Comments - Steal Away, Steal Away. The "Great Transcriber" of Negro compositions: Stephen Collins Foster - Pittsburgh Jazz Network2024-03-28T22:02:41Zhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=1992552%3ABlogPost%3A413249&xn_auth=nohen Jack Daniel’s Failed to H…tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2017-08-26:1992552:Comment:4134682017-08-26T23:47:09.190ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
<h1 class="headline" id="headline" style="visibility: visible;">hen Jack Daniel’s Failed to Honor a Slave, an Author Rewrote History</h1>
<div class="story-meta-footer" id="story-meta-footer"><p class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link"><span class="byline">By <span class="byline-author">CLAY RISEN</span></span>AUG. 15, 2017</p>
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<h1 id="headline" class="headline" style="visibility: visible;">hen Jack Daniel’s Failed to Honor a Slave, an Author Rewrote History</h1>
<div id="story-meta-footer" class="story-meta-footer"><p class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link"><span class="byline">By <span class="byline-author">CLAY RISEN</span></span>AUG. 15, 2017</p>
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<span class="caption-text">Fawn Weaver on a farm in Lynchburg, Tenn., where Nearest Green and Jack Daniel first began distilling whiskey together.</span> <span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Nathan Morgan for The New York Times</span></div>
<div class="story-body-supplemental"><div class="story-body story-body-1"><p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-1">LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Fawn Weaver was on vacation in Singapore last summer when she first read about Nearest Green, the Tennessee slave who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Green’s existence had long been an open secret, but in 2016 <a href="https://www.brown-forman.com/">Brown-Forman</a>, the company that owns the Jack Daniel Distillery here, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/dining/jack-daniels-whiskey-nearis-green-slave.html?_r=0">made international headlines</a> with its decision to finally embrace Green’s legacy and significantly change its tours to emphasize his role.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“It was jarring that arguably one of the most well-known brands in the world was created, in part, by a slave,” said Ms. Weaver, 40, an African-American real estate investor and author.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Determined to see the changes herself, she was soon on a plane from her home in Los Angeles to Nashville. But when she got to Lynchburg, she found no trace of Green. “I went on three tours of the distillery, and nothing, not a mention of him,” she said.</p>
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<p class="story-body-text story-content">Rather than leave, Ms. Weaver dug in, determined to uncover more about Green and persuade <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/topic/company/brownforman-corporation?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Brown-Forman Corporation" class="meta-org">Brown-Forman</a> to follow through on its promise to recognize his role in creating America’s most famous whiskey. She rented a house in downtown Lynchburg, and began contacting Green’s descendants, dozens of whom still live in the area.</p>
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<div class="story-body"><h2 class="headline"><span class="title">Jack Daniel’s Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave</span> JUNE 25, 2016</h2>
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<div class="story-body-supplemental"><div class="story-body story-body-2"><p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-3">Scouring archives in Tennessee, Georgia and Washington, D.C., she created a timeline of Green’s relationship with Daniel, showing how Green had not only taught the whiskey baron how to distill, but had also gone to work for him after the Civil War, becoming what Ms. Weaver believes is the first black master distiller in America. By her count, she has collected 10,000 documents and artifacts related to Daniel and Green, much of which she has agreed to donate to the new <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/15/arts/design/national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture.html">National Museum of African American History and Culture</a> in Washington.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-4">Through that research, she also located the farm where the two men began distilling — and bought it, along with a four-acre parcel in the center of town that she intends to turn into a memorial park. She even discovered that Green’s real name was Nathan; Nearest (not Nearis, as has often been reported) was a nickname.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">She is writing a book about Green, and last month introduced Uncle Nearest 1856, a whiskey produced on contract by another Tennessee distillery; she says she will apply the bulk of any profits toward her expanding list of Green-related projects.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Ms. Weaver’s biggest success, however, came in May, when Brown-Forman officially recognized Green as its first master distiller, nearly a year after the company vowed to start sharing Green’s legacy. (Daniel is now listed as its second master distiller.)</p>
