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The Rediscovery of Will H. Dixon
Don’t get the wrong idea! I almost never take requests on this blog, maybe one time in a thousand. The fuel that this blog runs on is its author’s own whims. Has to come from me. In fact, the best way to ensure that I won’t ever cover a subject is to suggest it to me. Poor Burt Mustin, for example, will have to languish ’til the cows come home, because someone once suggested him as a topic to me.
That said, Will H. Dixon (1879-1917) made his way past the gate for multiple reasons: 1) there is news to report; 2) he is vastly undersung; 3) he deserves attention; and 4) I can pass the buck by handing you off to someone else, the real Will H. Dixon scholar, Lawrence H. Levens, the custodian and guardian of his papers, who of course is the person who brought Dixon to my attention.
While he’s probably not related to either man, today’s subject makes an interesting passing chord between minstrel George Washington Dixon, and blues songwriter and bassist Willie Dixon. His was the ragtime era, of the time before even jazz had gained much of a foothold in pop culture. Our Dixon was a member of James Reese Europe’s Clef Orchestra, and was a friend and associate of such artists as Ernest Hogan, Will Marion Cook, Ida Forsyne, Williams and Walker, Henry S. Creamer, et al. As a member of the Memphis Students Club, he played prestigious vaudeville venues like Proctor’s 23rd Street and Hammerstein’s Victoria, as well as the Folies Bergere in Paris. His songs were sung by the likes of Sophie Tucker, Eva Tanguay, Eddie Leonard, et al.
Thanks, Mr. Levens, for forwarding these excellently thorough articles about Dixon’s life and legacy:
Rick Benjamin of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra recorded several of Dixon’s compositions on his Black Manhattan trilogy of albums, released 2007-2017, with research and liner notes by Benjamin.
The big news is that, according to Levens, “a cache of historical musical scores and manuscripts belonging to Will H. Dixon thought to be lost were [recently] discovered in a Brooklyn Heights co-op apartment where Dixon’s daughter Miss Frankye A. Dixon once resided. Also discovered in this historical lot was the 105-year-old libretto and musical score to a Light Dramatic Opera in 3 Acts written in 1915.”
Unfortunately, Dixon died of syphilis (quite common among showfolk and others back then) before the opera could be premiered. But the rediscovery of these manuscripts means that the possibility that these compositions will be performed and recorded is now very real. Read Mr. Levens’ exciting article about the discovery, published in the Amsterdam News back in June, here.
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