Well, we were talking about this situation with the orchestras, and I'm wondering if you see anything changing. Are things getting better?
Allen
I don't know what the situation is today. I know the Boston Pops has a black woman harpist. She's been there for years. And I don't know what the situation is in New York or Philadelphia now. San Francisco has a violist, I think, who is black. I don't know of any other. There are more young black conductors going around.
Crawford
Any advice for young people? What would you tell them to do?
Allen
Well, there are more opportunities now. Even at the San Francisco Conservatory there are many blacks in the school. There are more teachers, and there is just more everything for young black music students to aspire to in classical music, as they used to in jazz.
Crawford
Do you think that the competition is much tougher? In other words, do you have to be that much better technically today?
Allen
You've got to be excellent. I guess it's always been that you have to be a little better than the others.
Crawford
I'm not talking here about blacks versus whites, but simply young people looking at a career in piano. There are so many pianists, and they work all the time, it seems to me.
Allen
Yes. But now, look, we have orchestras in every hamlet. Every hamlet. There used to be operas in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. Look at Los Angeles: for years, the San Francisco Opera went down there to give opera. Now they've got an opera company, finally. Just like they should have had rapid transit years ago, but they kept on building freeways and no rapid transit. Now they're finally getting one. It's like Cairo; Cairo has built a rapid transit since I was there. In fact, they were building it when I was there, and the downtown was a mess.
Crawford
And now they have it?
Allen
Now they have it.
So you're positive about it. You feel that nobody should be discouraged from going into a musical career.
Allen
Right, absolutely.
Crawford
Well, what would you change in your life? Is there anything that you would have changed?
Allen
I don't think so. I always from the time I was five and a half and my mother took me to start music with Mrs. Bertram, I remember her name. She was the wife of the double bass player in the Portland Symphony. I just always wanted to play the piano.
Transcribed by: Shannon Page
Final Typist: Carolyn Rice
Tape Guide—William Duncan Allen
Interview 1: May 11, 1995
Interview 2: May 25, 1995
-
Interview 2: May 25, 1995
- Tape 3, Side A 35
- Tape 3, Side B 47
- Tape 4, Side A 48
- Tape 4, Side B not recorded
Interview 3: June 8, 1995
Interview 4: June 21, 1995
-
Interview 4: June 21, 1995
- Tape 7, Side A 78
- Tape 7, Side B 88
- Tape 8, Side A 98
- Tape 8, Side B not recorded
Appendices—William Duncan Allen
- A. "Musings of a Music Columnist" by William Duncan Allen, from The Black Perspective in Music (Vol. 1, No. 2, 1973)
- 102
- B. "Hotel's Rich History Adds Charm to Reopening," article by Matt Bailey, The Oregonian (January 16, 1990)
- 107
- C. Selected pages from The Black Perspective in Music Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 1987
- 108
- D. Programs for Tributes to William Grant Still (April 21, 1995) and Marian Anderson (May 7, 1995)
- 113
- E. Postcard written by William Duncan Allen, November 15, 1994
- 116
- F. Newspaper Reviews—William Duncan Allen
- 117
- G. 85th Birthday Celebration Program, December 1991
- 121
- H. Concert Engagements of William Duncan Allen: 1936-1942
- 132
Concert Engagements of William Duncan Allen: 1936-1942
- 1936-1937
- December 6:
- St. James Presbyterian Church, New York City
- December 11:
- Fisk University
- March 20:
- Scarrit College
- April 9:
- Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C.
- April 1:
- Fisk University
- 1937-1938
- November 17:
- Barber-Scotia College, Concord, North Carolina
- November 19:
- Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.
