William Dawson

S = Standifer
D = William Dawson
Mrs. D = Mrs. Dawson

S Mr. William Dawson, Composer, Educator, Writer, Teacher, Conductor. Mr. Dawson could you tell us where you were born?
D I was born in Anniston, Alabama.

S Could you tell us the names of your parents and how many children were there in the family?
D My mother's name was Elisa Dawson. Her maiden name was Starkey. My father's name was George W. Dawson. Out of seven children I was the oldest.

S Could you give me the date of your birth, the exact date?
D Sept. 26, 1899.

S When did you first become interested in music?
D At a very small age. There was a band in my town that played once a year, played the emancipation proclamation and it came out once a year. There used to be a mins''tral show that came through Anniston, white and black. We kids would follow them as if they were throwing away money. I used to love to see the trombone players in the first line throwing their horns from one side to the other at the kinds.

S At that early age were you taking any private lessons, such as piano, or any private music lessons?. If so, from whom?
D No. I first wanted to study the piano and had a fellow who was a distant relative and he taught me the bass part first, kinda like a boogy-woogy. Then he attempted to teach me the right hand. Then I asked him where was my music. He told me I didn't need any music. I wanted to learn how to read music. There was a man in that town by the name of S. W. Grisham who had been to Tuskegee as a band master before he came to Anniston. The reason I know he had been here was when I came here I saw one of the pictures of the perhaps early bands, perhaps 6, 7, 8, or 9 in it and I saw Mr. S. W. Grisham and they told me he was the band master. He had a band in Anniston, about a 14-15 piece band, and being a wonderful trumpet player himself he organized this band and I wanted to get into the band. I liked the music. I finally got me a half brass and half copper trombone and my father didn't want me to fool with music. There was a man there by the name of Mr. Fleming. He said to me, now William if you would let me have that instrument that you have bought, I will get Mr. Grisham to put you on the melophone and then your father will know that that horn belongs to Mr. Grisham, so you can practice at your home. That is how I started. The first instrument that I learned to play was a melophone.

S Now I remember reading or hearing somewhere that you finally came to Tuskegee. How old were you when you came here?
D 13. I ran away from home to come here.

S After coming to Tuskegee was it difficult for you to become accepted as a student?
D No. Booker Washington, I had been told that he said in some of his speeches, if you want an education and you are willing to work, if you get to Tuskegee then you will not be turned away. I had a friend who had been here a year before and he told me certain things about the school, what I should do and what I should not do. So there was a man who had a private school, Prof. Carmichael, whom I got to teach me addition, reading and writing.

S This is after you got to Tuskegee?
D No, before I came to Tuskegee. I wasn't able to, my father took me out of school to help him take care of the family, 7 children; he was making a dollar a day. So I wanted to come to Tuskegee and I got Prof. Carmichael to teach me reading, writing and arithmetic. 50 cents a month. I would slip out of our back yard and go to his house and have my lesson and slip back in because my father didn't allow me out of the house after dark. I made up my mind that I was going to Tuskegee because we heard so much of the famous Tuskegee band. Everybody knew about the Tuskegee band. My desire was to get to Tuskegee and play in that band. There were several magazines and books with pictures of famous Negroes and I saw some of those books and it made a great impression on me,. One that I saw was about Tuskegee and they were building what they called the laundry. Students building a laundry at Tuskegee and I wanted to be a carpenter when I saw that. One time I wanted to be a brick mason. Anybody who lived in the community who looked as if he were doing well or he had a home, I wanted to be that.

S My son is like that.
D The jobs that we kids strove to be was a fireman, a brakeman on the train. Many negroes were brakemen. We would get little lat&-rns and learn those signals and get out in the street at nights in the dark and give signals that these men working on the railroads would give. The train was a great thing for me to get to be a fireman or a brakeman. So I saved my money. I shined shoes. My father took most of the money that I made and on Sunday he would give me 10 cents or 15 cents and I could go to the ice cream parlor and get an ice cream cone or something, but he took most of my money. I began to get wise. I knocked down on him. I don't know if you understand that term

