Mark Twain, wrote this
about the musical genius
"Blind Tom":
One day last winter I was on my way from Galena to another Illinois
town to fill a lecture engagement. I went into the smoking car and sat
down to meditate; but it was not a good meditating place, for pretty
soon a burly negro man on the opposite side of the car began to sway
his body violently forward and back, and mimic with his mouth the hiss
and clatter of the train, in the most savagely excited way. Every time
he came forward I was sure he was going to brain himself on the seat-back
in front of him, and every time he reversed I was as certain he was
going to throw a back-somersault over his own seat. What a wild state
he was in! Clattering, hissing, whistling, blowing off gauge cocks,
ringing his bell, thundering over bridges with a row and a racket like
everything going to pieces, whooping through tunnels, running over cows
-- Heavens! I thought, will this devil never run his viewless express
off the track and give us a rest? No, sir. For three dreadful hours
he kept it up -- and you may know by that what muscles and what wind
he had. His wild eyes were sightless. For the most part he kept his
head turned sideways and upward as blind people usually do who get a
dim ray of light from apparently above the eye somewhere. He kept his
face constantly twisted and distorted out of all shape. When he spoke
he talked excitedly to himself, in an idiotic way and 
incoherently,
but never slowed down on his imaginary express train to do it. He looked
about thirty, was coarsely and slouchily dressed, and was as ungainly
in build and uncomely of countenance as any half-civilized plantation
slave. After I had endured his furious entertainment until I was becoming
as crazy as he was and getting ready to start an opposition express
on my own hook, I inquired who this barbarian was, and where he was
bound for, and why he was not chained or throttled? They said it was
Blind Tom, the celebrated pianist -- a harmless idiot to whom all sounds
were music, and the imitation of them an unceasing delight. Even discord
had a charm for his exquisite ear. Even the groaning and clattering
and hissing of a railway train was harmony to him. And this stalwart
brute was to torture his muscles all day with this terrific exercise,
and then instead of lying down at night to die of exhaustion, was to
sit behind a grand piano and bewitch a multitude with the pathos, the
tenderness, the gaiety, the thunder, the brilliant and varied inspiration
of his music!A month or two ago I attended
his performances three nights in succession. If ever there was an inspired
idiot this is the individual. He lorded it over the emotions of his
audience like an autocrat. He swept them like a storm, with his battle-pieces;
he lulled them to rest again with melodies as tender as those we hear
in dreams; he gladdened them with others that rippled through the charmed
air as happily and cheerily as the riot the linnets make in California
woods; and now and then he threw in queer imitations of the tuning of
discordant harps and fiddles, and the 
groaning and wheezing of bag-pipes,
that sent the rapt silence into tempests of laughter. And every time
the audience applauded when a piece was finished, this happy innocent
joined in and clapped his hands, too, and with vigorous emphasis. It
was not from egotism, but because it is his natural instinct to imitate
pretty much every sound he hears. When anybody else plays, the music
so crazes him with delight that he can only find relief in uplifting
a leg, depressing his head half way to the floor and jumping around
on one foot so fast that it almost amounts to spinning -- and he claps
his hands all the while, too. His head misses the piano about an inch
or an inch and a half every time he comes around, but some astonishing
instinct keeps him forever from hitting it. It must be instinct, because
he cannot see, and he must surely grow too dizzy with his spinning to
be able to measure distances and know where he is going to and whither
he is drifting. And when the volunteer is done, Tom stops spinning,
sits down and plays the piece over, exactly as the volunteer had played
it, and puts in all the slips, mistakes, discords, corrections, and
everything just where they occurred in the original performance! He
will exactly reproduce the piece, no matter how fast it was played or
how slow, or whether he ever heard it before or not. The second night
that I attended, two musical professors sat down together and played
a duet, which they had composed themselves beforehand for the occasion.
It was wonderfully tangled and complicated, wonderfully fast in movement,
and was bristling with false notes. In the midst of it "Yankee
Doodle" was interpolated, but so mutilated with intentional discords
that one could not help writhing in his seat when they rattled it off.
The bass was a brilliant piece of complication, and fitted the composition
about as well as it would have fitted any other tune -- just about.
When the piece was finished, Tom stopped spinning and took the treble
player's place alongside the bass performer, and clattered it furiously
through, with his nose in the air, and never missed a note of any kind;
and when he faithfully put in the ludicrous discords in "Yankee
Doodle," the house came down. Then the treble man came back, and
Tom took the wonderful bass and played it perfectly.
Tom will play two tunes
and sing a third at the same time, and let the audience choose the keys
he shall perform in. I heard him play "Fisher's Hornpipe"
with his right hand in two sharps (D), and "Yankee Doodle"
with his left in three flats (E flat), and sing "Tramp, tramp,
tramp, the Boys are Marching," in the key of C -- all at the same
time. It was a dreadful and disorganizing mixture of meaningless sounds,
but you could easily discover that there was "no deception,"
as the magician's say, by taking up the tunes one at a time and following
them a little while, and then you would perceive that in time, movement
and melody, each was without fault.
But the most surprising
thing this High-You Muck-a-Muck of all the negro minstrels does, is
to analyze musical sounds. If you will turn your back to the piano and
let somebody strike a key at random here and there, you will see that
you cannot call the name of two of the notes in succession except by
pure guess work; and when just one note is touched by itself you cannot
tell whether it was a black key or a white one. Blind Tom is your superior,
then, in some respects. For he can stand off at a distance, and face
the audience, with his back to the piano, and you may strike any key
you please, and he will tell its name and its color; and two persons
from the audience may select twenty keys (mixed so as to form a discord
that will give you the lockjaw), and strike them suddenly and all at
once, with their four hands -- and while the sound lingers in the air,
the listening idiot will incline his head and make a fine assay of that
sound, separate the web of discord into its individual elements, and
then begin with the first note and rapidly call the name of every key
of the twenty in succession, and never make a mistake! And twenty more
may be struck, and the fingers of the performers instantly sent scattering
at random over the full compass of the piano -- but by the time the
flash of sound had died Thomas has analyzed it and can name the notes
that made it. All the schooling of a life-time could not teach a man
to do this wonderful thing, I suppose -- but this blind, uninstructed
idiot of nineteen does it without any trouble. Some archangel, cast
out of upper Heaven like another Satan, inhabits this coarse casket;
and he comforts himself and makes his prison beautiful with thoughts
and dreams and memories of another time and another existence that fire
this dull clod with impulses and inspirations it no more comprehends
than does the stupid worm the stirring of the spirit within her of the
gorgeous captive whose wings she fetters and whose flight she stays.
It is not Blind Tom that does these wonderful things and plays this
wonderful music -- it is the other party.
We have the following pieces of sheet music by Blind Tom:
Voice Of The Waves
Wilt Thou Bring My Baby Home? (song)
Oliver Gallop
When This Cruel War Is Over
The Rainstorm
Daylight
The Battle Of Manassus
March Timpani
We also have prepared 2 PDF files with information about Blind Tom:
A 19th Century magazine article. and a short old book entitled "The Marvelous Musical Prodigy - Blind Tom"
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including the music of the spheres, the music of a Renaissance alchemist, music created by software and artificial intelligence, the music of the fairies, the music of the Illuminati, the world's most mysterious book, the world's oldest song, a way you can compose music like Mozart, the world's oldest love song,
