Blind Tom Wiggins
Encyclopedia
Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins (May 25, 1849 – June 14, 1908) was an African American
autistic savant and music
al prodigy
on the piano
. He had numerous original compositions published and had a lengthy and largely successful performing career throughout the United States. During the 19th century, he was one of the most well-known American performing pianists.
. Blind
at birth, he was sold in 1850 along with his enslaved
parents, Charity and Mingo Wiggins, to a Columbus, Georgia
lawyer
, General James Neil Bethune. Bethune was "almost the pioneer free trade
r" in the United States and "the first [newspaper] editor in the south to openly advocate secession" . The new owner re-named the child Thomas Greene Bethune or Thomas Wiggins Bethune (according to different sources).
Because the blind lad could not perform work normally demanded of enslaved Africans, Tom was left to play and explore the Bethune plantation
. At an early age, he evinced an interest in the piano after hearing the instrument played by Bethune's daughters. By age four he reportedly had acquired intuitive
, if rudimentary—and imitative—piano skills based solely on hearing. He continually intruded upon the Bethune family residence to gain access to the piano, with Bethune's daughters abetting these intrusions. By age five Tom reportedly had composed his first tune, The Rain Storm, based on his aural impressions of a torrential downpour. After his extraordinary music skills were recognized by General Bethune, Tom was permitted to live in a room attached to the family house, away from the enslaved quarters. The small room was equipped with a piano. Neighbor Otto Spahr, reminiscing about Tom in the Atlanta Constitution in 1908 (as reproduced in The Ballad of Blind Tom, by Deirdre O'Connell), observed: "Tom seemed to have but two motives in life: the gratification of his appetite and his passion for music. I don't think I exaggerate when I state that he made the piano go for twelve hours out of twenty-four."
As a child, Tom began to echo the sounds around him, repeating accurately the crow of a rooster or the singing of a bird. If he was left alone in the cabin, Tom was known to begin beating on pots and pans or dragging chairs across the floor in an attempt to make any kind of noise. By the age of four, Tom was able to repeat conversations up to ten minutes in length but was barely able to adequately communicate his own needs, resorting to grunts and gestures.
Bethune, Thomas' owner, then hired out "Blind Tom" at the age of eight years to concert promoter Perry Oliver, who toured him extensively in the US, performing as often as four times a day and earning Oliver and Bethune up to $100,000 a year, an enormous sum for the time , "equivalent to $1.5 million/year [in 2004], making Blind Tom undoubtedly the nineteenth century's most highly compensated pianist" . General Bethune's family eventually made a fortune estimated at $750,000 at the hands of Blind Tom . Oliver marketed Tom as a “Barnum-style freak” advertising the transformation from animal to artist. In the media, Tom was frequently compared to a bear, baboon, or mastiff.
Bethune hired professional musicians to play for Tom, who could faithfully reproduce their performances, often after a single listening. Eventually he learned a reported 7,000 pieces of music, including hymns, popular songs, waltz
es, and classical repertoire.
. In 1860, Blind Tom performed at the White House
before President
James Buchanan
; he was the first African-American to give a command performance at the White House. Mark Twain
attended many of Blind Tom's performances over several decades and chronicled the proceedings.
On- and off-stage, Tom often referred to himself in the third person (e.g., "Tom is pleased to meet you"). His piano recitals were augmented by other talents, including uncanny voice mimicry of public figures and nature sounds. He also displayed a hyperactive physicality both onstage and off. A letter written in 1862 by a soldier in North Carolina described some of Tom's eccentric capabilities: "One of his most remarkable feats was the performance of three pieces of music at once. He played 'Fisher's Hornpipe' with one hand and 'Yankee Doodle
' with the other and sang 'Dixie
' all at once. He also played a piece with his back to the piano and his hands inverted." At concerts, skeptics attempted to confirm if Tom's performance replications were mere trickery; their challenge took the form of having Tom hear and repeat two new, uncirculated compositions. Tom did so perfectly. The "audience challenge" eventually became a regular feature of his concerts.
