Dallas Blues
Hart A. Wand
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Browse piano sheets by Hart A. Wand on Zen Virtual Piano. Wand came to Oklahoma at the age of two with his parents, a brother and two sisters from Kansas, as one of the 89ers. John, his father, had emigrated from Frankfurt, Germany, and done well as a Topeka druggist; as soon as the land run ended he opened a tent drugstore on the site of the future Oklahoma City. Hart worked in the drugstore, and when customers were few he retired to the storeroom to practice his violin. A violin practiced in a drugstore storeroom suggests how music fitted into the gaps of a working day. He led a small dance band and worked on new tunes he could teach the other players. One day in 1912, as he practiced a piece influenced by various kinds of music he had heard in central Oklahoma, another of his father's employees remarked at the end, “That gives me the blues to go back to Dallas.” It was the band's pianist, Annabelle Robbins, who arranged the piece; Oklahoma City saw Dallas Blues in print in 1912, and the first run was gone in a week. A piece shaped by music heard in central Oklahoma, yet titled for Dallas, hints at a title that looks beyond the local scene. A bandleader writing tunes for his players to learn, beside a pianist arranging one of them, hints at a division of labor inside the band. In musical circles Wand is mostly remembered for Dallas Blues, which he published in March 1912 and copyrighted that September, an early published twelve-bar blues. As first published it was a solo piano instrumental, a single twenty-bar theme played through twice, the repeat in an elaborate ragtime style. Although written at a standard blues tempo, it is often played in a ragtime or Dixieland style, and in 1918 a later version appeared for voice and piano with lyrics by Lloyd Garrett expressing a singer's longing for Dallas. A first printing gone in a week, beside a later vocal version, hints at continued interest in the tune. His father died in 1909, and Wand inherited the Wand & Son manufacturing plant in Oklahoma City; the business went to Chicago before 1920, and by 1920 he was living in New Orleans. According to violafair.com, he expanded sales throughout the world and so had little time to indulge his love of music. Samuel Charters interviewed him for his 1959 book The Country Blues and reported that New Orleans respected and liked him. A man remembered mainly for Dallas Blues, despite running a manufacturing business, hints at a reputation resting on the tune rather than the business.
Browse piano sheets by Hart A. Wand on Zen Virtual Piano.
Wand came to Oklahoma at the age of two with his parents, a brother and two sisters from Kansas, as one of the 89ers. John, his father, had emigrated from Frankfurt, Germany, and done well as a Topeka druggist; as soon as the land run ended he opened a tent drugstore on the site of the future Oklahoma City. Hart worked in the drugstore, and when customers were few he retired to the storeroom to practice his violin. A violin practiced in a drugstore storeroom suggests how music fitted into the gaps of a working day.
He led a small dance band and worked on new tunes he could teach the other players. One day in 1912, as he practiced a piece influenced by various kinds of music he had heard in central Oklahoma, another of his father's employees remarked at the end, “That gives me the blues to go back to Dallas.” It was the band's pianist, Annabelle Robbins, who arranged the piece; Oklahoma City saw Dallas Blues in print in 1912, and the first run was gone in a week. A piece shaped by music heard in central Oklahoma, yet titled for Dallas, hints at a title that looks beyond the local scene. A bandleader writing tunes for his players to learn, beside a pianist arranging one of them, hints at a division of labor inside the band.
In musical circles Wand is mostly remembered for Dallas Blues, which he published in March 1912 and copyrighted that September, an early published twelve-bar blues. As first published it was a solo piano instrumental, a single twenty-bar theme played through twice, the repeat in an elaborate ragtime style. Although written at a standard blues tempo, it is often played in a ragtime or Dixieland style, and in 1918 a later version appeared for voice and piano with lyrics by Lloyd Garrett expressing a singer's longing for Dallas. A first printing gone in a week, beside a later vocal version, hints at continued interest in the tune.
His father died in 1909, and Wand inherited the Wand & Son manufacturing plant in Oklahoma City; the business went to Chicago before 1920, and by 1920 he was living in New Orleans. According to violafair.com, he expanded sales throughout the world and so had little time to indulge his love of music. Samuel Charters interviewed him for his 1959 book The Country Blues and reported that New Orleans respected and liked him. A man remembered mainly for Dallas Blues, despite running a manufacturing business, hints at a reputation resting on the tune rather than the business.
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Hart A. Wand
Common questions
Hart Wand was an Oklahoma City violinist and bandleader chiefly noted for publishing Dallas Blues in 1912.
It is an early published twelve-bar blues, issued in 1912 in Oklahoma City as an instrumental for solo piano.
Annabelle Robbins, the pianist in Wand's band, arranged the piece.
Wand ran the family's Wand & Son plant after 1909, moving his business to Chicago before 1920, and by 1920 he had settled in New Orleans.