"An artist who created his
own musical world"
Henry Roeland Byrd (a.k.a Professor Longhair) was Born in Bogalusa,
Louisiana, on December 19, 1918. The Henry Roeland Byrd story is fundamentally
the story of an artist who created his own musical world, constantly refining
and elaborating a distinctive personal style. It may have been too idosyncratic
to ever capture mainstream popularity during Longhair's lifetime, but it
was so striking and individual that it ultimately became the definitive
standard for New Orleans piano players. When he was a child, they didn't
have a piano in his house. He and his friends wne tout in the alley and
got an old piano that only had a certain number of keys because it was a
piano someone had left for the trashman. Most of the keys were broken, and
some of the keys didn't have hammers or strings attached to the hammers...How
many piano players in their childhood only had eight or ten keys to work
with? |
