The Willie Pape Scrapbooks: An Antebellum Alabama Child Prodigy

William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape

William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape was born February 27, 1850 in Mobile, Alabama, the son of William O. and Tabitha McBride Pape.  His talent for music was discovered at a very early age and in 1854, Willie’s father began giving him music lessons.  He was so gifted that even at the age of thirteen he was able to play many of the most demanding piano sonatas from memory.

Concert program, 1863.

Willie and his father traveled to New York in preparation to travel to Europe just as the American Civil War erupted.  Alabama, in fact seceded from the Union while they were traveling in January of 1861.  Rather than going abroad as planned, they stayed in New York for two years.  Willie continued his studies under Sebastian Bach Mills.  After brief concert tours to Havana, Cuba, and Canada, Willie and his father finally left for England in 1863.

Sheet music cover featuring Willie Pape

Willie's first public performance in England on 27 April 1863 was a huge success and eventually led to the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1864.  He spent several more years in England, performing and touring, until returning to the United States in 1875 and resettling in Mobile.  He retired from his musical career at the tender age of seventeen years old.  When he left England, Willie gave up the piano completely, though he did play church organ throughout his his life.


He was married twice; first to Ella Anderson (around 1880) who died on 9 August 1889; and then to her sister, Mary Anderson.  Ella and Willie had three daughters, Ethel, Ella, and Hazel; Mary and Willie had one son, William Sherwood.

He began his second career not long after he returned to Mobile, studying medicine. In 1882, Pape graduated from the Medical College of Mobile and began his practice in Mobile. He also served on the faculty of his alma mater where he was a Professor of Physiology and Hygiene.  He died August 30, 1901.

William Barnesmore Pape in later life

The Willie Pape scrapbooks were donated to The University of Alabama Libraries in 2012 by Dr. William Pape Wood.  We would like to thank the descendants of William Barnesmore "Willie" Pape for this generous and historically important piece of Alabama and music history.

A letter from Mother, March 21, 1861

The two Willie Pape scrapbooks offer interesting insight into his world as a young musician and performer.  The letters he received, as well as concert programs, reviews and other materials are contained in these rare scrapbooks.  They include impassioned letters from his mother and grandmother that discuss family business as well as the War, illness, disease, and death. We also know that young Willie Pape sent a letter to President Abraham Lincoln just two weeks before his assassination.  The letter spoke passionately about a young man's struggle to connect with his family during the Civil War and the heartache that the war and prolonged separation had caused him. 

It reads:

Willie Pape, 9 Soho Square London Pianist to the Royal Family at Marlboro House
By Command of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, June 6, 1864
March 29, 1865

Your Excellency --

I left my native town, Mobile, Alabama, for the purpose of pursuing my studies under the best musicians in Europe, on the 1st of March, 1861 -- now four years since. On my arrival in New York I was informed by my father who accompanied me that our State had seceded from the Union, & that we had better remain a while before we embarked for England. I remained in the North for two years studying and occasionally appearing in public for the benefit of charities. On my arrival in England I was permitted to appear at several Grand Concerts, at which the Royal Family attended, and I have been honored by the highest position attainable by an artist.
 

I have written my mother many times, and to my Grandmother, by the way all letters to the South go. (I don’t know how that is, only they are deposited in a basket at Bishopgate street, & prepaid), but I have not heard a word from any of my family since the mails were stopped.
 

I was fifteen years old on the 27th of last month, and have been absent from Mobile since I was 11. I am very anxious to hear from my Mother if there is means of doing so.

I am in daily communication with Her Majesty or the Prince of Wales. They are my patrons & friends, and despite jealousies of native pianists, they awarded me the highest honors. It has been a source of great dissatisfaction to the Royal Academy that an American should have been so honored, but in this country merit alone gives precedence in the fine arts.

The honor of your answer will make very happy one who, although raised to so high a pinnacle of favor, is at all times unhappy and despondent.

I am informed that property left me by Grandfather has been confiscated through our absence from the so-called Confederate States.  Our property was assessed at 25,000 dollars.

To the Hon. Abraham Lincoln.

The Pape scrapbooks will be on exhibit in the lobby of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library beginning Friday, December 15, 2012.   The University of Alabama Libraries would like to thank the descendants of William Pape for their generous gift of these treasured and historically significant items

Sounds Like Alabama!

The Year of Alabama Music at Hoole! Sounds Like Alabama

The Alabama Tourism Department has named 2011 the “Year of Alabama Music” and the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library is jumping on the celebration band wagon. Our new exhibit is opening soon -- one that will that will show music of all genres and from all corners of the state of Alabama that are held in our collections. We're calling it Sounds Like Alabama: Alabama's Contributions to American Popular Music from the Hoole Library's Collections.
You can learn more about Alabama music and the exhibit through a series of Twitter (@coolathoole) and on the Cool@Hoole Facebook page (Like Cool@Hoole: The Blog of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library) posts, we will feature songs written by Alabama natives that have gone #1 on the Billboard charts, along with tidbits about various artists and songwriters. So follow us daily to get your toes tappin’ to some true Alabama sounds of every conceivable stripe.