S Not quite.
D Knocked down. That term is very familiar with people in this part of the country. In other words, I was shining shoes and if I made $3 I would take 50 cents and keep it for myself. We call that knocking down. I would give my father the $2.50 and maybe he would give me 10-15 cents. I began to save my money. I went up under a house of a neighbor whose floor was high up and I got a snuff box and I used to slip up under that house and put my extra money in that snuff box, hoping to have enough money when I got ready to come to Tuskegee to pay my way down here. The first year when I went to look for the money it was gone. Apparently someone had seen me going and I can't say whom I thought it was. I have an idea but I wouldn't name him. So I failed that year. The next year I bought me a bicycle. I could ride a bicycle very well and started to deliver packages for a very select women's wear store. White middle class and upper class women traded at that store. A man by the name of Mr. Black owned it. And I delivered packages for that store. Mr. Black thought a great deal of me and at that time the stocking class for women was for unexposed. Whenever a shipment came in he would not allow even his sister who was a clerk to come back there. He would trust me to count the number of boxes of stockings that came in. He would say now William you go in and count them, now don't let anybody in here but you. I counted those stockings. He thought a great deal of me. There was a man there by the name of Mr. Sax who repaired bicycles, a very fine person. I made arrangements with him to buy my bicycle on the Saturday night prior to the day I was to leave for school. Seemingly everyone in the neighborhood was in sympathy with me. They knew what I was trying to do. They knew I wanted to go away to school So that Saturday night I sold my bicycle for $6 to Mr. Sax. I had already bought me a flat top trunk, the first trunk that I ever owned, and it is downstairs now. It stayed in the house and I had made arrangements with a Mrs. Beavers whose son was G. W. Beavers, a very good friend of mine, who had been here. She gave me permission if I got that trunk to her home it would go on her son's ticket as her son's trunk. My father belonged to the Baptist church which was located on the west side of Anniston. and he lost the key to his truck, he couldn't locate it, that Sunday evening when he was trying to go across town to church. Everybody in the house, my mother, three or four sisters, went looking for that key. That is the only way I could get out of that house with my trunk. At about 5:30 they located that key. My father dressed up, and he was quite a dresser, I have a picture. he wore spats and so forth. He went to church and while he was gone we got my trunk out of the house and I had one or two boys my age help me put it on a wheelbarrow, push it through the back alley to George Beavers house and left it there. When my father returned from church the first thing he missed was that trunk. He may have had an intuition, I don't know. He said where is William's trunk. No one could tell him. He got out and began looking for me. He almost caught me. I jumped under some hedges. I heard him ask a boy have you seen William. The boy said no, sir, Mr. Dawson, I haven't seen him. I was as close to him and I am to you. And he went on. I had planned how to get away from Anniston. This is a very unique part of my story. This pertinent point. There was a junction about 8 blocks from our house where the trains came in. One came from Atlanta going to Birmingham. That train would come in and then back into Aniston to the railroad station. Then it went to Birmingham, from Atlanta to Aniston to Birmingham, Alabama. So when he left he would move off in the direction of Birmingham. Well, I had been over to the junction and studied that thing pretty well. And I got over there about 1:30 in the morning and got on that train in the colored coach and got in the men's room, the toilet, and locked the door. So when it backed into the station at Anniston. I am not at the station. My father was out looking to see if I was going to get on that train. It moved off. The kids who were coming to Tuskegee from Anister, they caught train at Aniston, the L & N, there were 6 of them. They came through Balera, Alabama. So the train, L & N, coming down from Nashville to Birmingham to Montgomery. I got on that train and joined these others at Clare, Alabama. Then we came on to Montgomery and then to Tuskegee.

S What was this year?
D 1914-15. Dr. Washington died in 1915 and I was here when he passed. I marched in the band behind his hearse. I heard him speak two or three times in chapel. He gave a Sunday evening speech every Sunday night, that he was here, called the Sunday evening message. And they were messages to listen to. One that made a great impression on me and all of the students was titled, Keeping in Repair. He had another great speech on teamwork. When I was traveling with... Captain Neal and the quintets, they said that was intended for the faculty. Teamwork, to work together. But the one on the pass was given to the students and that made a great impression because I remember the illustrations that he gave in explaining his talk. One of them was he told the people in the community to keep your back yards looking as pretty or prettier than your front yards. Whitewash your fences. All the fences back in those days were whitewashed. People grew all sorts of flowers. He preached all that to the community. Then he said to the students about keeping in repair, he said sometimes you can see a man walking down the street with his heels run down. He should have those heels built up, he needs to keep in repair. The next morning when the students were gone to work, you had to report to work at 7, breakfast was at 6 a.m. sharp. Nothing started late at Tuskegee, nothing. Chapel you went to bed at 10:00. If you wanted to stay up half hour or hour studying you got permission from your floor officer, who was a student.

S Was there chapel every day?
D No.

S How many times a week?
D They had chapel vespers. They call chapel on Tuesday and Thursday in the chapel. On Wednesday evening they would have a short prayer or something in the dining room.

S Who would preside at the chapel at the vesper?
D A faculty member, one of the ministers. They had 11:00 service and a vesper service. The students marched to the chapel behind the band every Sunday. It was a beautiful formation. They could tell how long it took 8 hundred students, 1700 students to march from the library to the chapel and be seated by the tempo of the march. When Col. Davis came here he was a commodant at one time. They timed that. They timed it so that all of the students would be in that chapel at 5 minutes to 11. Service started at I I and when we went in the chapel you sat down quietly and you sat there.

S Who was the music person at that time?
D Mrs. Jennie Chetum Lee. She was a Fisk graduate. She had the choir. And before my time M. Clark Smith had the band. The students marched out of chapel, girls first, then the men. An interesting thing about those marches. When I came here in 1931 to organize the School of Music and prepare the music for the 50th anniversary, it was interesting to see the new students march with the old students, to see them tryin to catch step, prove... none whatever and the kids in the choir thought they had access to everything. They would smile and look at the new students laughing, but within three months everything was geared up and they knew how to walk, they knew how to catch step. If they got out of step you would never know it, just make a quick step and catch up.

S How many years were you at Tuskegee?
D 7 years.

S During that time what were the major music courses that you think had the greatest influence on you?
D First the band made a great impression on me. I was fortunate enough to get in the band. I couldn't play very well.