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<span class="caption-text">Mementos from the photo album of Annabelle Mammie Green, a granddaughter of Nearest Green.</span> <span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Nathan Morgan for The New York Times</span><br/>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“It’s absolutely critical that the story of Nearest gets added to the Jack Daniel story,” Mark I. McCallum, the president of Jack Daniel’s Brands at Brown-Forman, said in an interview.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">The company’s decision to recognize its debt to a slave, first reported last year by The New York Times, is a momentous turn in the history of Southern foodways. Even as black innovators in Southern cooking and agriculture are beginning to get their due, the tale of American whiskey is still told as a whites-only affair, about Scots-Irish settlers who brought Old World distilling knowledge to the frontier states of Tennessee and Kentucky.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Green’s story changes all that by showing how enslaved people likely provided the brains as well as the brawn in what was an arduous, dangerous and highly technical operation.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">According to Ms. Weaver, Green was rented out by his owners, a firm called Landis & Green, to farmers around Lynchburg, including Dan Call, a wealthy landowner and preacher who also employed a teenager named Jack Daniel to help make whiskey. Green, already adept at distilling, took Daniel under his wing and, after the Civil War and the end of slavery, went to work for him in his fledgling whiskey operation.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">In all likelihood, there were many other men like Green, scattered around the South. Records are spotty, though references to slaves skilled in distilling and whiskey making pop up in slave sales and runaway-slave ads from the early 19th century. But only one of them helped found a whiskey brand that today generates about $3 billion a year in revenue.</p>
<a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/dining/jack-daniels-whiskey-slave-nearest-green.html?smid=fb-nytbooks&smtyp=cur#story-continues-5">Continue reading the main story</a></div>
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<div class="comments-view"><h2 class="commenter">Peggy Rogers</h2>
August 17, 2017<br/>
<p class="comment-text">This is a story about two great Americans and one U.S. company that badly blew the opportunity to truly pioneer an important legacy. Mr....</p>
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<h2 class="commenter">Ozark</h2>
August 17, 2017<br/>
<p class="comment-text">I grew up upwind a ways from Jack Daniels, with the young relatives of "Uncle Nearest," including some around my age whose older living...</p>
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<h2 class="commenter">Ned Netterville</h2>
August 17, 2017<br/>
<p class="comment-text">I sure hope Ms. Weaver's book becomes a No. 1 best seller.Very few enslaved people had the necessary skills to record their own stories....</p>
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<span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Nathan Morgan for The New York Times</span></div>
<div class="story-body-supplemental"><div class="story-body story-body-3"><p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-6">The company had intended to recognize Green’s role as master distiller last year as part of its 150th anniversary celebration, Mr. McCallum said, but decided to put off any changes amid the racially charged run-up to the 2016 election. “I thought we would be accused of making a big deal about it for commercial gain,” he said.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-7">It didn’t help that many people misunderstood the history, assuming that Daniel had owned Green and stolen his recipe. In fact, Daniel never owned slaves and spoke openly about Green’s role as his mentor.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">And so the company’s plans went back on the shelf, and might have stayed there had Fawn Weaver not come along.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">The daughter of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/arts/music/frank-wilson-motown-songwriter-and-producer-dies-at-71.html">Frank Wilson</a>, the Motown Records songwriter who co-wrote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1Qr-jL4rU">“Love Child”</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuguVr-gjHw">“Castles in the Sand”</a> before becoming a minister in Los Angeles, Ms. Weaver began her career as a restaurant and real estate entrepreneur. She wrote the 2014 best seller <a href="http://happywivesclubbook.com/">“Happy Wives Club: One Woman’s Worldwide Search for the Secrets of ...</a></p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">As she tells it, she was looking for a new project when she picked up that newspaper in Singapore.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“My wife often thinks and acts as a single activity,” said her husband, Keith Weaver, an executive vice president at Sony Pictures. “As her husband, I knew, ‘Here we go again.’”</p>
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<span class="caption-text">In a photo in Jack Daniel’s old office, Jack Daniel, with mustache and white hat, is shown at his distillery in Tennessee in the late 1800s. The man to his right could be Nearest Green, a slave who helped teach Jack Daniel how to make whiskey, or one of Green’s sons.</span><br/>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">What was meant to be a quick trip to Lynchburg turned into a monthslong residency, as Ms. Weaver discovered an unwritten history, hidden in forgotten archives, vacant land and the collective memory of the town’s black residents.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Through dozens of conversations, local people, many of whom worked or still work for Jack Daniel’s, told her about learning Green’s story from their parents and grandparents, holding it as fact even as the company kept silent.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“It’s something my grandmother always told us,” said Debbie Ann Eady-Staples, a descendant of Green who lives in Lynchburg and has worked for the distillery for nearly 40 years. “We knew it in our family, even if it didn’t come from the company.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-8">Nothing stays quiet in Lynchburg (population 6,319) for long, especially when it involves the biggest employer in town, and by late March Ms. Weaver was meeting with Mr. McCallum, the brand president, in the makeshift office she had set up in a run-down house on her newly acquired farm.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">With a sampling of her estimated 10,000 documents and artifacts spread across a table between them, it quickly became obvious that Ms. Weaver, who had no previous background in whiskey history, knew more about the origins of Jack Daniel’s than the company itself. What was supposed to be a preliminary meeting turned into a six-hour conversation.</p>
