Word: robeson
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John Henry (by Roark Bradford; music by Jacques Wolfe; produced by Sam Byrd) took Paul Robeson back to Broadway after nearly eight years. The stage seemed set for a great return. The play was by the man whose stories had inspired The Green Pastures. Robeson's role was magnificently suited to him-that of huge John Henry, the legendary strong man, the Negro Paul Bunyan, of the Black River country...
...TIME'S review (Nov. 20) of CBS' The Pursuit of Happiness, you told only half the story of Ballad for Americans which Paul Robeson sang so magnificently. The ballad, evidently through some oversight, was credited to me as creator. Actually, while I wrote the music, the entire text including the beautiful selections you reprinted, was the work of the young poet, John Latouche...
Many a mewling white tenor has strutted the proscenium at Manhattan's Metropolitan while more gifted Negro singers, by long-standing custom, were excluded. But in the field of concert singing Negroes like Roland Hayes and Paul Robeson have held their own with the best. Today's most famous Negro singer is soft-spoken Contralto Marian Anderson, whose big, warm-blooded voice is conceded to be one of the world's finest. Last summer at the tony Berkshire Festival near Stockbridge, Mass., another remarkable Negro voice! this time a soprano, threatened to claim a share of Contralto...
Reconstruction, men and machines, then, at the end, mighty Paul Robeson and the chorus double-forted...
...Paul Robeson to stampede an audience was not particularly startling. But last week's bravos established that: 1) Pursuit of Happiness was a hit radio show; 2) U. S. radio listeners are starved for such stuff. Composer Earl Robinson used to sing his own ballads in overalls, to his own guitar, barely subsisting on pickings from the late Federal Theatre, from earnest groups in Manhattan who found his songs good. Last week, Earl Robinson's song was on its way to a publisher, was slated for early recording, and in the wind was a Broadway stage production, with...