In 1866, at age 16, Tom was taken on a European concert tour by General Bethune, who collected testimonials about Tom's natural talents from composer-pianist Ignaz Moscheles
and pianist-conductor Charles Hallé
. These were printed in a booklet, “The Marvelous Musical Prodigy Blind Tom," and used to bolster Tom's international reputation.
In 1875, General Bethune transferred management of Blind Tom's professional affairs to his son John Bethune, who accompanied Tom on tour around the U.S. for the next eight years. Beginning in 1875, John brought Blind Tom to New York each summer. While living with John in a boarding house
on the Lower East Side
, Tom added to his repertoire under the tutelage of Joseph Poznanski, who also transcribed new compositions by Tom for publication
. Many of these were, at Tom's insistence, published under such pseudonyms as Professor W.F. Raymond, J.C. Beckel, C.T. Messengale, and Francois Sexalise.
Tom's piano-playing behavior, both during practice and performance, was eccentric. "We had two pianos in one room," Poznanski told the Washington Post in 1886 (as recounted in O'Connell's biography). "I would play for him and he would get up, walk around, stand on one foot, pull his hair, knock his head against the wall, then sit down and play a very good imitiation of what I had played with additions to it. His memory was something prodigious. He never forgot anything." This led some critics to dismiss Tom as a novelty act, a "human parrot." Novelist Willa Cather
, writing in the Nebraska State Journal, called Tom "a human phonograph, a sort of animated memory, with sound producing power."
John Steinbeck
has compared the main character in his short story, “Johnny Bear” to Blind Tom.
Tom continued performing and touring for a number of years under the management of Eliza and her attorney (and later husband) Albrecht Lerche. Tom was on tour in western Pennsylvania in May 1889 on the day of the Johnstown Flood
, and rumor spread that he was among the casualties. Despite his continued appearances on the U.S. concert circuit, the rumor persisted for years, with some observers expressing skepticism that the Blind Tom who appeared in concert after 1889 was the "real Blind Tom."
In this phase of his career, Tom usually introduced himself onstage in the third person, imitating the pronouncements of his various managers from years past. He talked about his mental state with a characteristic lack of self-awareness. He had been diagnosed as non compos mentis by a doctor, and in his foggy netherworld the phrase was a matter of personal pride. Willa Cather described the poignance of one such concert: "It was a strange sight to see him walk out on stage with his own lips—another man's words—introduce himself and talk quietly about his own idiocy. There was insanity, a grotesque horribleness about it that was interestingly unpleasant. One laughs at the man's queer actions, and yet, after all, the sight is not laughable. It brings us too near to the things that we sane people do not like to think of."
After being dogged by incessant legal challenges to her custodianship of Tom, Eliza took Tom off the concert circuit around 1893.
. In 1903 Eliza arranged for Tom to appear on the popular vaudeville
circuit, beginning with Brooklyn's Orpheum Theater. He spent almost a year performing in vaudeville, before his health began to deteriorate. It is believed he suffered a stroke (described in some reports as "partial paralysis") in December 1904, which ended his public performing career.
After the death of her husband, Eliza relocated to Hoboken, New Jersey
, with Tom. They kept out of public view, though neighbors could hear Tom's piano playing at all hours of the day and night. Tom suffered a major stroke in April 1908, and died the following June. He was buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn
, New York .
Between 1970 and 2000, Dr. Geneva Handy Southall wrote a three-volume thesis titled Blind Tom: The Black Pianist Composer; Continuously Enslaved; it was published by Scarecrow Press in 2002.
In 1981 he was the subject of a film, "Blind Tom: The Story of Thomas Bethune" directed by Mark W. Travis.
In 1999 John Davis
recorded an album of Tom's original compositions on a CD entitled John Davis Plays Blind Tom. The cd package included essays by Amiri Baraka
, Ricky Jay
and Oliver Sacks
.
A full-length biography, The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist, by Deirdre O'Connell, was published by Overlook Press in 2009.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
autistic savant and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
al prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
on the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
. He had numerous original compositions published and had a lengthy and largely successful performing career throughout the United States. During the 19th century, he was one of the most well-known American performing pianists.
