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Ontario-born jazz pianist Lou Hooper (1894–1977) began his professional career in Detroit, accompanying blues singers such as Ma Rainey at the legendary Koppin Theatre. In 1921 he moved to Harlem, performing alongside Paul Robeson and recording extensively in and around Tin Pan Alley, before moving to Montreal in the 1930s.
Prolific and influential, Hooper was an early teacher of Oscar Peterson and deeply involved in the jazz community in Montreal. When the Second World War broke out he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and entertained the troops in Europe. Near the end of his life Hooper came to prominence for his exceptional career and place in the history of jazz, inspiring an autobiography that was never published. Statesman of the Piano makes this document widely available for the first time and includes photographs, concert programs, lyrics, and other documents to reconstruct his life and times. Historians, archivists, musicians, and cultural critics provide annotations and commentary, examining some of the themes that emerge from Hooper’s writing and music.
Statesman of the Piano sparks new conversations about Hooper’s legacy while shedding light on the cross-border travels and wartime experiences of Black musicians, the politics of archiving and curating, and the connections between race and music in the twentieth century.
“Statesman of the Piano provides a fascinating lens, one that corroborates current research and adds new detail and insights. Hooper’s story shows how a Canadian-born Black man was able to thrive in Jim Crow America. Moreover, the breakdown of black nightclubs/venues in the forties and fifties in southwest Montreal brings a new punctuation to the city’s jazz history.” Dorothy W. Williams, author of Blacks in Montreal, 1628–1986: An Urban Demography
"This book pushes Hooper into the annals of Canadian jazz history [and] is a vital contribution to Black Canadian history as it gives voice to a legend while hailing the reader to be curious, seek out the archive, learn about our hidden figures, and build community." Canadian Historical Review
"Statesman of the Piano is a terrific scholarly experiment in archival recovery and interpretation. [The essays] are a fine and suggestive collection that should drive more conversations about Hooper in a variety of cultural contexts. A remarkably creative project that opens up fresh conversations about jazz autobiography, Black Canadian storytelling, and revolutionary cultural production in exciting ways." American Review of Canadian Studies
"Jazz fans will be most interested by … pages dedicated to Harlem. Hooper relocated to the borough in the 1920s, where he made some of his most famous recordings with the likes of clarinetist Bob Fuller and banjoist Elmer Snowden, accompanying singers and recording instrumentals under group names such as the Three Jolly Miners and The Choo Choo Jazzers." La Scena Musicale
“Statesman of the Piano is a fantastic and necessary addition to the little extant scholarship on Black musicians in Canada. Hooper’s autobiography, together with the accompanying documents [and] essays, form a powerful contribution to Canadian music scholarship. [His] story is one that should be taught and studied in all Canadian and American post-secondary institutions.” CAML Review
Sean Mills is Canada Research Chair in Canadian and Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal and *A Place in the Sun: Haiti, Haitians, and the Remaking of Quebec. *
Eric Fillion is adjunct professor and Buchanan Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian History at Queen’s University.
Désirée Rochat is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University.