S What instrument did you play?
D I wanted to play trombone and when I tried out, Stanley Williams, Prof. Williams., who is living in New York now. He is a member of the local there. He must be 90 years old. He was one of the men and M. Clark Smith who traveled. He had graduate the year or so before that time. They didn't have a band master so he was acting band master. The students also marched to dinner behind the band. I had a friend that I met, named Barns, I'll show you his picture. He was from Indianapolis and he had his own instrument that he could play. When he tried out at band rehearsal, I could hear that euphorium. When he finished Stanley Williams said who told you you could play. I was standing behind the trombone waiting to get cast. When I heard him say to Barns who told you you could play, I eased out of the window and ran to my dormitory. I waited until the next day after dinner to go up and have my test. So they tried me out on three or four things. I couldn't play them the way then wanted to and I stopped. Prof. Stanley Williams asked a fellow by the name of Anthony Taylor who was a very fine trombone player, he said what are we going to do. Here I am, a kid, just standing there. He said, well we have to have somebody, lets give him a chance. That was all I wanted to hear. So that afternoon I came to the rehearsal. They had a simple thing to play but I couldn't play it, it was an 8th note followed by a quarter and an 8th in 2/4 time. I just couldn't read that....

S Could you hear it?
D I was trying to play it. Anthony Taylor just shook me. I cried. After the rehearsal I didn't go to supper. I went back to my room in Cassidy Hall, which is no longer now, on the third floor and I had a book from J. W. Pepper, .Music Self Taught. They had many things self taught in those days, you don't see them now. I got up there and I just stood at those notes and analyzed those notes and studied that one rhythm and I learned how to count. I played that rhythm over and over. If I played it once I played it 50 times. So the next day when I went back I could play that. They took me in and after one year in there Anthony Taylor who was the first trombonist went to the euphoria, and I became the first trombone player. I practiced 3 or 4 hours a day. So I got in the band. Now this is the unique thing about Tuskegee. Every student that enrolled in Tuskegee Institute had to take music, sight and read, hymn, note reading. They had three teachers. You were assigned to that class. You went there like an English teachel went to his class. Ms. Jennie Cheatum Lee would let me sit in there and learn and I learned to read those notes. I was so grateful to her because that is where I learned what we call soul today. Every student that enrolled in Tuskegee and he made a lower class, he was assigned to that. You should have heard 1800 students sing.

S Tell me. After having studied at Tuskegee and I would like to move into graduate study. Can you give me some sort of a chronology from Tuskegee on?
D At Tuskegee I worked in the band master's office and I learned to play most of the band instruments. I learned to play the bass violin in the orchestra. During the first world war when Captain -------- the band master left I had to teach a lot of fellows their parts and that was my first experience at teaching. When I finished at Tuskegee after 7 years, they gave no credit in music, none whatever. But I had the practical experience and I had learned to play well. I played everything that Father Pride, a great trombonist wrote, and it is all those difficult things, all those books for the trumpet, I played all those on the trombone and I began to play the euphonia also. So when I left Tuskegee I had several jobs offered to me as band master. Tuskegee supplied all the band masters in those days to Negro schools. I had two jobs offered to me. One at Topeka, Ka., and one at Prendero, Ka. I took the one at Topeka. They had never had a band there but a lot of people who had gone there, whom I knew were at Tuskegee at one time, so I thought I'd go there. While I was there I went over to study composition and orchestration at Washburn College. When I went in they asked me for my credits. I told them I had none, but it they would, I would appreciate it if they would give me an examination. Well they gave me an examination and by my experience they accepted me. When we were taking instrumentation I could score for a band or orchestra I had learned it as a student, practically, experimented with it. We used Emily Prouse book on instrumentation, orchestration. And all of the students in the class, I was the only negro in the class, they wondered how could I do this and Dean Sterns told them well he has learned this through experience and what he is doing now in here is he is just learning the theory of it because when I played in the orchestra here, we were playing some of Porter Taylor characteristic waltzes and the cell6-ist was not there that morning and being a boy you didn't ever want to rest. I was looking over my stand which I had a lot of rests, the bass fiddle doesn't play consistently, it comes in at certain periods. I looked over the cello part and so I kept trying to find this A on the 5th line in the F cleft and I found it. I said to one of the fellows, look it here, I have to play my hand way up here to make this note sound like that A in the cello. Well I had to learn then that notes written for the bass fiddle sound an octave lower than they are written. So when I read this and that class was no problem with me. Then I studied composition with Dean Sterns. I took violin romance, Romance for Violin, over to him. It was in and in B flat. Dean Sterns looked at it and said, Dawson, your piece must end in the key in which you start whatever you do. I said thank you very much Dean Sterns, it sounded all right but the next week when I went to my lesson he said, Dawson.do you ha-V that violin piece you wrote and brought to me last week. I said"Yes I do/./ He saict lets go over to the chapel, there is my audience. He went over there and played it, and it w so smoothly done he said now Dawson hereafter you write whatever you want to write

