"OL' MAN RIVER"

 “OL’ MAN RIVER”

In a Facebook post on January 23, Philly Herlein Rains reposted a report celebrating the birthday of William Caesar Warfield, who was born in West Helena, Arkansas, in 1920.  I had forgotten that he was a Black “native son,” although I had been well aware of the most famous Black “Native Son,” Richard Wright, being from Elaine and West Helena.    

William Warfield was born to Baptist minister Robert Warfield and Bertha McCamery Warfield in West Helena in 1920.  Reverend Warfield had a “day” job as a sharecropper, a hard knock life.  Combined with the rampant white supremacy, the neo-slavery of the 20th century, and the murderous lynching of over 235 Black Americans in Elaine and in Helena in 1919, the Warfield family soon joined the Great Migration from the South, stopping first in Missouri, then landing in Rochester, New York.  Though William Warfield did not stay long in his birth state, he described himself “as an Arkansas boy from tip to toe.” He was plagued by white supremacy all his life, but his heritage was multiracial: Black, Native American, white.

In 1938 when he was a senior in high school, he won first place in the National Music Educators’ singing competition with his powerful bass-baritone voice. He won a scholarship to famed Eastman School of Music.  He was drafted into the army in 1942, but before his departure, he gave his graduation recital at Eastman School to an overflow crowd. Because he was fluent in German, French, and Italian, he was assigned to an intelligence gathering unit.  Fighting through the racism at Fort Richie, he became a valuable asset, and he was discharged in 1946.

He then began his singing career in a road show called “Call Me Mister.”  The cast included Carl Reiner, Buddy Hackett, and Bob Fosse. During this time, he appeared in other shows and operas, while receiving acting and singing training. He also sang in clubs, and on one such occasion in a Toronto, a financier named Walter Carr heard him and decided to sponsor him.  Warfield’s Town Hall debut in New York City was on March 19, 1950.  He wowed that audience and was signed for an extended tour of Australia.  He also made his first movie,  a remake of “Show Boat,” and he landed his signature song “Ol’ Man River,” originally sung by the incomparable Paul Robeson.  Though the song was written with Robeson in mind,  Warfield came to own it, singing it more times than any other artist, including singing it in several languages.   No small irony that it is a song about the Mississippi River near his birthplace, a river from which his family had to flee in order to find their lives and to develop Warfield’s singing voice.

In 1952, he toured Europe to sing the lead in “Porgy and Bess.”  The “Bess” role was sung by Leontyne Price, a stunning soprano from Laurel, Mississippi.  The fire in the parts spread to them personally – they were married that same year.  The marriage did not last long, and they were separated in 1958.  They remained lifelong friends, however.  In 1957, Price began her incredible career at the Metropolitan Opera, but Warfield could never break that ceiling because his racial classification was Black Male.  

He appeared in movies and television and made many recordings.  He worked with composer Aaron Copland on many occasions, and in 1984, he won a Grammy for his role as Narrator in Copeland’s “A Lincoln Portrait.” You can hear an audio recording of it at https://soundcloud.com/oaiquartz/copland-lincoln-portrait - it’s about 8 minutes into it, though the ‘Billy The Kid” suite that precedes it is good also. 

His career was varied and long and included teaching at Northwestern.  He was invited back to Helena/West Helena to sing at the Warfield Community Concert, named not for him but for a white man SD Warfield, who had left much of his estate to establish an annual concert series that was to be free to the community.  One can only wonder what his thoughts were, as he climbed the stage in the area from which his family had fled in 1922.  

In 1977 he established the William Warfield Scholarship Fund, providing funding for African-American high school and pre-college students interested in vocal classical music, and it is now in its 46th year of providing such scholarships.  Warfield died in Chicago in 2002 after brain injuries suffered from a fall, and his body is buried in Rochester, joining a sea of witnesses, including Susan B. Anthony and  Frederick Douglass, in Mt. Hope Cemetery there.  He described his career in these words:

“I wanted it all. I wanted “Show Boat” and “Porgy,” as well as Brahms and Fauré. I wanted the spirituals along with the boogie-woogie, and grand opera, too. I wanted the Hollywood film and I wanted the bistro gig, the international tour and the White House command performance. I wanted to teach music, to bring to a new generation the lessons of my life in art. I wanted to play a role in world culture–not just “Negro culture” not just “Western European culture.” I shared the dream of every artist, regardless of his or her origins, to find my patch in that great tapestry of art. If West Helena, Arkansas, wasn’t big enough for my sharecropper daddy, the East Coast cocktail lounge circuit wasn’t big enough for my career. I wanted all the wonders of music, a taste of everything that the muses had to offer.”