Donald Walbridge Shirley

Don Shirley Born Donald Walbridge Shirley January 29, 1927 Pensacola, Florida, U.S. Died April 6, 2013 (aged 86) Manhattan, New York, U.S. Alma mater The Catholic University of America, University of Chicago, Leningrad Conservatory of Music Occupation Musician and composer Spouse: Jean C. Hill ​(m. 1952, divorced)​ Musical career Genres Jazz classical chamber jazz Instruments Piano and organ Years active 1945–2013 Labels CadenceColumbiaAtlantic Donald Walbridge Shirley (January 29, 1927 – April 6, 2013) was an American classical and jazz pianist and composer. He recorded many albums for Cadence Records during the 1950s and 1960s, experimenting with jazz with a classical influence. He wrote organ symphonies, piano concerti, a cello concerto, three string quartets, a one-act opera, works for organ, piano and violin, a symphonic tone poem based on the 1939 novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, and a set of "Variations" on the 1858 opera Orpheus in the Underworld. Born in Pensacola, Florida, Shirley was a promising young student of classical piano. Although he did not achieve recognition in his early career playing traditional classical music, he found success with his blending of various musical traditions. During the 1960s, Shirley went on a number of concert tours, some in Deep South states. For a time, he hired New York nightclub bouncer Tony "Lip" Vallelonga as his driver and bodyguard. Their story was dramatized in the 2018 film Green Book, in which he was played by Mahershala Ali.[2][3] Early life Donald Walbridge Shirley was born on January 29, 1927, in Pensacola, Florida,[4] to Jamaican immigrants, Stella Gertrude (1903–1936), a teacher, and Edwin S. Shirley (1885–1982), an Episcopal priest. Shirley started to learn piano when he was two years old. He briefly enrolled at Virginia State University and Prairie View College, then studied with Conrad Bernier and Thaddeus Jones at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he received his bachelor's degree in music in 1953. Known as "Dr. Shirley," he had two honorary doctorates. His birthplace was sometimes incorrectly given as Kingston, Jamaica, because his label advertised him as being Jamaican-born. According to some sources, Shirley traveled to the Soviet Union to study piano and music theory at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music. According to his nephew, Edwin, his record label falsely claimed that he studied music in Europe to "make him acceptable in areas where a Black man from a Black school wouldn’t have got any recognition at all." Career: 1945–1953 In 1945, at the age of 18, Shirley performed the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A year later, Shirley performed one of his compositions with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1949, he received an invitation from the Haitian government to play at the Exposition Internationale du Bi-Centenaire de Port-au-Prince, followed by a request from President Estimé and Archbishop Joseph-Marie Le Gouaze for a repeat performance the next week. Shirley was married to Jean C. Hill in Cook County, Illinois on December 23, 1952, but they later divorced.[[1 Discouraged by the lack of opportunities for black classical musicians, Shirley abandoned the piano as a career for a time. He studied psychology at the University of Chicago and began work in Chicago as a psychologist. There he returned to music. He was given a grant to study the relationship between music and juvenile crime, which had broken out in the postwar era of the early 1950s. Playing in a small club, he experimented with sound to determine how the audience responded. The audience was unaware of his experiments and that students had been planted to gauge their reactions. Career: 1954–2013 At Arthur Fiedler's invitation, Shirley appeared with the Boston Pops in Chicago in June 1954. In 1955, he performed with the NBC Symphony at the premiere of Ellington's Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. He also appeared on TV on Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. Shirley's first album as a leader was Tonal Expressions, for Cadence Records.[16] It reached No. 14 on Billboard's Best-Selling Pop Albums chart in 1955. During the 1950s and 1960s, he recorded many albums for Cadence, experimenting with jazz with a classical influence. In 1961, his single "Water Boy" reached No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks. He performed in New York City at Basin Street East, where Duke Ellington heard him and they started a friendship.