Dangerous Blues - The Story of Kansas Citys Billie Brown. Billie Brown was born June 19, 1903, in Eureka Springs, Carroll County Arkansas. Her father was William B. “Billy” Brown, a “saloon keeper,” according to the 1900 census. Billy and Anna Welker (1865?-1935) married on December 29, 1886. William Brown died under mysterious circumstances in 1907, and in 1913, Anna and Billie moved to Kansas City, where Anna worked as a piano teacher and possibly as a performer. She taught little Billie to play the piano and fostered her young daughter’s musical talent. The 1915 city directory shows Billie as a “pianist” employed by the Finance Cafeteria, which was located in the basement of the Finance Building at 1009-13 Baltimore. She was twelve years old. That same year, her first sheet music publication, a set of variations on the traditional Hawaiian standard Aloha-Ae, was published by the Owl Drug Store Company at 10th and Main in Kansas City in 1915. Billie was twelve years old and helped manage the sheet music department at the store. Neither Anna nor Billie can be identified in the census records of Kansas City of 1900, 1910, 1920, or 1930. It seems they managed to live “under the radar” – one wonders how and why they eluded the census-takers. Sending one’s daughter, however talented she may be, to work at age 12 was not a common practice and there were certainly finer living accommodations in Kansas City than a downtown boarding house. High school yearbooks for the five main Kansas City public schools in the period 1916-1919 bear no mention of Billie. Musicians Union Local 34’s membership records of the period contain no mention of either Anna or Billie. Subsequent city directories continue to place Anna and Billie at the rooming house at 1009 Locust, but in 1918, Billie and Anna are listed at 1214 Cherry, operating a “music room.” Also appearing at that address in 1919 is Fred L. Starkweather. At some point, Fred and Anna apparently married, probably in “common law,” as no record of their marriage in Jackson County, Missouri exists. Following the publication of Aloha, the Owl Drug Store published Shower of Kisses Waltz in 1916 by “by Anna Welker Brown, arranged by Billie Brown.” In 1918, Owl again published a collaboration by Billie and Anna, entitled The Star and The Rose. City directories of 1919 and 1920 are silent. The next time we see Billie’s name is April 25, 1921, when Kansas City music retailer and publisher J.W. Jenkins & Sons was granted the copyright for Dangerous Blues. She and Anna were still, according to the city directory, at the 1009 Locust rooming house, involved in “music,” however another source places them at the 620 East Ninth Street address. Billie is now a “pianist” employed by J. W. Jenkins Music Company, one of the largest music dealers and publishers in the Midwest. Professional song demonstrators had to be exceptionally proficient at their trade – being called upon to play anything, in any key, and to play so attractively that the customer would buy the sheet music. Billie had written a very unique little “dance blues” she called Dangerous Blues. Anna added some bouncy lyrics, and they sent it to a dozen music publishers but it was rejected by all. One day Billie was playing the tune in Jenkin’s, and Grant Ege (Jenkin’s long time music manager who discovered the famous Twelfth Street Rag), attracted by its unusual character, stopped and asked her what was the name of the piece. She told him, and the conversation following resulted in the company paying her $100 for the composition. Dangerous Blues was an immediate, nation-wide hit of major proportions. It was recorded by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and also by Mamie Smith, the most popular blues singer in America, as well as several other bands. The great pianist and composer Eubie Blake recorded a piano roll version of the tune which fully demonstrates its magnificent melodic invention. One of several unique aspects of the tune is a forward-looking and very uncommon device Billie used in bars 9-12 of the chorus, when it unexpectedly jumps from F major to D major as the phrase “Can’t you hear the music playing soft and sweet…” is sung; then temporarily resolving back to a G major on “It’s the kind that makes you want to shake your feet.” George Gershwin used the same unique harmonic progression in his Sweet and Low Down of 1925. The Music Trade Review wrote that that by July 1 1921, sales of the tune had grown to such proportions that Jenkins tore up its