S And end it the way you chose to?
D Then he tool-, me to his home and said I want you to listen to this. This wasa R. Strauss tone poem that ended in two keys. That was the first atonality I heard. Then he says you ought to study with Otto--------. That is the first time I heard Mr.---------name.. He said now my teacher in Chicago was Bloom. If you tell Bloom that I sent you to Otto I'll never speak to you again as long as I live because Bloom would never forgive me for sending you to-------- So I left and went to Kansas City and I peddled my sonc4that I had written all over Kansas City, Ka. and Mo. No one ever turned me down. I was trying to get to Ithaca, New York, where Pat Conway the great band master was. So M. Clark Smith the famous band master left that year to go and organize bands and quartets for the Pullman Co. in Chicago. I had to teach that group. They just made me take that job in Lincoln High School as band master, so I did. Now...Institute of fine arts was there and I had enough sense to know the thing that I needed to know and I was to learn those. So I went out to Horner Institute and told them I would like to study. They said you can't study out here. I said why. They said because you are a Negro. We don't allow Negroes to attend classe. I said I am not particular about attending your classes, I would like to study with some your teachers. They said come back in two or three weeks. Well, I did. They did that thinking that I wouldn't come back. I went back. They said well we have arranged for you to study privately. You will have to come out after 3 when school is closed to have your lesson. I said thank you, when do I start? For four years I didn't tell one person in Kansas City that I was doing that. But in the 4th year when all the names of the graduates came out in the Kansas City Star my name was among them and all the colored folks started to call me and said is this you. I said I don't know. Roy Wilkins was on the Kansas City. he was a very good friend. All of us lived in th Y. I said Roy, come on go with me now, let's go out to and see what is going to happen. We went and sat in the gallery. Allen...was the commencement speaker. All my classmates were sitting on stage. They said the only piece played was something by me. It was the Kansas City Orchestra that played it. People applaud for the young composer sitting in the gallery. Then finally when they passed the degree around they said William Dawson with highest honors. Nobody accepted, somebody whispered Roy and I were looking at this. After we left, we went home. The next week Roy wrote an article in, the Kansas City Star. I went out and ... and they handed me my degree. I said thank you.

S What do you call that, getting a degree post in absentia?
D Then I went to Chicago. The lady who taught me theory at Horner Institute was a Mrs. Hall, her picture is on the wall. She was studying this Mr...Harmony- book and it is no easy book and she would give me exercises out of it and I would work on them. She said Mr. Dawson you ought to study with Otto ... I said, Ms. Hall, who is this Otto... that I keep hearing about . She said he is in Chicago and this is his book. I am giving you an example of it. I have a copy of that book now and he said that this book was not written for music in kindergarten and he meant it. I became a student of his on a scholarship.

S I am going to stop you at this point. Mr. Dawson, at this time you had probably begun composing. Can you give us the names of a few pieces you had composed during this time of study?
D Yes, I started writing before I left Tuskegee. I set music to a. number of Dunbar poems "When all is done," was one. "Jump Back Honey, Jump Back," my first song was Forever Thine. I guess that sold maybe 40,000 copies.

S So Dunbar was a very popular composer with you and other blacks. Now, Mr. Dawson, can you tell us something about other compositions that you have composed and especially instrumental compositions that you may be think are a highlight of your career?
D Instrumental I would say the Symphony, Negro Folk Symphony.

S What if anything that you would like an audience or the public to know about, that cannot be read in a book.
D I should like for them to try to know the two or three Negro folk songs that I use. Not all of the song, bits of it, and then develop it. I wish they could learn that. 'I have been to one or two sessions while they were studying that and they wanted me there to ask an questions. All the knew was the opening theme called the missing link. All of them knew that. But that is just a symbol of something. Something like a light motif.

S Obviously you think that the use of that and the knowledge that everybody think they know about that particular tune is overworked and they should look more deeply into the symphony.
D Yes, it would be difficult for a person unless he studied it very closely of what has been done in that symphony. When he is at the last movement, is based on two themes but. .just three notes from the theme, just saying something one way and in a little while suddenly saying the same thing another way and suddenly saying the same thing another way. That takes intimate study to do that. Now when Edward Lee was to conduct this in Chicago, I was going to Texas, and I went by way of New York and spent three hours with him going through it. Also Dr... at Huntsville. I went through it with him that way. You could put words to everything in that last movement. Take them out and put them in to see. That was a form of development that I used and nobody can listen to that symphony and say that it is Spanish or Italian or...

S Why did you call it the Negro Symphony then?
D The Negro Folk Symphony.

S Why couldn't it have been just Symphony No. 25?
D That is just hopeless. Everybody's doing that.

S Why did you use Negro?
D Because I wanted to know that it is founded on the religious folk music of the American Negro.

S In essence you are saying that-
D It speaks for the whole race.

S But if music does this, can you consider that black music then?
D No, no such thing as black music.

S Can I consider it Negro music?
D If you want to.

S Would it be fair for me to say that William Dawson is a writer of Negro music?
Prof. Dawson: No.

S Would it be better for me to say that William Dawson
D Just say that it is the Negro Folk Symphony,

S So one of the pieces that he did was Negro Folk Symphony and it happened to coincidentally use Negro folk tunes
D No, I deliberately... said that and he proved it. The critics didn't know much about this music. We don't know much about it. In other words, in order for one to get a concept of what something is you can't just know one thing. If I want to give a concept of an apple I have to be a connoisser of all sorts of apples.

S If I want to get a good idea of musical output and your theory which you have just given me, what other instrumental compositions might I go to that doesn't have the deliberate Negro tunes in it. Name one. Or a choral piece.
D ...

S One that does not have a Negro theme.
D Oh, "Of the Fields," "The Rugged Yank." I'll let you hear "The Rugged Yank" after while.

S In these pieces and other pieces that you have chosen are there any particula keys that you find more amenable to your ideas than others.
D No. You see what you do, if I am writing something for a band I have to pick certain keys because of the instruments that make up the band. Another thing in this Negro Folk Symphony, everybody raved about the orchestration. I tried to express certain things, even in the orchestration. For example, in the second movement I use an E flat clarinet and when 110 piece orchestra is banging away you can hear that E flat clarinet in second movement. Now, why? Sometime in our negro churches you can hear somebody come out in a high voice somewhere and then just disappear. All of this is a part of...

