The Constellation that Connects Langston Hughes and David Bowie, Antonín Dvořák and Nina Simone (2024)

Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane

Dan Gutstein

Published:

2023

Online ISBN:

9781496849397

Print ISBN:

9781496849342

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Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane

Dan Gutstein

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Dan Gutstein

Dan Gutstein

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Pages

202–210

  • Published:

    November 2023

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Gutstein, Dan, 'The Constellation that Connects Langston Hughes and David Bowie, Antonín Dvořák and Nina Simone', Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane (Jackson, MS, 2023; online edn, Mississippi Scholarship Online, 23 May 2024), https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496849342.003.0016, accessed 28 May 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter presents the widening “constellation” of cultural heroes who embraced the “Liza Jane” family of songs. From the literary star Langston Hughes, to one of the greatest musicians in American history, Nina Simone, “Liza Jane” songs continued to appeal at the highest echelons of American culture—and world culture. Shockingly, “Liza Jane” would become David Bowie’s very first single in 1964. Most captivating, perhaps, would be the unlikely friendship that developed between classical composer Antonín Dvořák and his student Harry Burleigh in the 1890s at the National Conservatory of Music in New York. There is good reason to believe that Burleigh sang “Little Liza Jane” to Dvořák, and astonishingly, decades later, R&B saxophonist Lee Allen paid homage to Dvořák’s belief in African American music by accoupling the composer’s seventh “Humoresque” to a bright recording of “Little Liza Jane” in New Orleans.

Keywords: Dvořák, Humoresque, David Bowie, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone

Subject

American Music

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