ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the extensive and varied support I have received in writing and editing this book, the first to establish a critical context for Still's work. Judith Anne Still, the owner of William Grant Still Music as well as the composer's daughter, has been forthcoming and cooperative in supplying copies of rare materials and answering innumerable questions, returning my calls and clarifying many details even as she restrained her impatience with my deliberate ways. It was she who called my attention to her mother's (Verna Arvey's) "Scribblings" and much other invaluable documentation. Moreover, she led me to a major new source on both Still and the New Negro movement in Los Angeles.

I have taken the title of this book from Harold Bruce Forsythe's 1930 landmark essay on Still with the permission of his son, Harold Sumner Forsythe, Professor of History at Rancho Santiago College, Santa Ana, California. Professor Forsythe generously wrote, "I am sure that my father would be honored to finally be recognized as the founder of the critical study of William Grant Still's music." I thank him further for making available the materials in his possession on his father, for answering many questions in the course of interviews on December 21 and 22, 1994, and for subsequently placing his father's surviving papers at The Huntington Library. A celebration of the acquisition of the Forsythe Collection by The Huntington Library in February 1997 was also valuable. Both Judith Anne Still and Professor Forsythe have generously made photographs available as well. I also wish to acknowledge with thanks

the kindness of many other people who have graciously granted interviews, in person and by telephone, including Verna Arvey (long before I thought to write on Still), Harry Hay, and Annette Kaufman.

Like many another project, this book grew from something else, in this case a single essay on Still, written for a project that did not come to pass. Its growth into the present, much more ambitious project also owes a great deal to interactions with other musicians and scholars interested in Still's music. As these intensified, a rich brew of ideas and questions developed. Gayle Murchison has been far more helpful than the contribution of a single essay might suggest. She consistently pushed me to look further and consider more fully, pointing out additional references and generally sharing the insights of her pathbreaking dissertation research comparing the positions of Still and his contemporary Aaron Copland. A Still Centennial celebration sponsored by the Department of Music at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, organized by Murchison and Claire Detels in March 1995 stimulated my thought on Still as well. That meeting made possible lengthy and rewarding conversations on Still's music and some of the issues raised in the course of his career. Along with Murchison, Carolyn L. Quin, Wayne D. Shirley, and Jon Michael Spencer were among the major contributors to those discussions. A larger conference and two concerts of long-unheard works by Still and his contemporary Florence Price in June 1998 was funded by a generous grant from Northern Arizona University. This conference and its performances set in motion new responses to Still's work that can only be suggested here. I am indebted to Patricia Hoy, Blase Scarnati, Garry Owens, Jamise Liddell, and Tom Cleman of Northern Arizona University and graduate students David Betancourt, Jennifer Boomgaarden, Albert Grijalva, and Roger Valencia for the success of that conference, for which I served as program chair.

Special thanks to the contributing authors and editors, who suffered many delays in the preparation of this volume while I struggled to find an appropriate form for the diverse materials that are brought together in this book. Willard B. Gatewood, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, is a specialist in Southern history. His numerous books include Preachers, Pedagogues and Politicians (1966), Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite 1880–1920 (1990), and The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox (1993). Gayle Murchison is Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University; she has written on Mary Lou Williams as well as Still. Carolyn L. Quin, a long-

time student of Still's music, is on the music faculty at Riverside Community College in California. Wayne D. Shirley, Music Specialist in the Library of Congress, is a past editor of American Music and has written on many subjects, including Still, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and George Antheil. Exchanges with many other scholars at professional meetings at which I presented parts of my work on Still and via electronic mail have had an immeasurable value. Lance Bowling, Paul Charosh, Gayle Murchison, Cindy Richardson, and Wayne Shirley all read substantial portions of the manuscript at various stages and gave valuable advice.

Assistance of librarians and archivists is essential to a book such as this, and it was made abundantly available to me. Led by Michael Dabrishus, the staff of the Special Collections Division, Fulbright Library, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has been extremely cooperative, dealing with me most graciously in person as well as by telephone, mail, and e-mail. Staff members at the Music Division of the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University, The Huntington Library, the Maryland Historical Society, the Music Division and Billy Rose Collections of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the Schomberg Center at the New York Public Library, and the Beinecke Library at Yale University have been equally gracious and accommodating. The Inter-Library Loan staff at the Getchell Library, University of Nevada, Reno, has long and patiently delivered the goods on my innumerable requests.

I was able to draft early versions of several essays and consult libraries on the East Coast while a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar in 1994. The supportive atmosphere and some modest but strategic financial support from the Department of Music, the College of Arts & Science, and the Graduate School at the University of Nevada, Reno, have enabled me to proceed with this project without excessive interruption.

Several readers for the University of California Press have had a major influence on the shaping of this book as well, including but not limited to Rae Linda Brown, Dominique-René De Lerma, and Susan McClary. At the Press, first Doris Kretschmer and then Lynne Withey have been supportive, constructive, and patient throughout, as have Julie Brand, Karen Branson, Sheila Berg, and Suzanne Knott. Of course, I am responsible for the opinions stated, the sources chosen, and the conclusions drawn.