After years of selling newspapers or swabbing decks on Great Lakes steamers, Harry Burleigh got a good jobas baritone soloist with the choir of Manhattan's big, downtown St. George's Episcopal Church. That was in 1894, when he was 28. He was still there, at the age of 78, last week. He had become world famed as the composer of some 300 songs and sacred anthems and as the greatest of all arrangers of Negro spirituals.
White-haired Henry Thacker Burleigh put on a white tie and tails and stood affably in St. George's parish house...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In