Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020
According to The Diary of Daniel M. Storer, “The night of the 20th, Blind Boone gave a concert here. He is a splendid pianist, the best I have ever heard.”
John William “Blind” Boone was an American pianist and composer of ragtime music. He was born near Miami, Missouri on May 17, 1864, to a contraband slave, Rachel Carpenter, who had been owned by descendants of Daniel Boone. His father, Private William S. Belcher, was a bugler in the Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry.
Doctors removed both of Boone’s eyes when he was six months old, attempting to cure his brain fever.
Boone’s mother, Rachel Carpenter Hendricks, worried that her son would find life too difficult without some education, so the hometown of Warrenburg, Missouri decided to pay for Boone to go to the St. Louis School for the Blind. It was here that he played the piano for the first time.
When Blind Boone returned to school after a break, he found a new superintendent who did not believe African American students should have the same privileges as white students. The superintendent would not allow Black students to play piano at school. Unable to bear the new rules, Boone started skipping class to go to the Tenderloin District near the school. The area was poor and densely populated. Boone listened and played music with other African American musicians who worked in the saloons. Once the principal found out, Boone was dismissed from the school!
Returning to Warrenburg, Blind Boone was discovered by John B. Lange, Jr., who put Boone on the road in 1879.
Blind Boone was one of the first musicians to bring Black folk music to the concert stage. When the audience would become bogged down by his impeccable renditions of lofty classical standards, Boone would sense this, and break into a rollicking rag, a practice he affectionately referred to as “puttin’ the cookies on the lower shelf.”
It turns out Blind Boone was one of the first musical composers to blend European classical styles with folk music. He took African American and Afro Caribbean folk styles such as plantationmelodies and minstrel tunes, and put them in classical forms, then performed the pieces in concert halls.
And, he’s perhaps not so much a ragtime musician – his music really didn’t fall into the ragtime genre during his era – as he was an early innovator that created some of the musical building blocks that led to not only ragtime, but blues and jazz.
Boone was generous to those around him. He supported churches and other organizations. Once, in Kansas, he was denied a room at the only local hotel. An elderly relative offered Boone and his group to use her home. When Boone learned she had $360 remaining on her mortgage, a large amount in those days, he paid off her loan. Lange often said, “Boone is charitable, and I have been authorized by him, whenever I see a deserving person in need of assistance to assist such person in his name.”
Boone could tell a child’s age by putting his hand upon a child’s head. He had a very happy and warm personality and children loved him.
John William “Blind” Boone died of acute deflation of the heart on October 4, 1927.
Bibliography
The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant-His Personal History of Shakopee, Minnesota from August 1853 to January 1905. Shakopee Heritage Society, 2003.