Music producers generally work behind the scenes garnering little public recognition. Some, like Phil Spector and Quincy Jones, earned acclaim outside the industry; however, others faded into obscurity. Tom Wilson, one of these overlooked figures and a contemporary of Spector and Jones, matched them in influence. A musical alchemist who coaxed new sounds out of legendary musicians, Wilson spearheaded innovative directions for jazz and rock and roll in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Church music and education undergirded the Wacoan family into which Tom Wilson Jr. was born on March 25, 1931. His father served as the choir director at New Hope Baptist Church, where his grandfather, a college professor, was a founding member. Though he only played the trombone, choir participation and family jam sessions nurtured in the young Wilson a love of music. These musical mash-ups often occurred at his educator grandfather’s rug laundry, where Wilson also learned to work hard. It was this family belief in achievement that propelled Wilson from Fisk University to Harvard where he graduated in 1954 with a degree in economics.

While in Boston, Wilson dove into its jazz scene. He deejayed for Harvard’s radio station, WHRB, where jam sessions and his involvement in the Harvard New Jazz Society helped cultivate a love for the experimental genre. Working at WHRB, Wilson later stated, was the job that most greatly influenced his later success. Jazz was undergoing an evolution, and Wilson wanted to capture it. So after graduating, he started the aptly named Transition Records. Wilson possessed an ear for pioneering sounds, locating unknown artists like Sun Ra who pushed the boundaries of jazz. Over four years at Transition Records, Wilson recorded over twenty albums with musicians like John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor. Wilson’s involvement in all aspects of album production and positive reviews didn’t, however, translate into financial success, so he sold the label in 1957.

He worked for several labels in artists and repertoire before landing at Columbia in the early 1960s. It was at Columbia that Wilson left an indelible mark on the music industry. Though a novel practice at the time, Wilson took the initiative to locate new talent. This practice led him to a struggling folk duo by the name of Simon and Garfunkel. They recorded with Wilson but broke up until the producer’s surreptitious addition of electric instruments on “The Sound of Silence” brought them massive success and contributed to the development of folk-rock. Wilson also worked with iconic troubadour Bob Dylan on several of his albums, notably Bringing It All Back Home. On that record, Wilson encouraged a more electric sound, and with songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” helped launch Dylan into a new phase of his career. The legendary track “Like a Rolling Stone” was also a Dylan and Wilson collaboration. Wilson then rode this wave of success into a job at Verve/MGM in Los Angeles.

In his new position, Wilson continued to experiment. His initial signing was the eclectic sound of Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention. To his collection of artists Wilson also added the Velvet Underground. The band’s psychedelic tone and graphic lyrics meshed well with Wilson’s penchant for testing musical limits. Wilson went out on his own in 1968, launching a production company which accompanied his short-lived radio program “Music Factory” and two publishing companies: Terrible Tunes and Maudlin Melodies. Such a move made sense for a man at the forefront of the 1960s music scene.

Tom Wilson embodied the 1960s. A 1968 New York Times feature on Wilson described his clothing and interior design as encompassing the smoothly audacious style emblematic of the period. Wilson managed to be “far out” with his artists and productions, but kept his personal life and habits more private. His wife and children, while spending some time around the studios, remained a distinct entity, apart from his work. Music, he told his son, creates a “respite” from the demands of life. Journalists described Wilson, a study of contrasts, as “enigmatic” and a “master dissembler.” He was a man who had his finger on America’s musical pulse but also seemed to hover above it.

By the 1970s, however, Wilson produced less. The music he did develop didn’t sell as well, so he turned his attention to creating music for movies. Earlier Wilson had produced a jazz version of the West Side Story soundtrack (Bossa Nova) and Dylan song on the soundtrack for Easy Rider. Wilson remained in the music industry but pursued this new direction. He died at age forty-seven of a heart attack, a complication of his Marfan syndrome, on September 6, 1978. Only in death did Wilson return to Waco where he rests in the Doris Miller Memorial Park. Wilson was shrouded by his brief career and notable contemporaries, but current efforts like Producer Tom Wilson and Invisible Icon seek to posthumously recognize Wilson for his musical impact.

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During the 1950s and 1960s, Rev. Marvin C. Griffin strove to bring the Christian gospel to bear upon the civil rights struggle in Waco. As minister of New Hope Baptist Church from 1951 to 1969, Reverend Griffin preached a message of spiritual vitality and social action, advocating for racial equality during a period of heightened tensions among Waco’s white, black, and Hispanic communities. Griffin’s unswerving emphasis on racial justice and reconciliation established him as a respected leader throughout Central Texas.

The future minister was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1923 and, after several years in Oklahoma, spent his later childhood and adolescence in Dallas, Texas. Like many African American families in their community, the Griffin family suffered the effects of race-based inequality. The scarcity of Depression-era jobs for black men meant that Griffin’s mother supported the family on wages from her job as housekeeper in a white home. The young Griffin, however, felt called to become a preacher and exhibited academic promise at an early age.

