Billings, William (07 October 1746–26 September 1800), composer, singing teacher, and poet, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of William Billings, a shopkeeper, and Elizabeth Clark. Little is known of his early life and education, but he is thought to have attended common school and gained his musical education through attendance at singing schools (class lessons in choral singing). After the death of his father in 1760, Billings was apprenticed to a tanner, a trade he apparently followed off and on. Music, however, was his love and psalm-singing his passion. He began holding singing schools as early as 1769 and earned a high reputation throughout eastern New England as a teacher of choral singing. Billings was much in demand as a vocal teacher, particularly in the 1770s and 1780s, and he continued to teach as occasion permitted until his death....
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Billings, William (1746-1800), composer, singing teacher, and poet
Karl Kroeger
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Hays, Will S. (1837-1907), songwriter, poet, and editor
Dale Cockrell
Hays, Will S. (19 July 1837–23 July 1907), songwriter, poet, and editor, was born William Shakespeare Hays in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Hugh Hays, a successful manufacturer of farming equipment, and Martha Richardson, an amateur musician and writer. Although he early showed signs of musical aptitude, his formal training extended no further than a few violin lessons. He attended small colleges in Hanover, Indiana; Clarksville, Tennessee; and Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1856–1857. During this time he published his first song, “Little Ones at Home,” for which he wrote only the text. Hays returned to Louisville and worked in a music store. There he began to compose melodies for his poems, among the first of which was “Evangeline” (1857), musically in a style that acknowledged an important debt to the vogue for Italian opera. This turned out to be his first hit, selling perhaps as many as 300,000 copies. It was during his time at D. P. Faulds’s music store that Hays allegedly composed the original version of “Dixie,” a claim made by Faulds himself more than thirty years later and corroborated then by Hays. (This story has never been supported by evidence other than hearsay, and ...
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Hopkinson, Francis (1737-1791), author, composer, and judge
Harry M. Ward
Hopkinson, Francis (02 October 1737–09 May 1791), author, composer, and judge, was born in Philadelphia, the son of Thomas Hopkinson, a lawyer and Pennsylvania councillor, and Mary Johnson. Hopkinson’s father emigrated from England in 1731. Hopkinson matriculated in the first class of the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) in 1751; he graduated in 1757 and, with other members of his class, received an M.A. degree three years later....
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Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881), poet and musician
Jane S. Gabin
Lanier, Sidney (03 February 1842–07 September 1881), poet and musician, was born Sidney Clopton Lanier in Macon, Georgia, the son of Robert Sampson Lanier, a lawyer, and Mary Jane Anderson. Early in life, Lanier showed remarkable love and aptitude for music, but this talent was encouraged only as a social grace, for the southern genteel tradition looked with disfavor upon a man’s following the arts as a profession. After he graduated in 1860 from Oglethorpe University in Milledgeville, Georgia, his family assumed he would follow his father’s example and practice law. Lanier intended instead to follow a scholar’s life in Europe, but this dream was cut short by the Civil War. In 1861 he joined the Macon Volunteers, serving in the signal corps and then on a blockade runner until his capture; while imprisoned at a federal camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, he contracted the tuberculosis that eventually killed him....
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Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967), poet, writer, and folk musician
Penelope Niven
Sandburg, Carl (06 January 1878–22 July 1967), poet, writer, and folk musician, was born Carl August Sandburg in Galesburg, Illinois, the son of August Sandburg, a railroad blacksmith’s helper, and Clara Mathilda Anderson. His parents were hardworking Swedish immigrants who had met when August Sandburg was working on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in Galesburg and Clara Mathilda Anderson, who had traveled on her own to the new world, was employed as a hotel maid in Bushnell, Illinois. The frugal couple instilled in their seven children the necessity of hard work and education, as well as a reverence for the American dream. When Carl Sandburg entered first grade, he Americanized his Swedish name, thereafter signing his school papers and his early work as a poet, orator, and journalist “Charles A. Sandburg.”...
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Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967)
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Scott-Heron, Gilbert (1 April 1949–27 May 2011), poet, songwriter, singer, and pianist
Barry Kernfeld
Scott-Heron, Gilbert (1 April 1949–27 May 2011), poet, songwriter, singer, and pianist, was born in Chicago, the son of Gilbert Saint Elmo Heron, a Jamaican-born soccer player, and Robert Jamison Scott, a librarian. (His mother Bobbie Scott was named Robert, after her father, despite the gender implications.) His parents’ relationship was contentious and soon disintegrated. His father returned to his own family in Detroit in ...
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Smith, Samuel Francis (1808-1895), editor, Baptist clergyman, and author
P. Keith Gammons
Smith, Samuel Francis (21 October 1808–16 November 1895), editor, Baptist clergyman, and author, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel Smith and Sarah Bryant. Young Smith was educated at both the Eliot School and the Boston Latin School, where he received the distinguished Franklin medal in 1825. At Harvard College, Smith became part of the famous class of 1829, which also included ...
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Zunser, Eliakum (1836-1913), poet and composer of Yiddish songs
Michael S. Sweeney
Zunser, Eliakum (28 October 1836–22 September 1913), poet and composer of Yiddish songs, was born in Vilna (later Vilnius), Russia, the son of Feive Zunser, a carpenter, and Etta Kayle. His family name probably came from Zunse, a nearby village. His father died when Eliakum was eleven, and the family moved into the home of his mother’s sister. Zunser’s formal education was limited by his boyhood apprenticeship to an embroiderer, where he learned to sew gold thread on civil and military uniforms, but he read Hebrew and studied the Talmud in his spare time....