- November 30:
- Centenary ME Church, Memphis, Tennessee
- December 10:
- Fisk University
- December 30:
- Women's Club, Portland, Oregon (NAACP)
- January 27:
- Prairie View State College, Texas
- January 29:
- Wiley College, Marshall, Texas
- April 16:
- Fisk University (children's program)
- 1938-1939
- October 6:
- Louisville, Kentucky (Fisk alumni: Alice Grass Scholarship)
- November 9:
- Stowe Junior High School, New York City (charity)
- December 2:
- Alabama State Teachers College, Mobile, Alabama
- December 3:
- Dillard University, New Orleans
- February 10:
- Fisk University
- February 19:
- Tennessee State College
- 1939-1940 (during year's leave and study)
- November 5:
- High School of Music and Arts, New York City (charity)
- January 14:
- West Virginia State College, Charleston, South Carolina
- April 21:
- YWCA, Brooklyn (charity)
- July 27:
- Radio station WNYC
- July 28:
- New York World's Fair (Negro Week)
- 1940-1941
- December 12:
- Valley State College, Georgia
- February 9:
- Kentucky State College, Frankfort
- February 16:
- Fisk University
- February 22:
-
Brooklyn Academy of Music (YWCA)
Cheney State College, Pennsylvania
- March 21:
- Tillotson College, Austin, Texas
- March 22:
- Wiley College, Marshall, Texas
- 1941-1942
- January 28:
- A and T College, Greensboro, North Carolina
- January 30:
- Virginia State College, Petersburg
- February 20:
- Dillard University, New Orleans
- February 22:
- Prairie View State College, Texas
- March 29:
- Miles Memorial College, Birmingham, Alabama
- March 30:
- Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- April 5:
- YMHA, Newark, New Jersey (benefit NAACP and Urban League Scholarship Fund)
Index—William Duncan Allen
- Addison, Adele, 47, 52
- Adler, Kurt Herbert, 68
- Allen, Betty, 47, 53
- Allen, Charles Robert, 25-26, 29
- Allen, Lillian, Medley, 1-16
- Allen, William Duncan
- accompanist, 7-8, 35, 84, 85, 91-92, 97-100
- administrator, Junior Bach
- childhood in Portland, Oregon, 1-17, 21
- columnist, 59, 62
- education, 4-9; see also Oberlin College, Juilliard School of Music.
- Golden West Hotel, 3-4, 9-10, 17
- New York, 15-19, 78-80
- parents, see William Duncan Allen, Sr. and Lillian Medley Allen.
- performances, 22-24, 37-39, 41-48, 51, 63, 80, 95-96
- Poland, studying in, 29-32
- recordings, 28
- relatives, 1-4, 11, 16-21, 25, 36, 38, 48-50, 78-79, 83-84, 96
- religion, 5-6, 10, 69, 96-97
- San Francisco, 50-55
- siblings, see N. Constance Beaty; Charles Robert Allen.
- teaching, 61, 71; see Fisk University, Howard University, Talladega College.
- Allen, William Duncan, Sr., 1-16, 24-25
- American Federation of Musicians, Local 802, 28
- Anderson, Marian, 19-21, 56
- Angelou, Maya, 89
- Apollo Theater, 79
- Ashe, Arthur, 98-99
- Bach, Johann Sebastian, 15, 18
- Bacon, Madi, 58, 73
- Barber Scotia College, 37
- Battle, Kathleen, 58
- Beaty, Nellie Constance (Mrs.), 8, 25, 38, 84
- Berkley, Tom, 59
- Black Perspectives in Music, 6
- Bohannon, Costie, 47
- Boone, William Robinson, 6
- Brown, Anne, 27
- Bunche, Ralph, 26
- Burtram, Mrs., 4-5
- Busoni, Ferrucio, 32
- Carnegie Hall, 80
- Carver, George Washington, 16
- Childers, Lula Vere, 23
- Christian Science church, 5, 97
- Columbia Concerts, Inc., 45, 81
- Cook, Will Marion, 65
- Daughters of the American Revolution, 20
- Davis, Belva, 26-27
- De Coteau, Denis, 58
- Dett, Robert Nathaniel, 11, 42
- Depression, the, 3, 16, 22
- Du Bois, W.E.B., 78-79
- Duncan, Todd, 21-24, 27, 40-47, 50-1, 56, 65-67, 81, 83
- East Bay Music Center, 75-76
- Edwards, Gladys, 81-82
- Edwards, Harry, 81-82
- Evanti, Lillian, 22-23
- Evers, Mrs. Medger, 75
- Feringer, Frederick, 5
- Fisk Jubilee Singers, 10
- Fisk University, 10, 18-19, 37, 46
- Fisher, Orpheus, 21
- Freundlich, Irwin, 18
- Friskin, James, 16, 18, 35
- Garvey, David, 35
- Gary, Charles, 25
- Gershwin, George, 27, 40-41
- Goens, Dr. W.W., 52
- Golden West Hotel, 3-4, 9-10, 17
- Goodlett, Carlton, Dr., 51, 59
- Goodlett, Willette, 51