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<span class="caption-text">Debbie Ann Eady-Staples, a great-great-granddaughter of Nearest Green, works on the bottling crew at the Jack Daniel’s distillery.</span> <span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Nathan Morgan for The New York Times</span><br/>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Mr. McCallum says he left reinvigorated, and within a few weeks he had plans in place to put Green at the center of the Jack Daniel’s story line. In a May meeting with 100 distillery employees, including several of Green’s descendants, he outlined how the company would incorporate Green into the official history, and that month the company began training its two dozen tour guides.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">At one point Jack Daniel’s proposed adding a Nearest Green bottle to its “Master Distiller” series, a limited-edition run of bottles that celebrate its former master distillers, but dropped the idea over concerns from inside and outside the company about appearing to cash in on Green’s name.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Instead, Ms. Weaver has released her own whiskey, Uncle Nearest 1856, which she bought in bulk from another distillery. She is planning to produce a second, unaged spirit, made according to her specifications, which she says will mimic the style of whiskey that Green and Daniel probably made.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Jack Daniel’s seems unfazed, for now, by the use of Green’s name on someone else’s liquor. “We applaud Ms. Weaver for her efforts to achieve a similar goal with the launch of this new product,” a Brown-Forman spokesman said.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Ms. Eady-Staples, who met privately with Mr. McCallum before the big meeting, said she was proud that her employer was finally doing the right thing. “I don’t blame Brown-Forman for not acting earlier, because they didn’t know,” she said. “Once they did, they jumped on it.”</p>
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<span class="caption-text">An original jug stencil from about 1879.</span> <span class="credit"><span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span> Nathan Morgan for The New York Times</span><br/>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">And although there is no known photograph of Green, the company placed a photo of Daniel seated next to an unidentified black man — he may be Green or one of his sons who also worked for the distillery — on its wall of master distillers, a sort of corporate hall of fame.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" id="story-continues-9">“We want to get across that Nearest Green was a mentor to Jack,” said Steve May, who runs the distillery’s visitors center and tours. “We have five different tour scripts, and each one incorporates Nearest. I worked some long days to get those ready.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">Mr. May said that so far, visitor response to the new tours spotlighting Green’s contribution has been positive. It’s not hard to see why: At a rough time for race relations in America, the relationship between Daniel and Green allows Brown-Forman to tell a positive story, while also pioneering an overdue conversation about the unacknowledged role that black people, as slaves and later as free men, played in the evolution of American whiskey.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">For her part, Ms. Weaver isn’t finished with her search for Green — and may never be.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“I’ve lost track of him after 1884,” the year when Jack Daniel moved his distillery to its current location, and Green disappeared from the fledgling company’s records, she said. She is still hoping to find Green’s gravesite, and has recently been traveling to St. Louis to meet with a branch of the family there.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content">“I could be doing this the rest of my life,” she said.</p>
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</div> The Stephen Foster statue is…tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2017-08-24:1992552:Comment:4130072017-08-24T18:29:02.934ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
<div class="pgevoke-story-toparea-noimage-headline">The Stephen Foster statue is different from Confederate symbols</div>
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<div class="pgevoke-story-toparea-noimage-headline">The Stephen Foster statue is different from Confederate symbols</div>
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<p>I understand and sympathize with concerns about what to make of the Stephen Foster statue and what to do about it (“What to Do With Foster Statue With a Black Man at His Feet?” Aug. 19). However, the statue should not be lumped in with those of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures that are currently roiling the nation. Those Confederate statues were meant to demonstrate white hegemony by way of the soldier on horseback. They are an assertion of power and dominance. As such, their right to occupy public space is problematic. But the Stephen Foster statue is different. </p>
