“Langston Hughes was one never to forget an artistically inclined child,” says jazz and classical composer Hale Smith. “He came to my high school in Cleveland in ’42–which he’d attended briefly many years earlier–and I was in the crowd to greet him. I handed him a sheet of music that I’d written. He autographed it. Four years later, right out of the army, I was in Harlem for a visit. I ran into him at the post office on 125th Street. He saw me and said, ‘Say, aren’t you from Cleveland? Are you still writing music?’ I was astonished that he could remember a kid from four years ago! He was that kind of a man.”
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The famous poet and the aspiring composer became pen pals, and the friendship deepened after Smith moved to New York in 1958 for a teaching job. “I became a part of the wide circle of artists that hung around him,” says Smith. “He was interested in my music, and I was, of course, interested in his writings.” They talked about collaborating but never got around to it. Smith did turn a number of Hughes’s poems into songs, as did many other composers, including Kurt Weill, who appreciated the cadence and rich allusions in Hughes’s verse. “Some of his poetry is plain doggerel–in fact, he wrote a couple of homages to dogs–but most of it is very lyrical, a composer’s dream,” Smith says.
Four years ago singer Rawn Spearman asked Smith to arrange the music for a recitation of Ask Your Mama at a Hughes festival in New York. Smith jumped at the chance. “I thought I could at last honor Hughes,” Smith says. In the margins of the manuscript the poet had written the titles of specific songs or indicated the type of music that would be appropriate. “I observed his notes scrupulously–it was like working with him right next to me.” Smith incorporated all of the tunes and added some others, fashioning a score for a jazz band that he believes is a counterpart to–and at times counterpoints–the meaning of the text. “I included strains of ‘Dixie’ for satirical effect,” he points out, “and added a syncopated rendition of a 20s catchphrase [‘Shave and a haircut, two bits’] as a silly commentary. In a section on Leontyne Price, following Langston’s instructions, I played with the fact that she’s from Mississippi and sang Schubert’s lieder.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Nathan Mandell; Langston Hughes uncredited photo.