Here’s a preview of just a few of the songs from the past century that might be featured in our tweets and posts! Enjoy!!!

Here’s a preview of just a few of the songs from the past century that might be featured in our tweets and posts! Enjoy!!!

1920: St. Louis Blues, written by W.C. Handy and performed by Marian Harris:

1944: Smoke on the Water, written by Zeke Clements and Earl Nunn, performed by Red Foley. This song also went #1 when performed by Bob Wills in 1945.



1955: Wallflower, written by Hank Ballard, performed by Etta James.

1966: When a Man Loves a Woman, written by Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright, performed by Percy Sledge. This song also went #1 in 1991 when Michael Bolton covered it.

1978: Too Hot Ta Trot, written by Lionel Richie, performed by the Commodores.

1980: Tennessee River, written by Randy Owen, performed by the band, Alabama.

1993: Nuthin’ But A G Thang, written by Frederick Knight, performed by Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg

2002: The Good Stuff, written by Craig Wiseman, performed by Kenny Chesney.

Makes your eyes light up. Your tummy say, "Howdy!"

Stove Pilot. Eleventh Edition, September, 1955. Alabama Collection. TX 715.U54

A couple of pages from the fantastic community cookbook, Stove Pilot, part of the Hoole Library's Alabama Collection and in the Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture. Stove Pilot was done in several editions, compiled by the Women's Club at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama for the benefit of overseas recovery. The recipes are enchanting and humorous and the drawings are even better. The recipes for Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy are side by side, and in the right order -- making those of us who are old enough to remember, or those artificially aged by our professions to hum a little tune made famous (??) by Dinah Shore, Ella Fitzgerald and June Christy. So if you are thinking about baking this weekend, no cake! Go to the oven and make some ever-lovin'....

"I never get enough of that wonderful stuff!"

Love, and the Year of Alabama Music

In honor of Valentines Day, and of course, in celebration of the Year of Alabama Music! Love Will Keep Us Together, by the Captain and Tennille, A&M Records, 1975, from the Wade Hall Sound Recordings Collection at the Hoole Library. So, here's Alabama's own Toni Tennille -- of the Captain and Tennille!

Cathryn Antoinette Toni Tennille was born in Montgomery on May 8, 1940. Part of a musical family, her dad, Frank Tennille, was the singer for Bob Crosby and the Bobcats, a local big band ensemble. Her mom, Catherine, was the host of Montgomery's first daytime talk show. Toni studied at Auburn University and went on to worldwide fame as part of this musical duo.

Love Will Keep Us Together was written by Howard Carpenter, and was the title track of their A&M Records debut album in 1975. The song had been covered by Neil Sedaka on his 1974 album Sedaka's Back. Just one year later, Love will keep us Together the first of many #1 hits for Captain & Tennille, topping the Adult Contemporary Chart. Love Will Keep Us Together was also the first of two of their songs to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Jesse Owens!

On this day in 1913, the great athlete Jesse Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama. We blogged on him a little bit last year -- you can read about him here -- http://coolathoole.blogspot.com/2008/08/olympic-history-and-great-alabamian.html

Forget Cabot Cove -- Anne George's Birmingham and her Southern Sisters Mysteries

Writer, publisher, teacher, and poet Anne George was born on this day, December 4th, in 1927. She passed away in 2001, leaving a literary legacy that reaches far beyond her home state of Alabama.

Anne was born Anne Carroll Bell in Montgomery, Alabama. She was raised by her grandparents initially and moved to rural Lowndes County as a young girl. It was in her childhood that she became enamored with the detective stories -- from the magazines in her grandparents' house. Upon graduating high school, she attended Judson College in Marion, Alabama and graduated in 1949 from Samford University with a degree in English and Spanish.

She married and moved to Birmingham, where she taught English for over two decades. During that time she attended graduate school at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, earning an MA in English and Education in 1971. She also pursued a doctoral degree, and during that time founded Druid Press with her fellow student Jerri Beck. After ten years in the publishing business, they sold the press and Anne began writing full time.


She is best known for her Southern Sisters mystery series. This popular series began as a short story based on herself and a cousin. The first book in the series, Murder on a Girls' Night Out, was accepted for publication less than a week after she sent it to her agent. She eventually published seven books in the series, with such titles as Murder on a Bad Hair Day, and Murder Shoots the Bull. All of her writing is greatly influenced by her surroundings -- making Birmingham, Alabama center stage for her mysteries.