- Goodman, Janet, 70
- gospel music, 85-86
- Grass, Alice, 18-19
- Grist, Reri, 58
- Hallinan, Vincent, 78
- Harlem, 16-17, 79
- Harrison, Hazel, 33
- Harvard University, 7, 9, 14
- Hastings, George, 14
- Hess, Myra, 80
- Hinderas, Natalie, 60
- Howard University, 22-23, 25-27, 86
- Hughes, Margaret, 61, 89
- Hutchinson, Karen, 89
- James, Claire, 30, 32-34
- jazz, 8, 37
- Jones, Elayne, 67-68, 98
- Joplin, Scott, 60
- Jubilee Hall, 10
- jubilee music, 10
- Juilliard School of Music, 15
- Junior Bach Festival, 17, 70-73
- Knoll, Hans, 32, 37
- Lhevinne, Josef, 18
- Lewis, Henry, 58
- Lichty, Marion, 15
- Logan, Harald, 32, 71-72
- London Royal Albert Hall, Lucas, Dr. Stanley, 16
- Mailkoff, Tirzah, 17, 32, 47, 71, 73-74
- Mannes School of Music, 34
- Maynor, Dorothy, 22
- Metropolitan Opera, 20, 40
- Mitchell, Abbie, 40, 65
- Musical Artists, 81
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 75
- National Association of Negro Musicians, 64-65, 87
- Nazism, 32
- NBC Symphony, 19
- New York City Opera, 41
- Nickerson, Camille, 23
- Oakland Post, 59, 62
- Oberlin College Conservatory, 6, 11, 14, 18, 32
- Oda, Kyoka, 34
- Ormandy, Eugene, 68
- Ozawa, Seiji, 67-68
- Parker, William 82-83
- Petri, Egon, 29-34, 35
- Phillips, Theodore, 14
- Poland, 29-32
- Porgy and Bess, 27, 40-42, 84
- Portland, 1-17
- Price, Leontyne, 47, 54, 56-57, 93-94
- Reed, George Wilbur, 7-8
- Robeson, Paul, 40, 54-56
- Robinson, Bill "Bojangles," 10, 16-17
- Roosevelt, Eleanor, 20, 23-24
- Roosevelt, F.D.R., 24
- San Francisco, 50-55
- San Francisco Boys Chorus, 73
- San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 33-34
- San Francisco Opera, 55, 68
- San Francisco Symphony, 67-68
- San Francisco Sun-Reporter, 59, 62
- Scheide, William, 17
- Schiller Institute, 66
- Schomberg Center, 79
- segregation, 5, 10, 26-27, 35-36, 41, 46-47, 98-99
- Shaw, Frank, 15
- Shirley, George, 47, 53, 87
- Simmons, Calvin, 73-74
- South Berkeley Community Church, 54, 69
- Southern, Eileen, 84
- spirituals, 43-97
- Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine, 48-49
- Steber, Eleanor, 94
- Stevens, Lorice, 87
- Still, William Grant, 11, 42, 59-60, 62-63, 76
- Stokowski, Leopold, 23,
- Swanson, Howard, 60, 63
- Talladega College, 84-86
- Thigpen, Helen, 63
- Thurman, Howard, 8, 92
- Tibbett, Lawrence, 42
- Tibbs, Roy, 22
- Today's Artists (Four Seasons), 70-71, 82, 90
- unions, 27-28
- University of California Center for Urban Black Studies, 90
- Vengerova, Isabelle, 34-35
- Walker, Frances, 64
- Walker, George, 60, 64
- Warfield, William, 56-57, 65, 90
- Watts, Andre, 35-36
- White, Clarence Cameron, 6, 11
- White House, 22-25
- Wiley College, 38
- Williams, Camilla,
- Williams, Janet, 83
- Wilson, Olly, 6, 60
- Winters, Lawrence, 52
- Wolf, Eldon, 72
- Yachats Music Festival, 70, 76-77
- Young Musicians Program, 87
Caroline Cooley Crawford
Born and raised in La Cañada, California.
Graduated from Stanford University, B.A. in linguistics.
Postgraduate work at University of Geneva, certificate in international law and linguistics.
Degree in keyboard performance from Royal College of Musicians, London.
Copy editor for Saturday Review Magazine, 1973-1974.
Staff writer and press officer for San Francisco Opera, 1974-1979.
Co-Director for Peace Corps (Eastern Caribbean), 1980-1983.
Music reviewer for Palo Alto Times, Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal, 1974-present. Published Prague: Walks with Mozart, Dvorak, and Smetana, 1995.
Interviewer-editor in music for the Regional Oral History Office, 1985-present. UC Extension instructor in journalism.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1779n73k&brand=oac4
Title: Teacher, pianist, and accompanist to concert artists : oral history transcript / William Duncan Allen
By: Allen, William Duncan, Interviewee, Crawford, Caroline, Interviewer
Date: 1996
Contributing Institution: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
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