S Do you similarly do this technique in your choral music? What other choral composition that you have done do you find one of your more favorite?
D One thing of mine that you will find that only.... of the second end, that is just the missing link. Now if you know what I mean by the missing link. Something that might show up anywhere. What I meant by the missing link before one African was snatched from the West Coast of Africa and put into slavery they were all one piece. The minute that that first one was snatched away from there and sent to some other..., a link was taken out of the chain of people and will never be put back because when all parts of the world, even in Russia.

S Do you find in your choral music that you are currently composing, since you have gotten older, let's face it, are you more creative now than you were when you didn't know as much and did not have.
D I know more about doing this than I did, cause vou grow.

S Are you composing as much and arranging as much as you were when you were younger?
D Yes. Not as much now because I got all this conducting I am doing.

S A few moments ago I asked you one of your favorite pieces and you alluded me frankly. Is any of that good?
D I like the one I am working, with.

S How would you say that in other words.
D The piece I am working with, that is my favorite piece.

S Mr. Dawson was asked whether or not "Any of That Good News" is his favorite piece? His reply is that no, whatever piece he is working with is his favorite piece. That is, any particular piece that he might be working with or on at any particular time happens to be his favorite piece. What were you saying. .
D I was called in as a professional witness for the publisher of Chuck Berry, the lawyer who represents Chuck Berry.

S They were trying to decide or prove what?
D That John Lennon and then did steal "Come Together With Me" from "You Can't Catch Me."
Prof. S: Lennon, McCartney, the Beatles?
D I proved that they did.

S On what basis did you prove that this was
D First of all they must have used a machine to take all these little things, this electronic bit. They were clever. What I did, Lennon was in 4/4 time. Chuck Berry was in... time. I put Lennon's in... time and it came out together. Now we have something in jazz and as much as I played it we can mix major 3rd, minor 3rds, . anything, call it hash. Course the drum is drowning out everything else, the rhythm and they settled it on that basis. They were going to have a piano in the courtroom. I asked the lawyers what are you going to have that for. They are going to test your knowledge of the blues. Test my knowledge of the blues? I just started to laugh and of course I played every blues that was written by Handy and everybody else. West Texas blues, the---------blues, the Joe Turner blues, Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues, you name it. And I started to laugh, and he said that they were personally going to ask you if you knew anything about the cow-cow boogy and I laughed more. I said you might be interested in knowing that the fellow who wrote the cow-cow boogy was a distant relative of mine. When I was a child he lived about 6 blocks from me. That was Charles Davenport, that was the one that had "Beat Me Daddy Eight To The Bar." I said I would have had fun.

S Was this case won?
D Yes.

S How much was awarded from that to
D I don't know, I didn't ask. Chuck Berry's side won. I got the diagram somewhere.

S Was this in New York?
D Yes

S Speaking of New York,.now did you ever meet or know of Jester Harriston when he was in New York in the 30s.
D -Yes.

S The Hall Johnson's choir was very popular at that time
D In Green Pastures

S Were you familiar with Hall Johnson's work and did you...
D Sure, Hall was rehearsing one night. We sang in Riverside church at Radio City. Hall was there, they had to put people in the basement and radios outside such a crowd coming out for the Tuskegee choir on a Sunday afternoon.

S What made Hall Johnson, you think, so popular. Was it his theatrical flare or...
D Hall was tall and he was over those guys. All of these were mature singers.

S Were they mostly black?
D Yes, he could improvise. I've heard Hall say somebody put something in here, put something in here. Hall didn't write those arrangements down.

S This is why when you play an arrangement and you hear a recording of an actual Hall Johnson it seems to be a little bit different?

S You were disappointed in the blending of Hall Johnson's work?
D Yes, I was disappointed.

S Why?
D It just didn't blend.

S Was it because of the spontaneity with which they did it?
D They did an individualist thing almost. They sang. They were exciting.

S But the blend just wasn't there?
D In my own opinion.

S Jester at the time tells me he was of course also studying, as you were, on the side at Julliard, but he wasn't enrolled in Julliard.
D No, I never studied on the side.

S When I say as you indicated to me earlier, you were not enrolled in Horner?
D Kansas City. I had done so much before that. I had taught school, I was a band master, I taught the supervisor of instrumental music in Kansas City. All that. I did all of that.

S Were you married then?
D No.

S How old were you at the time. You mentioned a moment ago that you observed Hall Johnson's rehearsals in New York, were-.you married at that time?
D No.

S How long after that were you married? About.
D I had come to Tuskegee in 31 and I was here 3 or 4 years. When did we marry?
Mrs. D Sept. 21, 1935

S Mr. Dawson, now when you were in New York were you married at that time?
D No I was not.

S How long after that were you married?
D I married my present wife in 1935 in Atlanta, Georgia, in the home of Hale Woodruff, the artist.

S That's a Woodruff painting?
D That's a Woodruff painting you are looking at. And his wife was a... Barker and she taught in Lincoln High School when I taught there.

S Obviously, Mr. Woodruff is black. Is he noted for this type of work which is rather modern to say the least.
D Yes, he was a professor at New York University. He started the art movement at Atlanta University.

S He left Atlanta University and went to New York?
D New York University. He has retired from there. This is his technique. This is his style.

S You mentioned your present wife. What is her name?
D Cecille Nickelson, she was before I married her.

S This must be this very charming woman that is sitting next to you.
D You bet your sweet life.

