William Caesar Warfield

William Caesar Warfield
Personal details
Birth name	William Caesar Warfield
Born	22 January 1920 West Helena, Arkansas
Died	25 August 2002 Chicago, Illinois
Nativity	United States
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	32550394
Enlisted	Rochester, New York

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William Caesar Warfield (22 January 1920 – 25 August 2002) was an American concert bass-baritone and Ritchie Boy, one of fewer than one hundred African American soldiers trained at Camp Ritchie, who went on to an international career in concert, opera, stage, film, and television, and won a Grammy Award in 1984.

Biography

William Caesar Warfield was born on 22 January 1920 in West Helena, Arkansas, the eldest of five sons of a Baptist minister, and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. In 1938, as a senior at Washington High School in Rochester, he won the Music Educators National Song Competition in St. Louis. He went on to the Eastman School of Music, and in November 1942, as a senior there, he was inducted into the Army; he gave his graduation recital to an overflow audience at Kilbourn Hall on 18 November 1942 and attended his graduation the following May in uniform.

Warfield was at first assigned to the ordnance department as a truck driver, but after objecting on the strength of his language skills he was sent to Camp Ritchie, one of fewer than one hundred African American Ritchie Boys. His German, perfected through his music studies, had brought him there, but because of segregation it was never put to intelligence use; instead he was in charge of stage shows and conversed with German, Italian, and French prisoners in their own languages. He left the Army, where he had served in military intelligence, in 1946 and returned to Eastman to complete a master's degree that year.

In 1946 Warfield joined the road tour of Call Me Mister, whose cast included William Marshall, Carl Reiner, Buddy Hackett, and Bob Fosse, and over the next three years he appeared in Set My People Free and the opera Regina while studying through the American Theatre Wing's veterans' program. He made his New York recital debut at Town Hall on 19 March 1950, then toured Australia for 35 concerts for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1951 he made his screen debut as Joe in MGM's Show Boat, a star-making performance, and appeared on The Colgate Comedy Hour and TV Recital Hall. In 1952 he sang Porgy in a State Department–sponsored European tour of Porgy and Bess opposite Leontyne Price, whom he soon married; they divorced in 1973 but recorded excerpts from the opera together in 1963. He made six State Department tours, more than any other American solo artist. He premiered Aaron Copland's Old American Songs (Set I with orchestra in 1955, Set II with piano in 1958), appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955, sang in recordings of Handel's Messiah under Leonard Bernstein (1956) and Eugene Ormandy (1959), played "The Lord" twice on live television in Hallmark Hall of Fame's The Green Pastures, and was a soloist on Bernstein's Young People's Concerts in 1961. When singing "Ol' Man River" in concert he used the altered lyrics that Paul Robeson had adopted; he recorded the song on three Show Boat albums and reprised Joe at Lincoln Center in 1966 and in Vienna in 1972.

From 1962 Warfield had trouble with his voice, which deepened to a true bass, and he increasingly turned to narration, including Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and to speaking roles in works by Arnold Schoenberg. In 1969 he took part in a public-service oratorio in Riverside Park with the New York All-City High School Chorus. In 1975 he was a soloist with the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts in Central Park and became Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, later chairing its voice department; he reprised Porgy with the Lake George Opera Festival in 1976. In March 1984 he won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word recording for his narration of Lincoln Portrait with the Eastman Philharmonia. The William Warfield Scholarship Fund, founded in 1977 and later presided over by his nephew Thomas Warfield, supports young African American classical singers at Eastman; its recipients have included Claron McFadden and Nicole Cabell. He appeared in the film Old Explorers (1990) with James Whitmore and José Ferrer, playing a tugboat captain in a nod to Show Boat, whose footage of him was also used in That's Entertainment!; narrated a jazz arrangement of Show Boat music on the radio program Riverwalk Jazz in the 1990s, moved to Northwestern University's School of Music in 1994, and from 1999 toured with the trio "Three Generations", singing spirituals and folk songs. Warfield died in Chicago on 25 August 2002, after treatment at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for neck injuries from a fall a month earlier.

Research notes

• See Selling; p.149
• Entertainment Director
• Bass-baritone; "Porgy and Bess"

Gallery

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Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	82
Nara ASN	32550394
Nara Name	WARFIELD WILLIAM C
Nara State	23
Nara County	55
Nara POE	2378
Nara DOE	171142
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	BI
Nara Branch Code	0
Branch	Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
Nara Term or Enlistment	5
Term of enlistment	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	87
Nativity.1	ARKANSAS
Nara Year of Birth	20
Nara Race	2
Nara Race Description	Negro citizen
Nara Education	6
Nara Civilian Occupation	24
Nara Marital Status	6
Nara Height (inches)	71
Nara Weight (lbs)	251
row_source	demographics
Census_HISTID	825BD8B3-016E-4758-B431-B8C49C004478
Census_State	NEW YORK
Census_Relate	Child
Census_Sex	Male
Census_Age	20
Census_BirthYear	1920
Census_Marital	Never married/single
Census_Race	Black/African American
Census_BPL	ARKANSAS
Census_MBPL	0
Census_FBPL	0
Census_Educ	1 year of college
Census_OCC	995

Timeline

• Born 22 January 1920 in Arkansas.
• November 1942 — Inducted into the Army while a senior at the Eastman School of Music.
• 1946 — Discharged from the Army; completed master's degree at Eastman.
• 19 March 1950 — New York recital debut at Town Hall.
• 1951 — Played Joe in MGM's Show Boat.
• 1952 — Porgy in the State Department European tour of Porgy and Bess.
• 1975 — Professor of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• March 1984 — Grammy Award for spoken word recording (Lincoln Portrait).
• 1994 — Joined Northwestern University's School of Music.
• 25 August 2002 — Died in Chicago, Illinois.

Sources

• Wikipedia: William Warfield
• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of William C Warfield for Camp Ritchie (private research document; 1 source documents reviewed)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Warfield, William C for Camp Ritchie (private research files; selected non-private narrative findings; 1 source files: WILLIAM WARFIELD.doc)