She was also a successful poet, publishing two volumes of her work. Though she is gone, she is not forgotten by her legions of fans who identify with and idolize Patricia Anne and Mary Alice, two unlikely sleuths full of Southern charm and humor.

Anne George, as an Alabama author, is included in the Hoole Library's Alabama Collection.

Farewell to Odetta

This groundbreaking and inspiring folk singer and champion of African-American history and music passed away yesterday. Odetta was born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama on December 31, 1930.

When she was just six years old, she moved to Los Angeles with her family. She received classical voice training as a child and performed with a madrigal group (secular music from the Renaissance and early Baroque period -- all vocal) in junior high school, but by the time she finished high school, she became much more interested in other forms of music. She began her adult musical career in a touring production of the Broadway musical, "Finian's Rainbow", a Irish-ish musical with a score that included gospel and blues elements.



After the tour ended, her career blossomed when she performed as a folk singer in San Francisco in the early 1950s. She performed regularly and was close with folk legends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. She was already well established when the folk music scene became extremely popular and commercial in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Odetta's passionate and soulful voice, and her ability to captivate her audience deeply influenced the career paths of latter day folk performers Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. She was a major influence on singers like Janis Joplin and Bruce Springsteen.

And while she did become involved in acting and in other areas, she remained for her entire life a passionate advocate for folk music and its importance. She said, "The folk repertoire is our inheritance. Don't have to like it, but we need to hear it. I love getting to schools and telling kids there's something else out there. It's from their forebears, and its an alternative to what they hear on the radio. As long as I am performing, I will be pointing out that heritage that is ours." Her passion for African-American folk music still serves as a hallmark of the Civil Rights and Black Pride movements. She was a champion of African-American history and culture both thought and in action -- through her powerful voice and through learning, performing, and sharing these important songs with an audience around the world.

In 1999, she was recognized with the National Medal of Arts awarded by President Bill Clinton, and in 2004, she was a Kennedy Center honoree. In 2000, the Library of Congress honored her with its Living Legend Award.

Sound recordings by Odetta can be found in the Hoole Library's Sound Recording Collections.

"If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time." --Maya Angelou

An Evening (on film) with Eugene Walter!

"A student of human endeavors on this busy planet." --Eugene Walter

Join us at 7 pm on Thursday, November 20 in Gorgas Library room 205 for a fun-filled evening with a screening of the new documentary film by Alabama native, Bob Clem (Waterfront Pix) on fellow Alabama native and Renaissance man, Eugene Walter!

Eugene Walter: Last of the Bohemians documents the life and career of a writer, poet, actor, artist and raconteur whose work celebrates the art of living and personifies the culture of the coastal South. Living in Paris and Rome, Walter (1921-1998) lent his unique personality and wide-ranging talent to a number of different endeavors, many of them at the heart of the postwar artistic renaissance in Europe -- winning numerous awards for his poetry and fiction, helping start the Paris Review, working with and acting in the films of Federico Fellini and other Italian directors, editing the poly lingual literary magazine Botteghe Oscure and meeting and entertaining many of the most famous writers and cultural figures of his time.

From his beginnings in Mobile, Alabama, Walter was blessed with survival skills that enabled him to live the bohemian life, dedicating himself to artistic pursuits without visible means of support. He ran away from home literally as soon as he was able to walk, moving in with his grandmother, then receiving shelter from Mobilians who recognized his talent and his brilliance.

He lived for a time in a warehouse, then in the back of the city's famed Haunted Book Shop (its co-founder and dear friend of Eugene Adelaide Trigg passed away last month at the age of 89),
then as the ward of local theater patron Hammond Gayfer. Walter would later be honored by his native city as an artistic 'Renaissance Man' for his achievements in so many creative endeavors.

Eugene Walter was one of the last of an increasingly rare breed -- the freelance, wandering poet, living day to day in pursuit of art, truth and beauty. Paris and Rome are no longer the inexpensive cities they were in the aftermath of World War II, where artists and writers could survive on a few dollars a week.

Most writers and poets today have an academic affiliation, or else a full time job with little time left to write, to dream and to live in the fantasy world that Eugene Walter inhabited every single day, to the delight of most everyone he met. His story is not to be missed! The film was funded in part by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional support from the Sybil Smith Charitable Trust, A.S. Mitchell Foundation, M.W. Smith Foundation, Malbis Memorial Foundation and Ben May Foundation.

Eugene's books are included in the Hoole Library's Alabama Collection. There is also a small manuscript collection relating to Eugene Walter at the Hoole Library. You can review Eugene's author information and some of his tangible contributions to literature via This Goodly Land.

Watch a preview! And please join us for a fun opportunity to celebrate this treasured world citizen!

