Will H. Dixon's Birthday

August 29, 2024, will mark the 145th Anniversary of the Birth of Will H. Dixon (1879 - 1917). Chicago's own famed musician of note. Because of his premature death his musical legacy has been forgotten, lost, and just outright marginalized by musical scholars and musicologists.

Until recently, the only surviving artifacts of Will H. Dixon’s musical career is a scant handful of published scores from 100-years-ago . A newly discovered cache of unpublished orchestral works & popular music scores thought to be lost were discovered in a Brooklyn Heights co-op apartment. They were composed by the late Will H. Dixon, an American ragtime, classical and early jazz musician of note. Dixon was a gifted (pianist virtuoso), a prolific composer and arranger, an influential singer/songwriter, savvy publisher and an unsung playwright. He was an acclaimed music conductor, stage manager and animated bandleader of several pioneering musical troupes and orchestras. Dixon’s choreography was full of novelty, he was dubbed “The Original Dancing Conductor” by James Weldon Johnson.

This cache also includes other rare musical manuscripts dating back to 1915. Will H. Dixon died a premature death in 1917, leaving behind scores of untitled compositional works, some unfinished and many other unpublished orchestral scores. Many were composed between 1900 and 1917. Because they lay stored away in the dark for decades they’ve aged. Many of these scores are tattered making them very fragile to handle. Some are notated with “No title, but good” written in Dixon’s own hand. He died before he could fully complete and publish many of these new works. And it was reported in the New York Age Newspaper that Will H. Dixon’s “chief aim prior to his untimely death was to secure the production of an opera (mainstream) to which he had written both the libretto and composed the musical score.” Rick Benjamin’s four-year reconstruction of the Scott Joplin opera Treemonisha was recently premiered to great acclaim at San Francisco’s Stern Grove Festival.

The personal papers and archives include a collection of African American musical ephemera reflecting the life and times of Miss Francesca "Frankye" A. Dixon, who was a Howard University Professor and the papers of Miss Dixon's family members; including the musical manuscripts of Will H. Dixon, her father, the personal letters and papers of Mrs. Maude Dixon Myers, her mother. This treasure trove of historical papers and artifacts were salvaged in 2013 from the Brooklyn Heights Co-op apartment cleanout where Miss Margaret Patricia Barnes last resided. Miss Barnes aka “Pat” (1932 - 2013) was a classically trained opera singer, a member of Amato Opera, Co. and a Howard University Graduate of Music '55, and as a surrogate inherited the Dixon’s family possessions. The late Dr. Dorothy Irene Height describes in her memoir "Open WIde The Freedom Gates" her graduate school years of living with the Dixon family in Harlem. She has recorded oral history with Columbia250: Harlem History: Arts and Culture: Dorothy Height (columbia.edu). "CLUB HOPPING WITH W.C. HANDY" Dorothy Height "The Reminiscences of Dorothy I. Height," interview by Polly Cowan in Black Women Oral History Project (Cambridge, MA: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, 2 February 1975), 105–10. Courtesy of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Oral History Collection of Columbia University. Transcript: Oral History (columbia.edu).

To read more about Dixon and his work, click HERE