William Grant Still and Verna Arvey Papers

William Grant Still (1895-1978), who became known as the “Dean of African-American Composers," was born in Woodville, Mississippi, on May 11, 1895, the son of William Grant Still, a music teacher and bandmaster, and Carrie Lena Fambro, a schoolteacher. After graduating from high school (Little Rock, Arkansas, 1911), Still attended Wilberforce University (Wilberforce, Ohio) from 1911-15. While at Wilberforce, he formed a band and a string quartet. He left without taking a degree in order to pursue music full time.

Moving to Columbus, Ohio in 1915 Still played in various dance bands, including one led by W. C. Handy, "the father of the blues." He had earlier taught himself clarinet and oboe and now was also performing on violin and cello. Two years later, he entered the Conservatory at Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) to study composition, but in 1918, he left to join the United States Navy where he played violin in an all-Black mess hall. After his discharge in 1919, he returned to popular music, now as an arranger as well as a performer, arranging for Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw, Eubie Blake and others.

In 1922, Still resumed his formal education, this time at the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston, Massachusetts) where he studied composition with Edgard Varese whose influence is found in Still's early serious works to which he turned in the late twenties and thirties although he never abandoned popular music. Rather, throughout his career, Still moved easily between the two worlds. Until the early forties, he arranged and orchestrated for Broadway shows and several popular entertainers and conducted on radio shows for all three networks. During these same years, he composed From the Land of Dreams (1924), Darker America (1924), From the Black Belt (1927), and his best-known work, Afro-American Symphony (1930). Its performance by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (Rochester, New York) in 1931 marked the first performance of a symphony by an Black American by a major orchestra. Still's other "firsts" include his being the first Black American to conduct a major orchestra (Los Angeles, California, 1936) and the first to conduct an all-white orchestra in the Deep South (New Orleans, 1955).

Honors and awards came early and continued throughout his life: a Harmon Award (1927), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1934-35), two Rosenwald awards (1939-40), and a Freedom Foundation award (1953). Although he never earned an academic degree, Still received seven honorary degrees including an Honorary Master of Music from Wilberforce University (1936), an Honorary Doctor of Music from Oberlin College (1947), and an Honorary Doctor of Law from the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, 1971). Oberlin College recognized him on three other occasions. The College premiered Still's From a Lost Continent as part of its Contemporary Music Festival in 1951. In 1970, when he returned to campus for his 75th birthday celebration, Still was honored with a concert of his own compositions which included the first performance of his Symphony #5, Western Hemisphere, and in 1995 it remembered him with a Centennial Concert of his works.

The diversity of Still's composition is impressive: nine operas, five symphonies, four ballets, numerous compositions for voice and for piano, chamber ensembles - and two for accordion. Although some Black Americans dismissed his serious music as "Eur-American," Still always insisted that his goal had been "to elevate Negro musical idioms to a position of dignity and effectiveness in the fields of symphonic and operatic music." In 1948 he wrote that he wanted his music to be a vehicle to bring about better racial understanding (Macdonald). In 1969, during a conference on Black music at Indiana University he commented, "I made this decision of my own free will...I have stuck to this decision, and I have not been sorry." (DNB).

In 1915 Still married Grace Dorothy Bundy; they had four children: William Bundy, Gail Still, June Allyn and Carolyn Elaine. The couple divorced in the late twenties. Still married again in 1939. His second wife, Verna Avery, an accomplished pianist and writer, wrote the lyrics for several of Still's works and assisted him in many other ways. The Stills had two children: Duncan Allan and Judith Anne.

William Grant Still died in Los Angeles on December 3, 1978. Verna Avery died there in 1987.

Sources Consulted

75th Birthday Concert in Honor of William Grant Still. Program and Program Notes.

Macdonald, Claudia, "Program Notes." William Grant Centennial Concert. May 27, 1995. An excellent three page analysis of Still's music.

Still, William Grant. Oberlin College Alumni Report Form. September 27, 1947.

Still, William Grant, Composer. Vita. undated (after 1940.)

Still, William Grant. Dictionary of National Biography. Vol 20, pp. 776-77. The article contains valuable material on Still's life and works, including his musical styles.

William Grant Still and Verna Avery Papers. Introduction to the lives of Still and Avery and a description of their papers at the University of Arkansas. https://libraries.uark.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/displayexhibit.php?ExhibitID=101