Our friends at "Cover to Cover," the literary show on Georgia Public Radio have posted their recent segment on Blind Tom Wiggins, featuring an interview with author Deirdre O'Connell. The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist is a riveting biography of America's lost musical genius.
"Cover to Cover's" Myriam Levy notes: "In
The Ballad of Blind Tom, Australian author Deirdre O’ Connell describes her subject as “The most famous black performer of the Civil War generation.” Was he a naive genius or a freak? Was he a gifted, original American composer or a mere mimic of the reigning piano styles of the day? O’Connell wades through 50 years of press clips and testimony searching for the answer to the question, “Who was Blind Tom?”
He was born a slave in Columbus, Georgia. Despite his autistic condition, he made his guardians piles of money, perhaps, by today’s standard, millions of dollars, of which he and his family saw almost none. It would be story of overpowering sadness had Blind Tom not been so full of life. He took great delight in playing piano up to 12 hours a day, never regarding it as work even in the midst of a staggering itinerary. (In 1999, the pianist
John Davis recorded a selection of his songs, John Davis Plays Blind Tom.)
Full of wit and wild anecdotes,
The Ballad of Blind Tom has an astonishing cast of characters. It is
Deirdre O’Connell’s first book, and she spent a good deal of time in Georgia conducting research. She has also made documentaries for the Jimi Hendrix Estate and the United Nations Environment Program and has worked in news at SBS Australia."
Deirdre O'Connell, author of The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist, will discuss the life and times of Blind Tom Wiggins at a number of special events this week. O'Connell, an Australian writer and filmmaker, has written the definitive biography of Blind Tom Wiggins, slave pianist and autistic savant, who was one of the country's most popular entertainers in the late 19th century. His extraordinary life, born into slavery and later rising to the heights of musical stardom, touring concert stages all over America and Europe.
Meet Deirdre O'Connell at these special events:
Thursday, December 3 @ 6:00pm
Hue Man Bookstore
2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd (Btwn 124th & 125th Sts)
New York, NY
http://www.huemanbookstore.com/
Saturday, December 5 @ 1:00pm
African American Museum in Philadelphia
701 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
http://www.aampmuseum.org/
Tuesday, December 8th @ 7:15pm
DeKalb County Public Library
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur, Georgia
http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org/
Wednesday, December 9th @ 7:00pm
Columbus Library
3000 Macon Road
Columbus, Georgia
http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org/
Deirdre O'Connell, author of The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist, recently appeared on The Book Show with Linda LoPresti of Australian Public Radio to talk about the lost musical genius. Click here to download the show.
This critically acclaimed biography of Blind Tom Wiggins has received worldwide attention since its publication last year. Stay tuned for more news and events - author Deirdre O'Connell will make several appearances in the New York area in November.
Deirdre O'Connell's The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist is reviewed in The Guardian: "The musical genius of Thomas Wiggins was feted by Mark Twain and Willa Cather during his lifetime, by Dizzy Gillespie after his death, and mimicked by countless impersonators. He was the first African-American ever to perform at the White House. Yet he has since faded into obscurity. A footnote in the 1920 edition of The Encyclopedia of Aberrations ambivalently remembers him as "moronic genius". Tom was somewhere between the 12th and 21st child born to Charity Wiggins on a Georgia plantation in 1849. Although he was blind and his behaviour wildly erratic (bearing many signals of early infant autism), his talent for memorising and reproducing sounds was soon discovered by his owner's family, and before long he had become the "eighth wonder of the plantation". For the rest of his life, he would be bought and sold by different masters and toured around concert venues and freak shows. Tom's extraordinary ability to mimic noise, be it thunderstorms, trains or, to great comic effect, the posturing of the country's leading politicians, was the key to his formidable skill as a pianist and singer. But his talent also isolated him. Utterly lacking in empathy, unable to understand anything but sound, he took what his masters told him at face value. In turn, he fed the white myth of the Negro as a "natural musician", possessing an innate connection to nature's rhythms, "untrammelled by art or any degree of affectation." It's a story full of contradictions and confusion. According to 19th-century white planter ideology, Tom was "sub-human"; according to African-American folklore, he was a "spirit child" blessed with the gift of "second sight"; according to more recent interpretations, he was an autistic savant. The greatest strength of this book is that it sides with none of these views. Instead, O'Connell embraces all "the holes, contradictions, outright lies and distortions and the tiny nuggets of truth" and reimagines the cacophony Tom might have heard in the turbulent world that surrounded him."
Ina Hughs takes note of Deirdre O'Connell's fascinating biography The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist in the Knoxville News Sentinel: "One of the amazing stories of the 19th century, somewhat lost to time, is of a pianist and composer named Tom Wiggins, born blind, born a slave and born with the mysterious magic of a musical savant. "Blind Tom," as he came to be known, is one of the most fascinating chapters in America's bygone days. The Ballad of Blind Tom by Deirdre O'Connell (The Overlook Press) is the biography of a musical genius born into slavery, but at his death, an international celebrity who'd played for presidents and queens."
Our friends at "Cover to Cover," the literary show on Georgia Public Radio have posted their recent segment on Blind Tom Wiggins, featuring an interview with author Deirdre O'Connell. The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist is a riveting biography of America's lost musical genius.
