Word: grandstaff
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Dates: during 1949-1949
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...Sunday he got a chance to show his cantata, Big Spring, to a visiting musician who was conducting a choral program for the prisoners. The visitor thought it was good, took it to a Nashville radio musician who declared it "definitely better than good." Grandstaff mailed off a copy to Big Spring Druggist-Historian Shine Philips...
That was two years ago. The Texas and Pacific's 34-voice chorus sang it, but Tennessee authorities refused to spring Composer Grandstaff long enough to come and hear it. Last week, with a head of pressure built up for a centennial celebration, Big Spring was doing better by its favorite composer...
Chromatics & Hash. The cantata itself had been whooped up, among others, by Composer Roy Harris ("a sense of strength ... I wonder where Grandstaff heard choral singing so brilliant"), and Big Spring bigwigs had watered down the Tennessee authorities. Last week, accompanied by a grim, 200-lb., two-gunned Big Spring sheriff, R. E. Wolf, and a smiling Shine Philips, Composer Grandstaff was flown to Texas by private plane to hear his cantata sung...
What Honored Guest Grandstaff and a packed audience in Big Spring Municipal Auditorium heard was a half hour of music which made up in lyrical lustiness what it lacked in originality: a kind of chuckwagon hash-sometimes tasty-made like every cowboy-and-plains song ever written. Composer Grandstaff himself admitted, "It's chaotic in places. There are times when I get lost . . . and I use chromatics ... to get back on the track...
This week, as Grandstaff headed back for Tennessee and the penitentiary, he had the cheers of Big Springers in his ears. Mayor G. W. Dabney summed it up: "Our biggest boost since we struck...