Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946)
Born: 24 Dec. 1881 , Johnstown, PA
Died: 30 Dec. 1946, Los Angeles, CAA native of Pennsylvania, Cadman was educated in Pittsburgh, where he spent time as a church organist and music critic. In 1904, he began publishing organ pieces and ballads. But it was an interest in American Indian lore than really launched his composing career.
Inspired by the various ethnological inquiries then in vogue in America's ill-fated quest to preserve the dwindling Native American culture, Cadman spent the summer of 1909 collecting and recording Omaha and Winnebago tribal melodies and studying American Indian music. With a Native American princess, the mezzo-soprano Tsianina Redfeather, he toured the country between 1909 and 1916, giving music-talks on Amerindian music.
Any reputation left to Charles Wakefield Cadman is based on a pseudo-Indian song popular in the 1920s, called "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water." In the 1930s, though, he was San Diego's leading musical celebrity.
There were frequent Charles Wakefield Cadman salutes by local musical groups, one of which was named for him. Small wonder, then, that he and his widowed mother settled here in 1929, eventually buying a house in Kensington.
With Nelle Richmond Eberhardt, he wrote more than 300 songs and one opera, "Shanewis," which was produced during the 1918-19 seasons by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Chicago Civic Opera produced his "A Witch of Salem" in 1926.
Most of his writing in San Diego was symphonic. His "Dark Dancers of the Mardi Gras" was played by the San Diego Symphony and most other major orchestras around the country. He also wrote a "Resurrection" for the annual Mount Helix Easter sunrise service.
After his mother's death in 1938, Cadman moved to Los Angeles, where he was much involved with the early days of the Hollywood Bowl. When he died, friends recalled that he "was always in a hurry, even when he had no place to go."
[from an article by Welton Jones in the San Diego Union Tribune and from PBS / WNET.org]
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