Early life
Wiggins was born on the Wiley Edward Jones Plantation in Harris County, GeorgiaHarris County, Georgia
Harris County is located in the U.S. state of Georgia. It was created on December 14, 1827. As of 2000, the population was 23,695. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 29,073. The county seat is Hamilton...
. Blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
at birth, he was sold in 1850 along with his enslaved
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
parents, Charity and Mingo Wiggins, to a Columbus, Georgia
Columbus, Georgia
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Muscogee County, Georgia, United States, with which it is consolidated. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 189,885. It is the principal city of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, which, in 2009, had an estimated population of 292,795...
lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, General James Neil Bethune. Bethune was "almost the pioneer free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
r" in the United States and "the first [newspaper] editor in the south to openly advocate secession" . The new owner re-named the child Thomas Greene Bethune or Thomas Wiggins Bethune (according to different sources).
Because the blind lad could not perform work normally demanded of enslaved Africans, Tom was left to play and explore the Bethune plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
. At an early age, he evinced an interest in the piano after hearing the instrument played by Bethune's daughters. By age four he reportedly had acquired intuitive
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
, if rudimentary—and imitative—piano skills based solely on hearing. He continually intruded upon the Bethune family residence to gain access to the piano, with Bethune's daughters abetting these intrusions. By age five Tom reportedly had composed his first tune, The Rain Storm, based on his aural impressions of a torrential downpour. After his extraordinary music skills were recognized by General Bethune, Tom was permitted to live in a room attached to the family house, away from the enslaved quarters. The small room was equipped with a piano. Neighbor Otto Spahr, reminiscing about Tom in the Atlanta Constitution in 1908 (as reproduced in The Ballad of Blind Tom, by Deirdre O'Connell), observed: "Tom seemed to have but two motives in life: the gratification of his appetite and his passion for music. I don't think I exaggerate when I state that he made the piano go for twelve hours out of twenty-four."
As a child, Tom began to echo the sounds around him, repeating accurately the crow of a rooster or the singing of a bird. If he was left alone in the cabin, Tom was known to begin beating on pots and pans or dragging chairs across the floor in an attempt to make any kind of noise. By the age of four, Tom was able to repeat conversations up to ten minutes in length but was barely able to adequately communicate his own needs, resorting to grunts and gestures.
Bethune, Thomas' owner, then hired out "Blind Tom" at the age of eight years to concert promoter Perry Oliver, who toured him extensively in the US, performing as often as four times a day and earning Oliver and Bethune up to $100,000 a year, an enormous sum for the time , "equivalent to $1.5 million/year [in 2004], making Blind Tom undoubtedly the nineteenth century's most highly compensated pianist" . General Bethune's family eventually made a fortune estimated at $750,000 at the hands of Blind Tom . Oliver marketed Tom as a “Barnum-style freak” advertising the transformation from animal to artist. In the media, Tom was frequently compared to a bear, baboon, or mastiff.
Bethune hired professional musicians to play for Tom, who could faithfully reproduce their performances, often after a single listening. Eventually he learned a reported 7,000 pieces of music, including hymns, popular songs, waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
es, and classical repertoire.
Professional career
There are conflicting historical accounts of Blind Tom's first public performance, some indicating he was as young as three. One account from 1857 indicates that he had been performing publicly for several years. Newspaper reviews and audience reactions were favorable, prompting General Bethune to undertake a concert tour with Tom around their home state of Georgia. Tom later toured the South with Bethune or accompanied by hired managers, though their travels and bookings were sometimes hampered by the North-South hostilities which were drawing the nation towards Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. In 1860, Blind Tom performed at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
before President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
James Buchanan
James Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....
; he was the first African-American to give a command performance at the White House. Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
attended many of Blind Tom's performances over several decades and chronicled the proceedings.
On- and off-stage, Tom often referred to himself in the third person (e.g., "Tom is pleased to meet you"). His piano recitals were augmented by other talents, including uncanny voice mimicry of public figures and nature sounds. He also displayed a hyperactive physicality both onstage and off. A letter written in 1862 by a soldier in North Carolina described some of Tom's eccentric capabilities: "One of his most remarkable feats was the performance of three pieces of music at once. He played 'Fisher's Hornpipe' with one hand and 'Yankee Doodle
Yankee Doodle
"Yankee Doodle" is a well-known Anglo-American song, the origin of which dates back to the Seven Years' War. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today and is the state anthem of Connecticut...
