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Authored by Society president George Meiser IX |
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ONE News-Bit concerning BLIND TOM:
========================================= If you'd like to hear a bit of Tom's "Rainstorm" composition.... 
If you'd like to read some biographical data on Blind Tom, read on.... Mark Twain called him an "inspired idiot," who could "play two tunes (on the piano) and sing a third at the same time, and let the audience choose the keys he shall perform in." The subject of Twain's back-handed praise was Thomas Wiggins, a blind slave from Georgia known as Blind Tom who toured concert halls throughout America and Europe as a musical oddity. He also was known as Thomas Bethune, named after his owner, Gen. James Bethune. >From an early age, Wiggins seemed to crave sound. At four, Wiggins was able to reproduce music from memory after hearing it played by Bethune's children. When Wiggins was six, he began improvising on the piano and composing music. Born in 1849, he could recite any poem and play any piece of music on the piano after hearing it only once. He earned over $100,000 a year for Bethune who kept custody of him even after emancipation. Tom's life was full of contradictions. "He had a strange walk and would sway and twitch when he played the piano." "He could mimic whatever he heard, even in foreign languages, but rarely expressed his own thoughts." Scholars now believe Wiggins was an autistic savant--much like Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man. That term wasn't around in the 19th century when few people questioned whether or not Wiggins was exploited. After the Civil War, Wiggins' parents were pressured to give custody of Tom to the Bethune family. Years later, after two court battles, Tom was returned to his mother who was unable to care for him. He ended up living in New York with Bethune's estranged daughter-in-law. As time went on, he refused to play the piano because he wanted to be back at his old master's house. "Tom wants to sit in master's parlor...sit quiet and listen just like he taught me. Then I will play my piano for me, just for me." When Wiggins died in 1908, his obituary in The New York Times referred to him as a "freak pianist" who played "with a conception of music that was as great as his skill. His technique came as naturally as did his musical emotions." ========================= end ================== |
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