Tenor Roland Hayes is acknowledged as a masterful interpreter of both classical songs and Black spirituals. In a career that spanned more than 30 years, he performed throughout the United States and Europe. Hayes shattered the color barrier in the world of classical music, becoming one of the highest paid musicians of his time and paving the way for later African American singers. One of six children, Roland Hayes was born on June 3, 1887, in Curryville, Georgia. Although neither of his parents were afforded any formal educational opportunities, they recognized the value of good schooling. Hayes's father, William, a former slave turned farmer and carpenter, had an intense appreciation of music. Music was a natural part of Hayes's life. His mother, Fannie, was determined to see that all of her children were educated--and that Roland would pursue a religious vocation.
A timid child, he nevertheless liked to sing while at work on the farm and at the Baptist church the family attended. Hayes learned to read music from a man who conducted a seasonal singing school, and he also played the quills--joints of bamboo tied together like panpipes--to music of African origin. When Hayes was 11 years old, his father died from injuries suffered several years earlier in a work-related accident. Young Roland and his brother Robert were forced to quit school and work to support the family. In 1900 the Hayes family--then consisting of his mother, Roland, and his two brothers, Robert and Jesse--moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. There, Hayes worked at an iron foundry, awaiting his turn to attend school.
At age 16, after he had been made a foreman at the foundry, he returned to his studies part-time. Determined to succeed despite the embarrassment of reciting lessons with students much younger than himself, Hayes even hired a tutor. He also started singing lessons with W. Arthur Calhoun, an Oberlin University music student who opened Hayes's ears to classical music. After three months, Hayes knew that regardless of his mother's objections, he had to aspire to a career in music. In 1905 Hayes entered the preparatory division at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. After three years, during which he received a scholarship and helped support himself through housework and vocal performances with various groups, Hayes reportedly left the university because of a misunderstanding.
Hayes worked at a men's club in Louisville for a short time and began to gain notoriety for his singing. After performing a few years at small social functions, he gave a concert in Boston with the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1911. After that, he stayed in Boston, where he found work as a hotel bellboy, a waiter, and a messenger for an insurance company. He continued his studies with operatic bass Arthur Hubbard and sent for his mother--who finally accepted her son's career choice--to come and live with him in the Northeast. Hayes performed with educator Booker T. Washington and singer-composer Harry Burleigh, whose reputations and experience enhanced that of the budding singer. However, early in the twentieth century, no professional manager was willing to sponsor a Black performer.
Roland Hayes began with arranging his own recitals and coast-to-coast tours from 1916 to 1919. He sang at Craig's Pre-Lenten Recitals and several Carnegie Hall concerts. He made his official debut that year in Boston's Symphony Hall which received critical acclaim. Hayes performed with the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, and at the Atlanta Colored Music Festivals and at the Washington, D.C. Washington Conservatory concerts. His performance of lieder, or classical songs, by Franz Schubert and arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky created a sensation. In 1917, he toured with the Hayes Trio which he formed with baritone William Richardson and pianist William Lawrence who was his regular accompanist.
In 1920 he set sail for London, England. His London debut was in April 1920 at Aeolian Hall with pianist Lawrence Brown as his accompanist. While in London he received a message from King George and Queen Mary of England, requesting that he perform for them. After a year of scraping by with whatever small performances came their way, Hayes and his accompanist, Lawrence Brown, were booked to perform at the prestigious Wigmore Hall. Although he was suffering from pneumonia, Hayes sang masterfully. Two days later he gave a command performance for King George V and Queen Mary. Soon Hayes was singing in capital cities across Europe and was quite famous when he returned to the U.S in 1922 and performed at Symphony Hall in Boston to rave reviews.
Shortly afterward he became the first Black singer to appear at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Hayes then began a series of concert tours that took him to nearly every corner of the country. Performing the African American spirituals, he was raised on, which he called "Aframerican religious folk music", Hayes's voice was marked with a unique sonority which easily navigated French, German, and Italian art songs. Because many of these songs had never been written down, Hayes arranged them for orchestral accompaniment. When touring Europe in October 1923, he was introduced to Countess Bertha Katharina Nadine Colloredo-Mansfeld, a wealthy White woman of Hapsburg ancestry. The two had a passionate and turbulent relationship that spanned several decades.
He made a number of recordings of classical music and spirituals and, as early as 1924, performed at least one concert before a desegregated audience in Atlanta. By 1924 he was performing more than 80 concerts per year, many with major orchestras, such as those in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Detroit. He was widely praised for his interpretations of German and French songs, as well as his renditions of Black folk songs and spirituals, which he later compiled in a single volume in 1948 titled "My Songs; Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted". In 1925 Hayes gave a command performance for Queen Mother Maria Christian of Spain. That same year, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal, given annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for the "most outstanding achievement among colored people."
Hayes toured Italy in 1927 and the Soviet Union the following year. He was hailed wherever he went as one of the greatest classical singers of his era for his silken smooth tone and sensitive lyrical interpretations. Although Hayes often performed concert renditions of arias, he never appeared in an opera because interracial casting was frowned upon during his era. After the 1930s, Hayes stopped touring in Europe because the change in politics and the rise of the Nazi Party. Roland Hayes married Helen Alzada Mann in 1937, and they had a daughter, Afrika. Hayes and his wife maintained residences in Brookline, Massachusetts, and in Curryville, Georgia, where they owned a 600-acre farm, the same farm where Roland Hayes had been born.
An unfortunate racial incident involving Hayes’s family occurred in Rome, Georgia, in July 1942 and made national newspaper headlines. After Hayes’s wife and daughter sat in a Whites-only area of a shoe store, they were thrown out of the store. Hayes later confronted the store clerk, and he and his wife were arrested by the local police. Hayes was also beaten. About a week later, in response to the incident, Governor Eugene Talmadge warned African Americans who didn’t agree with segregation “to stay out of Georgia.” Talmadge promised, “We are going to keep the Jim Crow laws and protect them.” Although Hayes claimed that he was not bitter, he and his family left Georgia not long afterward and eventually sold their farm in 1948.
In addition to his exceptionally long singing career, Hayes taught voice at Boston University beginning in 1950. In 1954 he toured Europe, where he was greatly admired in England, Holland, and Denmark. At age 70 he still garnered rave reviews: "What Mr. Hayes does is live each song he sings," wrote Boston Herald music critic Rudolph Elie. "To be sure, there are many others who do the same thing.... The essential difference here, however, is that Mr. Hayes knows what he is living: there is a classic balance between his intellectual comprehension and his emotional concept. The consequence is an atmosphere so intense as to be gripping.... [The listener] is in the presence of a master."
In 1962 Hayes gave a concert at Carnegie Hall to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday and raise funds for the American Missionary Association College Centennials Fund. In 1966, he was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctorate of Music from The Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford.
Hayes gave his final concert in 1973 at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died on January 1, 1977, in Boston. In 1982, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga opened a new musical performance center, the Roland W. Hayes Concert Hall. The concert venue is located at the Dorothy Patten Fine Arts center. In 1992, when the Calhoun Gordon Arts Council was incorporated, the Roland Hayes Committee became the Roland Hayes Music Guild and Museum in Calhoun, Georgia. The opening was attended by his daughter Afrika. Although Hayes recorded for a number of labels, including Vocalion, American Columbia, Vanguard, and Veritas, few recordings are available. Hayes was a groundbreaking figure in the field of music who helped pave the way for classical African American artists such as Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Leontyne Price, Simon Estes, William Warfield, and George Shirley.