Louis Chauvin

Louis Chauvin was a brilliant and influential pianist who created a steady stream of original melodies while seldom taking the time to write them down or get them published. His story is colorful and tragic, and he didn't live long enough to make any phonograph recordings. Chauvin was born on Lucas Street in St. Louis, MO, on March 13, 1881. His mother was Afro-American and his father a Mexican of mingled Spanish and Native American ancestry. A child prodigy, he possessed harmonically advanced and prematurely modern musical sensibilities and was a skilled improviser who dazzle...