Blues in California

An aunt of William Grant Still's once asked him, "Billy, what do you do?" "I compose music," Still replied. "Yes, I know," she said. "But what do you do? Haven't you any work?"

At 53, big-eyed Billy Still still has no "work." But he is the U.S.'s leading Negro composer. His melodic, sometimes fiercely rhythmic symphonies and tone poems have been performed by Stokowski,

Rodzinski and Monteux. He was the first Negro to conduct a major U.S. orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic). But somehow, the big breaks that have brought fame & fortune to less deserving composers have never seemed to come Still's way.

His latest blow came with a new suite for string quartet, based on Panamanian folk music. It was given a first performance last fortnight in Los Angeles, but the Los Angeles critics were not there; they had to cover the Ojai (Calif.) music festival where Stravinsky was the guest of honor. What's more, the area around the Still concert was roped off to traffic because of some relay races at the nearby Coliseum. Conditions were not ideal for a premiere, but listeners who struggled in found it worth the effort.

Mississippi-born Composer Still's music has a homespun quality, but it is as varied as his own background of Scottish, Irish, American Indian and Negro ancestors. He tries to avoid repeating himself ("after all, an architect wouldn't want to design the same kind of house all the time"). Making movie music (at $250 a day) ceased to interest him because he felt that he had to do "my work in my own good time, and in my own good way . . ."

The Still way is scratching out only a few bars a day in his modest Los Angeles home. His great enthusiasm is opera: he has written four, but none has ever been published. One of them, Troubled Island, with a libretto adapted from a play by Poet Langston Hughes, was rejected by the Metropolitan, says Still, because it called for an all-Negro cast. "They never heard of makeup, I guess."

He has hopes that New York's energetic City Opera (TIME, Nov. 3) will perform one of his operas: "Now that I have one foot in the grave [he is in good health at 53], I guess I've got a better chance."

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