34 Facts About Roland Hayes

Roland Wiltse Hayes was an American lyric tenor and composer.

When Roland Hayes was 11, his father died, and his mother moved the family to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

William Roland Hayes claimed to have some Cherokee ancestry, while his maternal great-grandfather, Aba Ougi was a Chieftain from the Ivory Coast.

Zion Baptist Church in Curryville is where Roland Hayes first heard the music he would cherish forever, Negro spirituals.

Roland Hayes trained with Arthur Calhoun, an organist and choir director, in Chattanooga.

Roland Hayes began studying music at Fisk University in Nashville in 1905 although he had only a 6th-grade education.

Roland Hayes's mother thought he was wasting money because she believed that African Americans could not make a living from singing.

Roland Hayes furthered his studies in Boston with Arthur Hubbard, who agreed to give him lessons only if Hayes came to his house instead of his studio.

Roland Hayes did not want Roland to embarrass him by appearing at his studio with his white students.

In January 1915 Hayes premiered in Manhattan, New York City in concerts presented by orchestra leader Walter F Craig.

Roland Hayes performed his own musical arrangements in recitals from 1916 to 1919, touring from coast to coast.

On November 15,1917, every seat in the hall was sold and Roland Hayes's concert was a success both musically and financially, but the music industry was still not considering him a top classical performer.

Roland Hayes sang at Walter Craig's Pre-Lenten Recitals and several Carnegie Hall concerts.

Roland Hayes performed with the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, and at the Atlanta Colored Music Festivals and at the Washington Conservatory concerts.

Roland Hayes began lessons with Sir George Henschel, who was the first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and gave his first recital in London's Aeolian Hall in May 1920 with pianist Lawrence Brown as his accompanist.

Soon Roland Hayes was singing in capital cities across Europe and was quite famous.

Almost a year after his arrival in Europe, Roland Hayes had a concert at London's Wigmore Hall.

Roland Hayes returned to the United States of America in 1923.

Roland Hayes made his official debut on November 16,1923, in Boston's Symphony Hall singing Berlioz, Mozart, and spirituals, conducted by Pierre Monteux, which received critical acclaim.

Roland Hayes was the first African-American soloist to appear with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Roland Hayes finally secured professional management with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Company.

Roland Hayes was reportedly making $100,000 a year at this point in his career.

Roland Hayes published musical scores for a collection of spirituals in 1948 as My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted.

In 1925, Roland Hayes had an affair with a married Czech aristocrat, Bertha Henriette Katharina Nadine, Grafin von Colloredo-Mansfeld, which resulted in a pregnancy.

Roland Hayes refused to allow the expected child to bear his name or to be raised along with the couple's four older children, quietly managing to obtain a divorce in Prague on 8 January 1926, while Bertha left their home in Zbiroh, Czechoslovakia, to bear Hayes's child in Basel, Switzerland.

Roland Hayes offered to adopt the child, while the countess sought to resume the couple's relationship, while concealing it, until the late 1920s.

The new Mrs Roland Hayes was born in Chattanooga and graduated from what is Tennessee State University.

Roland Hayes did not perform very much from the 1940s to the 1970s, but continued yearly concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York and performances at Fisk and other colleges.

Roland Hayes continued to perform until the age of 85, when he gave his last concert at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.

Roland Hayes was able to purchase the land in Georgia on which he had grown up as a child.

Roland Hayes died on January 1,1977, five years after his final concert.

Roland Hayes, before departing from Prague for Berlin in 1924, was warned by American Consul General not to go to Germany until the occupying armies had been withdrawn, as Germans had bitter feelings over being occupied by armies with black troops.

Later, Roland Hayes confronted the store owner, whom he knew, and resolved the conflict.

Roland Hayes faced heavy criticism from anti-Jim Crow activists for performing in an integrated theater in Washington, DC, on January 5,1926, followed by a segregated theater in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 7,1926.