flat-fee contract with Billie for the song and began to pay her royalties. “They handed her a check for $500 and told her to write more songs. Two of these will be released in January, one of them, Lonesome Mama Blues, appearing on the 1st, and the other, Lullaby Moon, on the 15th.” On November 1, 1921 Jenkins, copyrighted Lonesome Mama Blues, music by Billie, and lyrics attributed to Anna Welker Brown and one E. Nickel. (Nothing can be found about Nickel.) Jenkins published it on January 5th, 1922 A more or less straightforward “blues shout, it was recorded by Mamie Smith, Edith Wilson and her Jazz Hounds, and also by Ladd’s Black Aces. Lonesome Mama was used in vaudeville, as different editions of the sheet music music bear photographs of well-known entertainers including Rae Samuels, who had headlined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1914. Jenkins also published Lullaby Moon in 1921, music by Billie and words by Anna. It is a lovely and sweet ballad, a “barcarolle,” literally a boating song of the type sung by Venetian gondoliers. Billie would have been thrilled with the successes of her Dangerous Blues and Lonesome Mama Blues, as well as her burgeoning career as a musician. What other eighteen-year old girl in the United States was having huge national sheet music and record sales, her songs being performed and recorded by some of the very biggest names in show business? Could there be a brighter future for one so young, so talented? Sometime in late 1921, Billie Brown contracted smallpox virus, which had killed an 300 million people in the 20th century. The initial signs and symptoms of smallpox, which appear about two weeks after infection, resemble those of the flu – fever, fatigue, and headache. Later, severe pus-filled blisters appear on the skin, and scabs develop that eventually leave deep, pitted scars. The skin separates from its underlying layers. The pain is excruciating. Once symptoms develop, there is no effective treatment for smallpox and no known cure. People usually die during the second week of the illness. On November 30, 1921 she was admitted to Kansas City’s General Hospital Number One, under the care of Dr. W.F. Love. On December 4, 1921, Billie Brown, eighteen years old, died at Kansas City’s General Hospital. Her death certificate misspells her name as “Billy.” Her death notice, printed in the Kansas City newspaper the following day, was simple: “Billie Brown, Age 18 years, died December 4th; she is survived by her mother, 620 East 9th. Funeral services will be held Monday afternoon at 3:00 from the gravesite, Forest Hill Cemetery. For further information, call H.C. Bergman Undertaking Company, 38th and Woodland.” The same day, this article appeared in the Kansas City Times: IMPROVEMENT IN SMALLPOX. Last Monday there were ninety-one cases in isolation in both hospitals, while today there were seventy-one. In that period there were twelve deaths. There are now six cases in the hospitals regarded as critical. Physicians at the General hospital said today there had been a definite reduction in the number of severe cases being admitted, due to the benefits of vaccination.” The Music Trade Review wrote: “DEATH OF BILLIE BROWN REGRETTED. Youthful Composer a Victim of Smallpox Epidemic in Kansas City. The composer of Dangerous Blues is dead. ‘It does not seem possible to us here in the office where she came from day to day and brought her cheerfulness and happy heart,’ said E. G. Ege, manager of the music publishing department of the J. W. Jenkins Sons Music Co., of Kansas City, ‘but she is gone.’ Ege said that he had some other compositions of hers to follow later which the brilliant little composer had finished before her untimely death last week.” On January 18, 1922, Billie was removed from Forest Hill, at 69th and Troost, and re-interred at the Elmwood Cemetery, at 4900 E. Truman Road. Cemetery records show that her mother paid for the new site. And for the next thirteen years, Billie lay in an unmarked grave. Anna Welker Brown Starkweather died on March 25, 1935, and was buried alongside her daughter in Elmwood Cemetery. Upon Anna’s burial, a simple stone was placed that reads: BROWN ANGE 1935 BILLIE 1921. The ensuing years have eroded the stone and it is barely readable today. Billie’s swan song was What’s On Your Mind (Let No One Know) published in 1924 by Jenkins. John Dawson, 2007 and 2014.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 16:56:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015