I have now located my copy of Cather's 1999, self published pamphlet Tracking Down a Legend: The "Jaybird" Coleman Story. Much of it is essentially what he wrote in 1962 but how he ends this new piece of writing I found interesting:
"Early in 1950, Jaybird became ill. His brother took him to the Negro ward of a local hospital, but the singer died before he was even admitted. I inferred at the time that Joe did not particularly want to talk about his brother's death. He did tell me that Jaybird was buried in Bessemer's Lincoln Memorial Gardens with a veteran's tombstone. Sometime after my visit with Joe, I was able to find the grave and photograph it. Joe's delightful wife, Lizzie, owned the only known photograph of "Jaybird" taken at Ft. McClellan during the First World War. I purchased the rights to the photograph from her and printed it as part of a copyrighted story in the September 1962 issue of Music Memories. When I reread the article to prepare this booklet, I was privately embarrassed at how bad the writing was (and, in one or two places, how the article bordered on the patronization which passed for racial "moderation" in 1962 Birmingham). But I was just a fresh-faced kid.
That was twenty-eight years ago. There was no archives department at the local library; there was no Birmingham or Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame; there was no Alabama Music Hall of Fame Museum in the Tri-Cities. Just a kid, tracking down a legend. And trying to build a bridge between black and white."
"Early in 1950, Jaybird became ill. His brother took him to the Negro ward of a local hospital, but the singer died before he was even admitted. I inferred at the time that Joe did not particularly want to talk about his brother's death. He did tell me that Jaybird was buried in Bessemer's Lincoln Memorial Gardens with a veteran's tombstone. Sometime after my visit with Joe, I was able to find the grave and photograph it. Joe's delightful wife, Lizzie, owned the only known photograph of "Jaybird" taken at Ft. McClellan during the First World War. I purchased the rights to the photograph from her and printed it as part of a copyrighted story in the September 1962 issue of Music Memories. When I reread the article to prepare this booklet, I was privately embarrassed at how bad the writing was (and, in one or two places, how the article bordered on the patronization which passed for racial "moderation" in 1962 Birmingham). But I was just a fresh-faced kid.
That was twenty-eight years ago. There was no archives department at the local library; there was no Birmingham or Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame; there was no Alabama Music Hall of Fame Museum in the Tri-Cities. Just a kid, tracking down a legend. And trying to build a bridge between black and white."