User:Eurodog/sandbox236
Charles Exodus Drayton was an American dramatic baritone.[1][2]
Career[edit]
1900, Drayton was a student at Claflin University.
Drayton founded the Four Harmony Kings, vocal quartet which, during a European tour, performed for Pope Pius XI at the Vatican February 13, 1932.
- April 1919: the Four Harmony Kings were composed of:
- Bass: William Allen Hann (born January 9, 1881)
- 2nd Tenor: William Howard Berry (1889–1942)[3]
- Baritone: Charles Exodus Drayton
- Ivan Harold Browning (1891–1978)[4]
- 1918: William D. Burns, William A. Hann, William H. Berry, Charles Exodus Drayton
James Reese Europe[edit]
James Reese Europe in Boston at Mechanics Hall, during an intermission, berated a drummer, Herbert Wright, who became enraged and lunged at Europe with a pen knife. Wright was convicted of manslaughter and served 8 years of a 10-year sentence in a Massachusetts penitentiary.
After his release in 1927, he lived quietly in Roxbury, Boston, working as a dance band drummer. At some point he gave a neighborhood boy his first drum lesson. That boy was Roy Haynes. Haynes lived on the same street as Wright – Haskins Street, a street that was discontinued February 9, 1976.
Family[edit]
Drayton was of Ethiopian descent, according to his Draft Registration for World War I.
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ African American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand: A History, 1788–1941, by Bill Egan, McFarland & Company (2020) p. 202; OCLC 1135100634
- ^ Black Recording Artists, 1877–1926: An Annotated Discography, compiled by Craig Martin Gibbs (born 1956), McFarland & Company (2013), p. 62; OCLC 870092561
- ^ "Music World Mourns Death of Wm. H. Berry," by Ivan Harold Browning (1891–1978), Pittsburgh Courier, May 2, 1942, p. 20 (accessible via Newspapers.com; subscription required)
- ^ "In Memorandum – Ivan Browning: A Trouper to the End," by Stanley O. Williford (born 1942), Los Angeles Times Calendar, June 4, 1978, p. 71 (accessible via Newspapers.com; subscription required)