When I think of the presidents and music, my mind drifts from the elegance of Pablo Casals’ cello performance at the Kennedy White House in 1961 to boisterous convention halls playing John Philip Sousa marches.
Yet, a select few of our presidents have been musicians of the first order, able to play and be recognized for their skills.
Let’s examine them in roughly chronological order.
Thomas Jefferson was a virtuoso violinist whose skills helped him win the hand of Martha Skelton in marriage. Her other suitors backed away once Jefferson serenaded Martha on his violin. He also played cello and clavichord.
John Quincy Adams our 6th President, was an accomplished flutist who wrote his own compositions while attending Harvard University.
Our 9th President, John Tyler, who ascended to the presidency after the death of William Henry Harrison, trained from an early age to become a concert violinist. His father pressured him to become a lawyer instead, so Tyler dropped his professional musical aspirations. After his term in office, he often played with his second wife Julia, an accomplished guitarist, to entertain their guests.
Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson also played violin after their oval office hours. Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan played harmonica. Coolidge’s Vice President, Charles Dawes, wrote the later-to-be-famous song All in The Game. Gilded Age president Chester Arthur played the banjo.
Warren Harding played multiple instruments too, famously playing the tuba at the 1920 Republican Convention to celebrate winning the nomination for president.
Both Harry Truman and Richard Nixon were accomplished pianists, honing their skills from an early age. However, this common talent was at the center of a feud that lasted over a decade.
Nixon, who wrote Concerto #1 of his own at an early age, also played violin, saxophone, clarinet, and accordion. He ran for Vice President on the 1952 Republican ticket with Dwight Eisenhower, becoming the aggressive attacker of then sitting President Harry Truman.
Truman, a Democrat, also trained on the piano from an early age, and famously played as a politician, once with movie star Lauren Bacall sitting atop the piano.
Harry Truman never took kindly to criticism. He didn’t like all the accusations tossed toward his administration by Richard Nixon during the 1952 campaign. It’s clear he held a grudge against Nixon long after he left the White House and Eisenhower/Nixon took over.
The feud spilled out in public in 1958 when Harry refused in advance to play a duet with Nixon at the National Press Club in Washington.
In 1969, as president, Nixon tried to mend fences with Truman, donating the piano Truman played at the White House for use at his retirement home in Independence Missouri. Nixon played the Missouri Waltz for Harry and Bess, but Truman stood by stone faced and unwilling to smile for the cameras, holding onto that grudge.
Nixon went on to set new standards for White House public entertainment by playing piano to accompany singer Pearl Bailey and duets with Duke Ellington.
In modern times, Bill Clinton’s saxophone-playing appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992 may have been a turning point in that campaign against George H. W. Bush. He played Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel wearing sunglasses and won over the hearts and minds of many younger and minority voters. Once in office, Clinton had a special music room set up at the White House so he could play at any time.
Lastly, although he did not play an instrument, Barack Obama was a pretty good singer, crooning to Sweet Home Chicago and Let’s Stay Together.
Altogether, 13 of our 46 presidents have had legitimate musical skills, helping us flesh out more of their backgrounds and bringing them to life.
Interested in learning more about the presidents? Visit the Carolyn & James Millar Presidential Gallery on the upper level of the Booth Western Art Museum. The gallery features original letters and photographs of every U.S. president. Learn more at www.boothmuseum.org.
