Activities Among Negroes
Home Again Above: JOHN C. PAYNE, Negro baritone, formerly of Oakland, who is in this city on a concert tour after an absence of five years in London. Below: LAWRENCE BROWN, pianist and composer, who will be Payne's accompanist.John C. Payne, a negro baritone singer and an Oaklander, has won honors in London. He was born in Montgomery, Ala., and his parents went to Sacramento, Cal., when he was young. They lived in that city three years, during which time he attended the public schools and had as a teacher Miss Sarah M. Jones. It was this teacher who gave him his first singing lessons and urged his parents to have his voice trained.
Later the family moved to Oakland and placed him under the training of Miss [Margaret] Blake Alverson. After a few years, through his own efforts, he went to Boston, where he entered the Boston Conservatory of Music and began the study of voice culture. This in time was the means of his securing a position as choirmaster with Will Marion Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra and with the Royal Southern Quartet of Singers. This company played continuously for six months in the Philharmonic hall of London. While there they were summoned to appear before the king and queen.
After Payne's contract expired with the company he remained in London to study vocal music. He studied under such well-known instructors as Charles Gee, Mark Raphael and Von Muehlein. Payne received a gold medal while singing in Scotland from Walter Freer. J. P. G. W. Lattimore made the award in St. Andrew's hall, Glasgow, in the presence of 5000 people.
Professor Elmer Beeton [Elmer Keeton] presented Payne in a recital on Tuesday evening in the Twentieth Century clubhouse in Berkeley, where he rendered a program part classical and part negro spirituals. His niece, Bernice Anderson, is a promising violinist. She accompanied him in one of his most difficult numbers at the recital.
Payne plans to return to London soon and devote himself to several years of training in grand opera, after which he hopes to make an American tour and settle on the Pacific Coast.
Payne had a good accompanist in the person of Lawrence Brown, who was born in Jacksonville, Fla., receiving his first musical training in the Boston Conservatory of Music, after which he went to Paris and studied. Later he went to London, where he became acquainted with Roland Hayes and served as his accompanist during his tour of Europe. During his four years in London Brown accompanied several English artists, among whom were John Goss and Mark Raphael. He has lately accompanied Payne at his recitals of negro songs, his own clear voice adding to the pleasure of the concert.
Sacramento and Oakland have had in their earliest history negro singers who have won fame first in California and then in England, France and Germany. In the early sixties the Hyer sisters of Sacramento won fame first in that city, when on April 22, 1867, they sang a Wagnerian program to the capacity of the Metropolitan theater, They later went to Boston, where they had vocal training and won success in a tour of the world.
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 33, Number 5011, 20 April 1867
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 33, Number 5011, 20 April 1867
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 33, Number 5012, 22 April 1867
Oakland sent out a colored singer, Sarah Miles Taylor, the daughter of a forty-niner, who went east to be trained and later toured England, France and Germany. San Francisco sent into the musical world the best negro woman singer ever appearing on the American or European stage in the person of Mme. Selika. She has been rated in different parts of the world as one of the greatest high sopranos.
In Pasedan [Pasadena] there has lived for many years Mrs. Corrine Bush-Hicks, who studied vocal music under Mme. Ira Aldrirge [Mssr. Ira Aldridge] of London. Later she sang before Queen Victoria. She toured Europe and filled an engagement in France, returning to London just as the memorial services for Queen Victoria were being conducted in Spurgeon's tabernacle. She was invited to sing on this occasion.
From Los Angeles Florence Cole Talbert went to the Chicago Conservatory of Music to complete her vocal training. She won at her first term in a competitive examination the diamond medal. This entitled her to sing on commencement day, accompanied by 100 members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
There are many California negro men noted as pianists, pipe organists and leaders of orchestras. Among these are Elmer Bartlett, a member of the American Organist Guild, and Leviticus Lyons, who for the past five years has been studying in New York and will make his bow to the public this fall. He will sing classical music in five different languages.
Next Wednesday evening in Oakland Miss Margaret Johnson will make her appearance as a musical star and will be assisted by Mrs. Jetter Davis, [Lillian Jeter Davis] a graduate of a school of music in Philadelphia. Miss John[son] was born in Oakland.