S Where did you meet her?
D Believe it or not when I had the choir in Ebenezer Church in Kansas City everybody came early to listen to the choir and she and her little gang occupied the balcony. They were there for 11:00 and that was where I first saw her. The next time I saw her she was teaching in Atlanta and then the next time I knew anything I was married to her.

S And then she moved to Tuskegee?
D Yes.

S You were a professor at Tuskegee at the time, right?
D They didn't call me professor.

S What did they call you?
D I don't know what they called me., but they didn't call me professor. I didn't like anybody to call me professor.

S Were you the choral conductor at the time?
D I came here to organize a school of music and I took over the chorus.

S At that time, I know there was a boutique here several years ago, what was the name of that, Mrs. Dawson, and was this your shop?
Mrs. D Yes, the Boutique Bizzarre. I have been in business quite a number of years and it is right across the street from Tuskegee Institute campus.

S What did you sell at that shop?
Mrs. D Ladies apparel and accessories and we have the most unusual costume jewelry in the southeast. We have customers come from all over this area to buy costume jewelry.

S Were these designed by you or did you hire a cadre of people to design them for you?
Mrs. D No, I just select them.

S How did you happen to select. Did you travel widely to select these pieces?
Mrs. D Mostly to New York, or sections of New York, down in the village and all around to find unusual pieces.

S What motivated you to open a shop here in Tuskegee of that sort?
Mrs. D I think I had always wanted to have a shop. Even when I was in high school in the yearbook they said some day we will be visiting Cecille's boutique shop.

S The students here patronize your shop a great deal?
Mrs. D Yes they do.

S Your shop, then, is still open?
Mrs. D Yes.

S When you say yes they do, are these pieces expensive?
Mrs. D They are popular prices.

S What do you call popular prices?
Mrs. D Well, from $3 to $20.

S Can you give me an example or a for instance of what may be in your shop that would be an item that if my wife were to walk into your shop in Charleston, S. C. you might see as a woman where might you lead her to and try to sell her?
Mrs. D Well, first I would size her up and try to visualize just what she would like to see., or look nice in, and then I would pick out certain things for her.

S Is this necklace, which is very interesting, around your neck now, is that on of your pieces? Would I find a piece like that in your shop?
Mrs. D We did have them a few years ago. I selected this in New Delhi, India, but we do not have it any more.

S What about the dress, which is exquisite?
Mrs. D I selected this dress in Abujon, Ivory Coast.

S Where's that?
Mrs. D West Africa.

S So all these places you have been. I know that Mr. Dawson is widely traveled. Does this mean that you have gone on many of the tours with him and at these times purchased things or have you gone by yourself and done these?
Mrs. D No. He went first and then after hearing him talk about all these places then I decided that I would like to see the world.

S Mr. Dawson, has your wife been instrumental or even an advisor in any piece that you have arranged or composed? Is she a good critic, I'll put it that way.
D Yes she is a good critic.

S Or bad critic?
D But she always has more to say than what she'd think I wanted said.

S Would you agree with that Mrs. Dawson?
D And I don't want her to say that, I want some opposition.
Mrs. D He likes for everyone to differ with him and that is really not my nature to always take the opposite side.

S Have you ever come home and said Bill tonight I heard your piece and you conducted it and it was perfectly awful. How did you ever come up with something like that. Have you ever been that candid or that knifing?
Mrs. D No, not really because usually when he conducts he has really prepared himself and as a rule anything that he conducts turns out very well.

S Are you saying, then, that he does very little that you don't like or can't relate to?
Mrs. D In the field of conducting, yes.

S What about the music of his that you have heard. Are you also saying that there is very little that you don't like or there is very much that you do like, which is the best way to say that?
Mrs. D I like what he does very much.

S Is there any one thing that he has ever done that you don't really care for?
Mrs. D I can't think of anything.

S -Good. I am fishing obviously so don't let me pressure you. It is kind of hard for most of us to like everything we have done.
Mrs. D I hear him working on them and by the time it is finished I usually like it

S Mr. Dawson, maybe I can ask you that same question. Is there anything that you have done now when you hear them done by the Fisk Jubilee singers or the Fisk choir or any choir for that matter, you say if I were to do that again I would do that differently. Do you like everything that you have done?
D I am constantly changing. Whatever it costs financially that doesn't both me. I tell the publisher you can take it out of my royalties, I'll pay for it, but this must be like this because I grow daily and if I hear something that will improve that I want that done and if I don't get it done I don't think I would ever be happy again, it would be on my mind until I die.

S That may be a message, I think, to young composers. You have some composers who feel like once they have done something it is unmutable, it is inviolate, it is nailed in steel. You are saying that if you hear something and you feel like you want to add to it, you don't think that that is being blasphemous. In other words, you are always growing?
D I will give you a good example. I made a setting of the Londonderry air. we submitted that to a publisher who owned it outright with Old Danny Boy words and the said they had about 30 different arrangements of it. I said to the man that maybe the reason why you need another one. This was a truly... all the way through and it is setting well, the poem is just beautiful, "Before the Sun Goes Down." I was riding to Montgomery, which is 40 miles from Tuskegee and I commit everything. I hear everything the way I want it before I get in front of a group. This poem ends, and then the light remains the longest before the sun goes down. That had been printed, it had been issued but I heard something else in the very last measure of having three voices come down, what we call porto mento. After the chorus has resolved, all the voices are resolve irregularly because I wanted these voices to drop its distance. Then these three voices come in the measure and they just glide, down, down, down, down and the publisher had that put in there. I am happy because I said I would never have another opportunity in my life to use this effect. So I had to change. I am doing that now With another number.