After high school, Griffin entered Bishop College—at that time the only Texas institution offering a degree in religion to African American students. There he met Lois King, whom he married in 1944 and with whom he would serve churches and communities throughout Texas for over six decades. After graduating from Bishop in 1943, Griffin earned a bachelor of divinity in theology from the famed Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin’s emphasis on the social implications of the Christian message shaped Griffin’s approach to civil rights in the years to come. Griffin graduated from Oberlin in 1947 and soon took a position as director of city missions for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board in Dallas, Texas. There, the young graduate worked with people in need from white and black neighborhoods alike. In this way, Griffin’s diverse childhood, educational, and professional experiences allowed him to cultivate relationships across racial and economic lines.

In 1951, Waco’s New Hope Baptist Church invited Griffin to fill in as interim pastor when its own minister, Dr. Joseph Newton Jenkins, fell ill. This temporary position became permanent when Jenkins passed away, and the twenty-seven-year-old seminary graduate found himself the pastor of one of Waco’s oldest and most prominent African American churches. The young minister took to the position quickly, however, pioneering a radio ministry and citywide transportation system to the church on Sunday. All the while, Griffin devoted himself to theological study; in 1955 he became the first African American to receive a master of religious education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Griffin also brought a renewed emphasis on the social resonances of the Christian gospel, preaching the importance of advocating for justice in the wake of pervasive racial discrimination. In Waco, the new pastor entered an environment in which white hostility was prevalent and in which local blacks were hesitant to confront racial divides for fear that their jobs, social standing, and physical safety might be jeopardized.

Their fears were not unfounded. When initial efforts to integrate Waco schools following the Brown v. Board of Education decision were stymied by public backlash, it appeared that the desegregation project had reached a standstill. White leaders took no initiative toward implementing the federal ruling, and area blacks balked at taking any serious form of action. For the remainder of the decade, little progress was made in the dismantling of legalized segregation.

Thanks to leaders such as Marvin Griffin, the tide began to turn during the 1960s, bringing about an integration that proved far more peaceful—albeit far more gradual—than many cities in the South. As the nationwide struggle for civil rights grew more visible and more tumultuous, Waco minorities became increasingly vocal in their calls for desegregation and equal access to employment. Leading white Chamber of Commerce members—dubbed “The Committee of Fifty”—were anxious to avoid the protests, sit-ins, and violence plaguing much of the South. When the committee expressed the desire to cooperate with Waco’s black community leaders in desegregating the city at long last, Marvin Griffin set to work forming a council comprised of seven prominent African American men and women. With Griffin as its chairman, the council sought input from all corners of Waco’s black population to formulate a list of the most pressing racial issues to be remedied. These included public accommodations, the use of recreational facilities, access to jobs, and representation on boards and commissions.

The Committee of Fifty proved open to cooperation. It and Griffin’s council were careful, however, to keep their deliberations secret, lest they arouse anger from the white community. Thus, in 1961, they privately crafted a plan for the gradual and quiet desegregation of Waco businesses, cooperating with journalists to ensure that the press would refrain from reporting on the committee’s existence and the instances of desegregation that followed. Facility by facility, the group worked with business owners and the designated African American citizens—often Griffin and the members of his council—who would patronize each establishment. By means of enforcement, several members of the committee threatened to fire employees who did not carry out the new policy of desegregation. By 1963, popular Waco eating establishments, hospitals, and department stores had desegregated in this manner. Additionally, Baylor president Abner McCall—a member of the Committee of Fifty—began to take steps in the desegregation of Baylor University, which was finally desegregated in 1964.

Public desegregation, however, was only the first step in a long and arduous road toward a more racially equitable society. Accordingly, Griffin remained unwavering in his advocacy for Waco’s black community even after this initial wave of desegregation. The pastor worked to secure job opportunities for Waco’s African American citizens, and he also continued to fight for the desegregation of the Waco Independent School District, which would ultimately desegregate by federal court order in the early 1970s. Griffin also continued to facilitate racial reconciliation in local churches as well, exchanging pulpits with white preachers such as Rhea Gray and holding interracial book clubs in homes to facilitate productive dialogue on issues of race. In the political sphere, Griffin worked to expand black voter registration and galvanized his congregation and others into a politically active community.

In 1969, Griffin accepted an offer to become pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin, Texas—a position in which he served until his retirement on July 31, 2011. Here the twin goals of Christian faithfulness and social action remained paramount in Griffin’s ministry. In 1998, the pastor spearheaded the creation of the East Austin Economic Development Corporation, which offered crucial services to underprivileged populations. The spiritual and social leader continued to advance in learning and education even in latter decades of his career; in 1990, Griffin received his doctor of ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Throughout his long and storied life, Griffin never wavered in his insistence that the Christian message was inseparable from the issue of racial justice and community involvement, and he continued to encourage Christian faithfulness and social activism among his congregants at Ebenezer.