' with the other and sang 'Dixie
Dixie (song)
Countless lyrical variants of "Dixie" exist, but the version attributed to Dan Emmett and its variations are the most popular. Emmett's lyrics as they were originally intended reflect the mood of the United States in the late 1850s toward growing abolitionist sentiment. The song presented the point...
' all at once. He also played a piece with his back to the piano and his hands inverted." At concerts, skeptics attempted to confirm if Tom's performance replications were mere trickery; their challenge took the form of having Tom hear and repeat two new, uncirculated compositions. Tom did so perfectly. The "audience challenge" eventually became a regular feature of his concerts.
In 1866, at age 16, Tom was taken on a European concert tour by General Bethune, who collected testimonials about Tom's natural talents from composer-pianist Ignaz Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.-Sources:Much of what we know about Moscheles's life...
and pianist-conductor Charles Hallé
Charles Hallé
Sir Charles Hallé was an Anglo-German pianist and conductor, and founder of The Hallé orchestra in 1858.-Life:Hallé was born in Hagen, Westphalia, Germany who after settling in England changed his name from Karl Halle...
. These were printed in a booklet, “The Marvelous Musical Prodigy Blind Tom," and used to bolster Tom's international reputation.
In 1875, General Bethune transferred management of Blind Tom's professional affairs to his son John Bethune, who accompanied Tom on tour around the U.S. for the next eight years. Beginning in 1875, John brought Blind Tom to New York each summer. While living with John in a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
on the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
, Tom added to his repertoire under the tutelage of Joseph Poznanski, who also transcribed new compositions by Tom for publication
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
. Many of these were, at Tom's insistence, published under such pseudonyms as Professor W.F. Raymond, J.C. Beckel, C.T. Messengale, and Francois Sexalise.
Tom's piano-playing behavior, both during practice and performance, was eccentric. "We had two pianos in one room," Poznanski told the Washington Post in 1886 (as recounted in O'Connell's biography). "I would play for him and he would get up, walk around, stand on one foot, pull his hair, knock his head against the wall, then sit down and play a very good imitiation of what I had played with additions to it. His memory was something prodigious. He never forgot anything." This led some critics to dismiss Tom as a novelty act, a "human parrot." Novelist Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
, writing in the Nebraska State Journal, called Tom "a human phonograph, a sort of animated memory, with sound producing power."
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
has compared the main character in his short story, “Johnny Bear” to Blind Tom.
Custody battle
In 1882, John Bethune married his landlady, Eliza Stutzbach, who had demonstrated a knack for mollifying Tom's sometimes volatile temperament. However, shortly after their marriage, John Bethune embarked on an extended tour of the U.S. with Tom, in effect abandoning Eliza. When Bethune returned home eight months later, his wife filed for divorce. The couple split up—John took Tom—but a bitter legal squabble ensued, with Eliza hounding John for financial support, a claim that the courts usually adjudicated in John's favor. After John Bethune died in a railway accident in 1884, Tom was returned—over Eliza's objections—to the care of General Bethune (now living in Virginia). Eliza sued General Bethune for ownership, with Tom's elderly mother Charity enjoined by Eliza's attorney as a party in the plaintiff's suit. After a protracted custody battle in several courts, in August 1887 Tom was awarded to Eliza, who moved Tom back to New York. Charity accompanied them with the understanding that she would benefit financially from Tom's earnings. However, after it became apparent that Eliza did not intend to honor any financial obligations to Charity, Tom's mother returned to Georgia.Tom continued performing and touring for a number of years under the management of Eliza and her attorney (and later husband) Albrecht Lerche. Tom was on tour in western Pennsylvania in May 1889 on the day of the Johnstown Flood
Johnstown Flood
The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889. It was the result of the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam situated upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, made worse by several days of extremely heavy rainfall...
, and rumor spread that he was among the casualties. Despite his continued appearances on the U.S. concert circuit, the rumor persisted for years, with some observers expressing skepticism that the Blind Tom who appeared in concert after 1889 was the "real Blind Tom."