S Let me ask you since you are talking about the nuts and bolts of your work, how modern, in other words are you into, do you use a great number of. . chords, diminished chords, or chord clusters in any of your recent music.
D Not if it. doesn't express what I want to express.

S Is some of the things that you have done. Unfortunately, I have not heard everything that you have done but are there some things that you might consider more modern or avant garde that maybe...
D You see, personally, I am not too over-enthusiastic about... music. I studied with different teachers. I had one teacher, everything was mathematical... and all of that was in it. When I studied ...I discovered that that was interesting but it would not express what I wanted to express. I want something that we can identify by race. Every composer has done that and I knew that I didn't want to put a full dress suit on a farmer. Each one of these melodies to me is a personality and it takes me a long time to study to find out what I should do with it to express what it wishes to say.

S Mrs. Dawson, of the poets that Mr. Dawson uses to help him say what he wishes to say and I like the way he says that, and express what he wishes to express, in other words to serve as a vehicle for his music, are there any favorites that you have? He mentioned earlier for example that Paul Lawrence Dunbar was certainly a favorite of his. Are there any poets of his that are a favorite of yours? Mrs. Dawson, are there compositions, especially the lyrics of compositions that Mr. Dawson has arranged or composed that you particularly like?
Mrs. D Yes, I especially like "There is a ... In Caliad"and "When the Sun Goes Down," "Out in the Fields," and many others.

S They are obviously very beautiful works and they are religious in a sense, I don't mean in any particular denomination as such, they probably speak to you forcefully because they give you some insight into yourself and into life, are there any other pieces that you particularly like especially in terms of giving us some insight in why you like them?
Mrs. D I especially like his Negro Folk Symphony. It is a very good and entertaining. It has a lot of meaning and feeling in it and it means a lot to me.

S Do you find it difficult living with a creative man? Let me put that another way. A creative man such as William Dawson?
Mrs. D He is not really easy to live with but I have lived with him many, many years and I know how to live with him. But he is a composer and he is quite difficult at time s.

S Just by looking at you and being in your lovely home I can tell that what you do you provide an ambiance so that he can do what he wishes to do and I think that is the bottom line for any creative person to have an environment in which you can create. Are there any unique things or any things that you try to do to accommodate any of his habits when he is composing?
Mrs. D Yes, I try to stay out of his way when he composes. I go into the bedroom and read and listen to TV so he won't be disturbed. Quite often he calls me, he wants me along, listen to this, he'll try it out two-three ways. He wants me to tell him which sounds the best.

S Is it lonesome sometimes being married to a composer, especially when he is trying to deliver or a composition is in the gestation period.
Mrs. D No, I don't find it lonely because I am an only child and I have learned to live with myself and it is not difficult to live alone.

S Can you tell when he has just delivered a composition? When I say delivered I say that in the sense that some composers say that when they get an idea, or Mr. Dawson said himself when we were driving up from Montgomery that he works at fever pitch because he knows what he is going to do and he works on it until he does it. That is it, which I think is rather interesting and it tells me something of the way he works as a composer. Do you find him more relaxed when he is finished with the work or is he just saying what is next? How do you feel?
Mrs. D I tease him and call him a workaholic all the time because when he finish one thing he has already started something else in his mind.

S In the community here so that you are not completely cut off from other things or so that you are not completely inundated by a William Dawson, are there some other activities you are involved in here in Tuskegee?
Mrs. D I am involved with my church and social organizations.

S What is your denomination?
Mrs. D AME

S Is that African Methodist Episcopal?
Mrs. D Yes.

S Is that the same church that Mr. Dawson is a member of?
Mrs. D Yes

S You are both Methodists then?
Mrs. D That is true.

S Is there anything, Mr. Dawson, that you have composed and performed specifically for that church or for the AME Methodists? That may be a dumb question but sometime since you are here, have you conducted at that church?
D No I have never conducted at that church.

S How long have you been a member of this church?
D I have been going there ever since when I resigned from Tuskegee Institute in 1955. I go to hear a good sermon or good music.

S In listening to a preacher have you ever taken his gospel and said, look, I am going home and compose something or arrange something on that gospel?
D No.

S How do you select your
D I am interested, first I want to hear the text. I listen very carefully. I am always waiting to hear if he gives something a different interpretation than I would have given to it. If he does, he really has to preach to me. I read the bible, I have to f the work I am doing when I am composing. I must know everything that I can about the lyrics, about the song, then that determines what I am going to do with that material.

S Let me ask you a couple of very quick questions and then we will close the tap out. One, could you just name off a few of the honors that have come to you in your lifetime that you particularly cherish. I know you have done a lot, but maybe just one or two
D I was very happy when I entered the.... contest. I was quite young and I won first prize in 2-3 categories every time they gave that. Then I have a number that Charles Johnson, Opportunity magazine put on a contest. He was very wonderful in encouraging creativity among composers or painters or writers and so forth, when he was editor of the Opportunity.

S This is the former President of Fisk University?
D Yes. And I submitted a composition to one of their contests and Charles wrote me a note, I was living in Kansas City then. He said I think you would be interested to see the report on Manning who was one of the men who organized the Conservatory in New York, what he said about that, and I have that somewhere. He said this is unique and indicates a big talent.

