Listening for Henry Crowder

"Henry Woodfin Grady Crowder (1890-1955) was born Gainesville, Georgia. He established himself as a pianist and orchestra leader in Washington, D.C in the 1910s, working alongside Russell Wooding and Duke Ellington. Drafted in 1917 while leading an orchestra at Harvey's Restaurant he was briefly chauffeur to General March. He moved to Chicago in the early 1920s, making piano rolls in 1926, later touring with Jelly Roll Morton. He recorded with violinist Eddie South's Alabamians 1927-1928. They travelled to Europe where, in Venice, Crowder and Nancy Cunard, daughter of the steamship magnate, met. They embarked on a tumultuous seven year relationship, which culminated in the production of Cunard's monumental 1934 Negro: An Anthology dedicated to Crowder. In 1930 Cunard published a folio of Crowder's piano settings to six poems by her, Samuel Beckett - who wrote specially for Crowder - and others. The music and poems of Henry-Music are reprinted here. All the songs were supposed to have been recorded but only one disc, with Cunard's "Memory Blues" aka "Boeuf sur le toit", is thought to have been released. It is included on the CD here with other Crowder recordings. In 1942 Crowder was