In this phase of his career, Tom usually introduced himself onstage in the third person, imitating the pronouncements of his various managers from years past. He talked about his mental state with a characteristic lack of self-awareness. He had been diagnosed as non compos mentis by a doctor, and in his foggy netherworld the phrase was a matter of personal pride. Willa Cather described the poignance of one such concert: "It was a strange sight to see him walk out on stage with his own lips—another man's words—introduce himself and talk quietly about his own idiocy. There was insanity, a grotesque horribleness about it that was interestingly unpleasant. One laughs at the man's queer actions, and yet, after all, the sight is not laughable. It brings us too near to the things that we sane people do not like to think of."
After being dogged by incessant legal challenges to her custodianship of Tom, Eliza took Tom off the concert circuit around 1893.
Later years
Tom spent the next ten years as a ward of Eliza and her husband, who divided their time between New York city and New Jersey's Navesink HighlandsNavesink, New Jersey
Navesink is a census-designated place and unincorporated area located within Middletown Township, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the CDP population was 2,020.-Geography:Navesink is located at ....
. In 1903 Eliza arranged for Tom to appear on the popular vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
circuit, beginning with Brooklyn's Orpheum Theater. He spent almost a year performing in vaudeville, before his health began to deteriorate. It is believed he suffered a stroke (described in some reports as "partial paralysis") in December 1904, which ended his public performing career.
After the death of her husband, Eliza relocated to Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...
, with Tom. They kept out of public view, though neighbors could hear Tom's piano playing at all hours of the day and night. Tom suffered a major stroke in April 1908, and died the following June. He was buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York .
Posthumous Recognition
The people of Columbus, Georgia, raised a commemorative headstone for him in 1976. He was the subject of a play titled HUSH: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins, which was performed on the Atlanta stage with Del Hamilton as director.Between 1970 and 2000, Dr. Geneva Handy Southall wrote a three-volume thesis titled Blind Tom: The Black Pianist Composer; Continuously Enslaved; it was published by Scarecrow Press in 2002.
In 1981 he was the subject of a film, "Blind Tom: The Story of Thomas Bethune" directed by Mark W. Travis.
In 1999 John Davis
John Davis (pianist)
John Davis is an American classical pianist, concert performer, recording artist, and historian. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Davis now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has specialized in reviving the forgotten music of several 19th Century...
recorded an album of Tom's original compositions on a CD entitled John Davis Plays Blind Tom. The cd package included essays by Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, Ricky Jay
Ricky Jay
Richard Jay Potash , better known by the stage name Ricky Jay, is an American stage magician, actor, and writer. He is a sleight-of-hand expert and is notable for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter.-Life and career:...
and Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...
.
A full-length biography, The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist, by Deirdre O'Connell, was published by Overlook Press in 2009.
External links
- O'Connell, Deirdre. "Who Was Blind Tom?" 2009. Web. 9 Feb. 2010
- Blind Tom, Slave Pianist Sensation A radio documentary from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Into the Music.
- A Sketch of the Life of Thomas Greene Bethune (Blind Tom). Philadelphia: Ledger Book and Job Printing Establishment, 1865.
- Deirdre O'Connell, The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist (biography), Overlook Press (2009). ISBN 978-1-59020-143-5
- Biography of Tom Wiggins at BlackPast.org
- Battle of Manassas, composed by Thomas Wiggins (ca. 1861), including thumbnail biography
- Barbara Schmidt, "Archangels Unaware, The Story of Thomas Bethune at Mark Twain site, www.twainquotes.com
- WFMU radio Interview with Blind Tom biographer Deirdre O'Connell, December 2, 2009
- NPR feature on Atlanta production HUSH: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins
- Geneva Handy Southall, Blind Tom, The Black Pianist-Composer: Continually Enslaved (Scarecrow Press, 2002)
- Blind Tom: The Story of Thomas Bethune, KCET, PBS (1981) at the Internet Movie Database
- Blind Tom Wiggins at the Evergreens Cemetery
- Blind Tom at Find A Grave