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Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner was born in 1895 on her family’s farm in Harrison Switch, Texas. She was the oldest of three children born to Meddie Lilian and Jeff D. Allen. Harrison Switch, later known as Harrison, was a small African American community eight miles southeast of Waco. Conner’s parents, and most other residents of Harrison, owned their own farms. This was notable in a time when the majority of African American farmers in Texas were sharecroppers. Conner showed great intelligence from a young age, and by 1914, she graduated from Prairie View Normal School, later known as Prairie View A&M, with a teaching certificate. She supported herself by teaching in various McLennan County schools. In 1923, Conner married a prominent Waco doctor, George S. Conner, and moved to his Waco home on 12^th Street. Dr. Conner was thirty-one years her senior. That same year, Conner left her job as a teacher to become a home demonstration agent, employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The demonstration program was founded in 1912 as a way to teach rural girls homemaking skills, but soon grew with the help of federal funding and statewide organization. The program provided support to farming families by supplementing clothing, undertaking home improvement projects, and even funding scholarships. 

Due to segregation, Conner was only allowed to work with black women and families. Conner’s childhood years spent on the farm, as well as her training as a teacher, made her an excellent choice for the position. Conner taught women practical lessons, such as homemaking, sewing, basic healing, better farming techniques, and personal hygiene. Due to her influence, rural schools switched from a shared ladle to individual drinking cups for school children, cutting back on the spread of germs. She traveled throughout McLennan County during the week, and stayed with her husband in Waco on the weekends. Conner furthered her academic studies as well, returning to Prairie View and earning a bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1934. After receiving her degree, she was promoted to supervisor of home demonstration agents, which meant she was in charge of the program for all of Central Texas. She continued to travel during the week, staying in private homes, because segregation kept her from staying in hotels.  In 1939, Dr. Conner died. Conner, at the age of forty-four, found herself a widow, once again supporting herself.  She returned to school, and in 1944 received her Master’s degree in home economics from Prairie View. In 1948, Conner left her position with the home demonstration program to become supervisor of the black schools of McLennan County. She found that black schools had far less supplies, inferior accommodations, and a lack of funding compared to the white schools in the county. Conner fought to reform this injustice, and combined the thirty-five smaller schools into fourteen larger ones in order to make the most use of the limited resources available. In 1952, Conner retired but continued to live an active and involved lifestyle, persisting in her quest to make a difference in people’s lives. She was part of multiple social sororities, served as president of the Texas Federation of Colored Women’s Club and was influential as a member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club. In 1966 she was appointed to the State’s Committee on Public School Education by Governor John Connally. Conner continued to be a faithful member of New Hope Baptist Church, and an active member of her community, serving throughout Waco and McLennan County until her death on June 10, 1972 at the age of 76. Jeffie Conner is remembered as one of the outstanding professional women of Waco, paving the way for future black women to follow in her footsteps and make a difference.

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Julius “Jules” Bledsoe’s extraordinary musical talent transcended racial discrimination of the nineteenth century and established him as a pioneer in American music.

Bledsoe was born on December 29, 1897, to Henry and Jessie Bledsoe in Waco. Even as a young child, he loved to sing. Bledsoe first performed publically at the age of five at New Hope Baptist Church, a church founded by his grandfather in 1866. In 1914, Bledsoe graduated from Central Texas Academy as valedictorian, and travelled to Marshall, Texas, to study liberal arts and music at Bishop College. After graduating magna cum laude in 1918, Bledsoe served as a civilian chaplain for an ROTC program at Virginia Union University in Richmond from 1918 to 1919.

In 1920, Bledsoe began his graduate study of medicine at Columbia University. After taking voice lessons with notable musicians such as Claude Warford, Luigi Parisotti, and Lazar Samoiloff, however, his career plans began to shift. He made his professional music debut on April 20, 1924, in the Aeolian Hall in mid-town Manhattan. Sol Hurok, a twentieth-century American impresario, sponsored Bledsoe’s first performance. Over the next several years, Bledsoe performed in various capacities around the city. He received his first leading role in an opera in 1926, when he performed the baritone role of Tizan in Deep River. Following one of Bledsoe’s New York performances, a critic from the New York Morning Telegraph praised Bledsoe as the star of the cast who could “pick the heart right out of anybody.”

Yet it was Bledsoe’s portrayal of Joe in a 1927 production of Jerome Kern's Showboat which launched him into the spotlight. His interpretation of the tune “Ol’ Man River” became a classic in American music. He later starred in the 1929 film production of Showboat as well. Bledsoe quickly earned international renown. He performed both in the United States and in Europe, and was praised for his command of several languages, his impressive vocal range and control, and a power to communicate ideas and emotions through music.

During this time, racial discrimination prevented African Americans from performing with major opera companies. Yet Bledsoe’s talent and renown earned him the right to perform with distinguished organizations such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the BBC Symphony in London, the Royal-Dutch Italian Opera Company, and the Cosmopolitan Opera Association in New York.

Bledsoe did not confine his career solely to the performance of music, but also composed many pieces. He wrote several spirituals and patriotic songs, such as “Pagan Prayer” and “Ode to America.” The Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam performed his African Suite, a set of four songs for voice and opera. Bledsoe also composed an opera titled Bondage in 1939, based upon Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.