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February is Black History Month in Canada and around the world. In Canada, the 2024 theme is “Black Excellence: A Heritage to Celebrate; a Future to Build”. In honour of this theme, we wanted to highlight a recent publication about Lou Hooper, a Canadian-born pianist who played with many of the twentieth century’s jazz and blues greats in Detroit, Harlem, and Montreal.
Listen to a recording of Lou Hooper from 1977: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm4qSSasJ7g
Read below an excerpt from Hooper’s unpublished autobiography, The Happy Road, which appears in full within Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper, edited by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion and Désirée Rochat.
Ontario-born jazz pianist Lou Hooper (1894-1977) began his professional career in Detroit, accompanying blues singers such as Ma Rainey at the legendary Koppin Theatre. In 1921 he moved to Harlem, performing alongside Paul Robeson and recording extensively in and around Tin Pan Alley, before moving to Montreal in the 1930s.
Prolific and influential, Hooper was an early teacher of Oscar Peterson and deeply involved in the jazz community in Montreal. When the Second World War broke out he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and entertained the troops in Europe. Near the end of his life Hooper came to prominence for his exceptional career and place in the history of jazz, inspiring an autobiography that was never published. Statesman of the Piano makes this document widely available for the first time and includes photographs, concert programs, lyrics, and other documents to reconstruct his life and times. Historians, archivists, musicians, and cultural critics provide annotations and commentary, examining some of the themes that emerge from Hooper’s writing and music.
Statesman of the Piano sparks new conversations about Hooper’s legacy while shedding light on the cross-border travels and wartime experiences of Black musicians, the politics of archiving and curating, and the connections between race and music in the twentieth century.
The Happy Road by Lou Hooper
VIII
This being my first visit to New York, I gradually absorbed the Harlem of the twenties, enjoying and being employed in it. There was so much and all so beautifully 99 per cent Negro; highly professional people involved in business, politics, etc. Everywhere there seemed to be poets and writers.
The social life and extravagance of Negro Harlem was perhaps best shown in the novel with the then shocking title, Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten, a white man. It spoke of the rent parties and “chit’lin suppers” to pay the rent; it also exposed other “up-stage” activities of some of the “dicty” snobbish chorus-chicks from the black musicals on Broadway. This exposé was, at least, a healthy one; whether accepted or rejected, personally, that is!56
The potential greats and near-greats; Claude Mckay the noted poet who left Harlem to live in the USSR; Essie and Paul Robeson, she to become successful novelist and student of anthropology, and he the world’s greatest bass-baritone. They were all there, and were part of the tapestry of my life.
One acquaintance I made while in Harlem and of special importance and interest to me, was that of Paul Robeson. I had met Paul, by chance, at a Sunday afternoon impromptu musicale in Harlem. I, along with my wife and son, had called at the home of a new acquaintance of ours. I was to discover a pleasant musical atmosphere prevailing, though ours was just a social call and not associated with an artistic event. So, once inside and following the usual introductions, I was invited to play the piano, and after I had been playing for a while, Paul and his wife came in to join us. I had known each of them earlier, but as Paul Robeson and Essie Goode, not as Mr and Mrs Paul Robeson. Essie was director of the Harlem YWCA.
When I had finished playing, Paul and I started up a conversation, during which he asked me if I would be interested in being his accompanist; at this point Mrs Robeson jokingly remarked, “He even has the clothes for it!” I was wearing an afternoon walking-suit: grey cut-away coat, striped trousers and vest, spats, derby hat, and walking stick. This was the normal dress of many for Sunday wear. It was then agreed that plans would be finalized by Paul’s visit to our apartment during the next week.
My subsequent association with him as accompanist at his first song recital in New York in Sherry’s Park Avenue Hotel is still one of my pleasantest recollections. A magnificent giant in stature, Paul was a retiring man and very shy. In conversation, every word was cherished by his friends. Paul sang mostly spirituals that evening. As his rich voice filled the room with its velvety warmth, a new hope sang again in these ancient and sincere expressions of a people.
It was only after persistent urging by friends and theatrical associates that Paul finally consented to sing at all. He did not think he could sing, and he once told me just that, but Paul could sing and was blessed with a matchless voice to aid him.57
Other concerts followed – at each concert I played a piano solo – at Rutgers University, Paul’s alma mater, where he had dominated classroom studies with the highest grades and excelled in track and field sports. Then there was a concert at the Long Island estate of the Pells (a socially prominent family of the time), a return to a New Brunswick (New Jersey) church concert, and our final recital on a Sunday afternoon at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston.58 Here, we were turned away with the suggestion that we try the Copley Annex for accommodations, but while we were leaving, somebody, somewhere, must have “got the message” that it was Paul Robeson they had turned away. At any rate, upon our arrival at the Annex, and after a few whispered comments behind the counter, we were escorted to a waiting taxi which took us back at full speed to the Plaza, where we were shown to our luxurious suite. It may be that the sudden about-face was made when someone looked at the list of patrons on the official program for the concert; at the head of the list was the governor of Massachusetts, Lieutenant Governor Cox. This was in 1925.59
A short while after this engagement, Paul came to see me at our apartment: I could see that he was a little uneasy and wondered what was to come.
He told me that he had been approached by the Victor Phonograph Recording Co. to record with a second singer, in the person of H. Lawrence Brown, who was also a pianist and who had recently come to New York. Paul was most apologetic and very disturbed, even though he and I had only a gentleman’s agreement, and I had been handsomely paid for each concert. We soon reached agreement, however, as I had no wish to travel, leaving my home and my family in New York.60
Thus ended, amicably, my six months’ association as accompanist to Paul Robeson, a great artist and brilliant scholar. I have met Paul in Montreal twice since in his recitals and was able, in the short time at our disposal, to reminisce a little with him and his now well-known accompanist, H. Lawrence Brown.61
NOTES
Sean Mills is Canada Research Chair in Canadian and Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal and A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec.
Eric Fillion is adjunct professor and Buchanan Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian history at Queen’s University. He is the author of JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: Musique-action, 1967-1975 and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy.
Désirée Rochat is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.
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