S And that is one of your cherished honors?
D And I will let you hear that tonight. That is Talk About a Child if You Love Jesus.

S Mrs. Dawson were you about to say something?
Mrs. D Another honor that he received that he should have mentioned was when he was honored at Horner's Institute of Music as a distinguished alumni and that was the school where he couldn't participate with the other students.
D Commencement exercises.
Mrs. D Commencement exercises.

S This is the one to which you referred earlier in our conversation. About his not being accepted because of his race?
D There was another one, the American Choral Directors Association. There are over 3, 000 members in this country. They honored me in St. Louis 4-5 yeax ago. You would have to read the citation of what Dawson has done for the choral. pS7-s of this country. Another was to be inducted into the Fine Arts Hall of Fame of the State of Alabama.

S When was this done Mr. Dawson?
D 1974, 1 think. And among the people who were honored that night were Falkner, O'Conner, the famous actress, and a painter...a street named for her in Montgomery. I forget who the 5th one was, I guess Dawson.

S This is a footnote. I hadn't intended to bring this up but you mentioned something that was very interesting to me. You are a Tuskegeeite, I guess that is the way they say it. But I have noticed somewhere that most Dawsons seem to have gone to Fisk. Can you give me the chronology of that? Is that true?
D Yes. That side of the Dawsons, my faher's brother lived in... He was a barber. He sent all of his children to Fisk. I was not able to go to Fisk. They had a AME school in... and I think those Dawsons attended that school. They had a better opportunity than I had in Aniston, Alabama, where there was nothing for us. Another thing about my uncle is his name was Levi Dawson. He taught Sunday School, he was a biblical student.

S Is your middle name Levi?
D Yes. There was a lady here, she was up in years, Mr. Levi was her Sunday School teacher. He was interested in the House of Leviticus, and he named every child that he had, that middle name of Levi, the girls and boys. Congressman William L. Dawson in Chicago, his name is William Levi Dawson; Julian Dawson, the doctor, surgeon, his name is Julian Levi Dawson, and they named their first son Levi. So I guess my father named me Levi, the middle name.

S What was your father's name.
D George. My mother's father was named William Starkey. I guess they compromised and gave me my grandfather's name, William, and gave me the middle name, Levi, of his father. I did have a second brother that was named George Dawson but he passed quite young. So all those Dawsons that L was in all their names.

S You were just honored at Fisk recently. It also had to do with letters, the donation of the Dawson letters.
D That was the Congressman. He donated his letters to Fisk and I was asked to come up and I spoke at the dedication...and other people. Bill Dawson's son's wife came and spoke.

S Let me say that first of all I would like to express my pleasure to you, my teacher, my former teacher for an entire year. What year was that you were at Fisk?
D 1959.

S That was my last year at Fisk and it was the best pleasure I have ever had to have an opportunity to study with a man of this stature, having known him for a year of course, known of his work and then the second thing, I would like to say to both of you is it is a pleasure to be in your lovely home. Mrs. Dawson you have been a very charming person. I know you were a little apprehensive about being on the video tape and all that but I want to thank you and thank you both for allowing me to come into your home.
D It is a real pleasure to have you because this is a first, what happened tonight.
Mrs. D I was a little surprised when he told me that he was to let you do this.
D I turned him down. I would like to say this about my wife. She designed this house. She worked on this thing for 7 years and she got an architect to carry out her plan.

S I think maybe what we should do is maybe try to turn the camera around on this room because I think since she designed this
D The whole house. I was not here when this house was built. I was sent to Spain.

S There is the piano.
D She wants to put the chairs back

S I won't take a picture of that at all until she gets things back in order. I am going to take the camera off the tripod here. This way we can move around a bit. This is your grand piano. How long have you had this
D Oh, that piano that is an old... that piano must be, when I left here the Spanish government people had requested that I come there and conduct in northern Spain ...
Mrs. D You might be interested in this little stone. The stone came from the chimney of Booker Washington's home.
D The cabin in which he was born. His nephew gave me that 35 years ago. He said, Dawson, here's something I want you to have. He told me what it was. When I left I gave this to her and I said put this in the house somewhere. There was nothing here but a knoll when I left but I came back and this house was here. She said she started to put it on the outside like a cornerstone but finally decided to put it in the hearth, now that is the center of the home, and I want you to test that before you go to see the texture, how they baked bricks in slavery time.

S So in your decorating or planning for this home, Mrs. Dawson, you chose that place as sort of a center point. Mrs. ]Dawson: I thought it should be the center of the living area.
D that is the heart of the home.

S Your taste-is exquisite I think. I am always floored by anyone who can take a room of this size and make some continuity out of it.
D You will have to look in here, if you can overlook things, this is
Mrs. D Don't put your camera on anything in here
D 6 years Mrs. Hall the woman I was telling you at Horner Institute when I was to graduate she just cried. She said., Mr. Dawson, if I were back east I would walk up there with you tonight... That is Richard D. Harrison of Green Pasture, this is Charles Leonard Wood, who succeeded Richard Harrison. That is Dunbar, who was the conductor of the... Minneapolis Orchestra. He took up the Philadelphia Orchestra after.... left. This was my teacher, Mr. Adolph Beidy. Here is...when he came here with his gang and Dr. Ives

S I am going to stop for a moment before we run out of tape. I must show this wall over here. This is your work desk, this is your library, this is your wall of honors, I can see, which you haven't said too much about.
Mrs. D That is just a few of them,

END OF INTERVIEW