<p>Foster was no racist. He was one of the first whites to appreciate the power and quality of black music. He went out of his way to meet, talk with, listen to and learn from black musicians in Pittsburgh. That said, this is a statue of Foster, and so one can understand the sculptor's decision to make Foster the larger figure. But the unnamed black musician is the one making the music; Foster is simply transcribing notes, showing how his music is being inspired by the black figure. The black figure is dressed in simple, tattered clothes, but one could read that as saying that his humble place in life has nothing to do with his musical talent and creativity. </p>
<p>Foster’s songs do not demean blacks, but they do romanticize the South and the position of blacks in the South. That is a problem. But Foster, thankfully, stands apart from others in portraying blacks in a sympathetic fashion. Unfortunately, after Foster’s passing, racists took his music and, through the covers of sheet music, stereotyped blacks in truly demeaning ways. But Stephen Foster himself, and this statue in particular, does not do that. A careful look at the figure of the black musician shows that it portrays him as humble but proud. He looks into space, not up at Foster. The statue has long provided a teaching moment for students in my course, History of Black Pittsburgh.</p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><strong>LAURENCE GLASCO</strong> <br/>Associate Professor, History Department <br/>University of Pittsburgh<br/>Oakland</p> Should Public Statue Of Step…tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2017-08-23:1992552:Comment:4130982017-08-23T17:37:14.096ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
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<div class="column-header"><h1 class="posttitle">Should Public Statue Of Stephen Foster Be Removed Because It Depicts A Slave?</h1>
August 17, 2017 6:43 PM <span class="byline">By Jon Delano</span></div>
<div class="column-header-metadata"><strong>Filed Under:</strong> <span><a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/jon-delano/">Jon Delano</a>, <a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/pittsburgh/">Pittsburgh</a>, <a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/stephen-foster/">Stephen…</a></span></div>
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<div class="column-header"><h1 class="posttitle">Should Public Statue Of Stephen Foster Be Removed Because It Depicts A Slave?</h1>
August 17, 2017 6:43 PM <span class="byline">By Jon Delano</span></div>
<div class="column-header-metadata"><strong>Filed Under:</strong> <span><a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/jon-delano/">Jon Delano</a>, <a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/pittsburgh/">Pittsburgh</a>, <a href="http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/tag/stephen-foster/">Stephen Foster</a></span></div>
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<p>PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Mayor Bill Peduto has asked the Pittsburgh Arts Commission to <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">review</span></span> and suggest what, if anything, should be done about a statue of a famous Pittsburgh song-writer on city property.</p>
<p>The statue includes an African <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">American</span></span> slave.</p>
<p>Music: “Camp town ladies sing this song. Doo-dah. Doo-dah.”</p>
<p>Without question, Pittsburgh native Stephen Collins Foster deserves a place in <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">history</span></span>.</p>
<p>“I would challenge anybody to remember any other popular songwriter in the 19th century,” says Tom Powers, president of the Lawrenceville History Society.</p>
<p>Music: “O Susanna, don’t you cry for me.”</p>
<p>“Without question, a national icon. He’s the father of popular music,” says Joe Wos, a pop culture historian.</p>
<p>But now the only local public statue of Foster which is located outside the Carnegie Library in Oakland is under attack because it includes a depiction of an African American slave.</p>
<p>“I feel that this sculpture is not appropriate for public property,” says Renee Piechocki, director of public art with the non-profit Pittsburgh Arts Council.</p>
<p>“What is placed on public property is an indication of what a place values, and I don’t believe that Pittsburgh values causing people pain with derogatory images and content,” Piechocki told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Thursday.</p>
<p>Not everyone thinks a nearly 120-year old statue should be removed, including Tom Powers, president of the Lawrenceville Historical Society where Foster was born and is buried.</p>
<p>“To sort of do a Soviet-style purge of statues is not what America is about,” says Powers. “It’s about different ideas, and it’s also acknowledging our history, the good and the bad.”</p>
<p>Instead of removing this statue of a Pittsburgh icon that may be offensive to some, one local historian says, let’s make this a teachable <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">moment</span></span>. Leave the statue but add some placards that explain why a statue like this was erected in the first place.</p>
<p>“In this situation, this is an opportunity to <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">educate</span></span>,” says Wos, who acknowledges Collins clearly wrote some racist lyrics.</p>
<p>“His contributions to <span class="vm-hook-outer vm-hook-default"><span class="vm-hook" style="color: #009900; border-color: transparent transparent #009900;">popular</span></span> music are very important, but we need to look at the bigger picture.”</p>
<p>Before any decision is made, Piechocki hopes everyone gets a voice.</p>
<p>“I would like to see as many people thinking about that and reflecting on the question and offering their point of view.”</p>
<p>The Pittsburgh Arts Commission is expected to hold public hearings on this, the mayor’s office says.</p>
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<p></p> A symbolic and metaphorical m…tag:jazzburgher.ning.com,2017-08-22:1992552:Comment:4129932017-08-22T23:07:10.346ZDr. Nelson Harrisonhttps://jazzburgher.ning.com/profile/NelsonHarrison
<p>A symbolic and metaphorical monument to the truth. Can you see it?</p>
<p>A symbolic and metaphorical monument to the truth. Can you see it?</p>