Remembering the King (and the man who crowned him)

Elvis passed away 31 years ago yesterday. This photograph was taken in 1974 in Memorial Coliseum (now Coleman Coliseum) on The University of Alabama campus and is part of our vast holdings of University photographs, a component of The University of Alabama's archives which as housed at the Hoole Library. These photographs range in scope to include campus buildings and scenes, specific events, and everything in between.  We have made some of the photographs available in our digital collections, and are continuously adding more.  This group of digital materials is called The University of Alabama Encyclopedia. 

Elvis Presley played at UA twice in the 1970s -- and he wasn't alone. The campus attracted huge acts, especially in the 1950s through the 1970s including the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, and many, many more.  In the earlier years, concerts were held in Foster Auditorium, and later at the Coluseum. Tuscaloosa's spot between Atlanta and New Orleans made it an ideal venue for these kinds of performances. 

While we remember the King, it's not a bad idea to think about the man who made him what he was. That man was Sam Phillips. He moved from his native Florence, Alabama to Memphis, and opened a recording studio where he worked with Blues pioneers and made some of the very first Rock and Roll recordings.  The image of this current historic marker which stands in Florence, Alabama is courtesy of biologist and Florence native, Stuart McGregor. 

Phillips got his start as a DJ in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and relocated to Memphis in 1950 where he opened the Memphis Recording Service.  He also launched his own record label, Sun Records, where he recorded Elvis and many others. 

Phillips is credited by many as not only with discovering Elvis Presley, but also recording the first Rock and Roll record,  "Rocket 88" by a band called Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. That band was led by none other than Clarksville, Mississippi native Ike Turner. 

Materials about Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley, Memphis blues, music, and much more are available in the Hoole Library's Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture.

(Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier) Lafayette wuz Here 4/3/25

It was on April 3, 1825, during his tour of the United States that French general and Revolutionary War hero the Marquis de Lafayette was entertained at Montgomery with great fanfare -- so much fanfare, in fact that Governor Israel Pickens spared no expense for Lafayette's visit to Alabama. His visit actually expended more funds than existed in the state treasury! Lafayette also visited Cahaba and Mobile as part of his tour of the state of Alabama.

The Hoole Library's holdings in this area are not vast by any means, but there are a few interesting things that further illustrate the lavishness and significance of Lafayette's visit to the state of Alabama 183 years ago today!

Donated by Patrick Cather, Hoole a small collection of typescript copies of financial materials relating to Lafayette's visit in our manuscript collections. The bill of fare furnished by J.B. Houer included six hams, 8 roast turkeys, 6 roast pigs, 24 fowls, 12 ducks, 6 dishes roast beef, eight dishes mutton and kid with the necessary trimmings, and vegetables in proportion.... (one can only imagine the trimmings and vegetables needed to set off the array of meats listed)



Additional materials were donated by D.L. McCall, including research materials for an article he wrote on Lafayette's visit to Alabama in April 1825. The paper was subsequently published in Alabama Historical Quarterly, Vol. Seventeen, 1955. One letter, written by Governor Pickens to Lafayette expresses such unbridled excitement about the prospect of Lafayette visiting Alabama.

It reads, in part, "Never on any occasion in my life have enjoyed so valued an honor that now afforded me of being the medium of communicating to you the cordial sentiments of my fellow citizens. Although this new state has only within a very few years been admitted to the American family of republics (Alabama became the 22nd state on December 14, 1819!) and but recently indeed has the territory it occupies emerged from a wilderness; yet its inhabitants are the immediate descendants of your companions in their great first struggle for liberty and they are not insensible that most of the soil they inhabit and the valued privileges they enjoy from a portion of the patrimonial inheritance then achieved. And altho our infant institutions have not sufficiently matured to promise you that animating display of the monuments of the arts, which you have witnessed with gratification in some of our elder sister States; Yet of one truth I assure you that nowhere will the veteran friend of liberty and of man, receive a more cordial and united welcome."



The Hoole Rare Book Collection also holds the twelve volume set, Mémoires, correspondance, et manuscrits du général Lafayette, published in Brussels in 1837-1839. This set was originally part of the T.P. Thompson library, which is the foundation for the Hoole Rare Book Collections.

October is Archives Month!

Celebrate Archives Month in Alabama! Alabama has joined in the nationwide celebration of Archives Month. The poster was designed by Jessica Lacher-Feldman using images from several repositories statewide. To download a pdf of the official Alabama Archives Month poster, visit the Society of Alabama Archivists (SALA) website at http://www.alarchivists.org and visit the section on Archives month for more information, including a statewide calendar of events. The Society of Alabama Archivists' annual meeting is also held in October and will take place next week, October 25-26 at Troy University Dothan in Dothan, Alabama.