"ONE OF HUGHES’ BEST PLAYS AND THE CROWNING GLORY OF HIS DRAMATIC CAREER": VERY MEMORABLE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF TAMBOURINES TO GLORY, INSCRIBED BY HUGHES WHEN HIS NOVEL WAS FIRST IN REHEARSALS AS A PLAY WITH RENOWNED PRODUCER JOEL SCHENKER, WHO BROUGHT THE PLAY TO BROADWAY IN 1963
HUGHES, Langston. Tambourines to Glory. WITH: (LP) Tambourines to Glory. Gospel Songs by Langston Hughes & Jobe Huntley. New York: John Day, (1958); Folkways, (1958). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. Original LP.
First edition of Hughes' landmark novel, conceived as a play and ultimately produced on Broadway, an especially distinctive presentation/association copy warmly inscribed by Hughes to the play's producer while the play was first in rehearsal in 1960, inscribed in Hughes' trademark green ink with his flourishes, "Especially for Joel Schenker, this book that becomes your play. Sincerely, Langston Hughes. During rehearsals, Longacre, New York, August 25, 1960,” this very scarce copy accompanied by an original Folkway LP of Tambourines featuring songs by Hughes and Jobe Huntley, recorded in 1958 by the Porter Singers in Harlem.
In Tambourines to Glory, Hughes' story of a Harlem storefront church, he achieved his goal of a "theatre of celebration, which presents models for African Americans and entertainment for general audiences" (Langston Hughes, Folk Dramatist, 170). Originally drafted as a play by Hughes in the early 1950s, he initially issued the unproduced play as this 1958 novel, which prompted the interest of Broadway producer Joel Schenker. Soon after Hughes was awarded the 45th annual Springarn Medal in June 1960, he attended out-of-town rehearsals of Tambourines with its producer Schenker. When the play stalled in previews, however, the production was put on hold. It would open in November 1863 for a brief run after its innovations were criticized by influential reviewers and some in the Black church. Nevertheless Tambourines is now "considered to be among Hughes' best plays and the crowning glory of his dramatic career" (Nelson, ed, African American Dramatists, 241).
"Like his other Gospel plays, Tambourines reflects patterns of African festival drama in which the audience is directly engaged… [and] shows the linkages of the secular and the spiritual, a theme of Baldwin's Amen Corner" (McLaren, From Protest to Soul Fest, 85-6). First edition, first printing. Accompanied by original Folkways LP of Tambourines to Glory (FG 3538) in interior paper sleeve and full-color cardboard sleeve: containing "Gospel Songs by Langston Hughes & Jobe Huntley. Recorded by the Poerter Singers at Second Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, October 3, 1958." Bruccoli & Clark, 165. Blockson 6533. This very scarce presentation/association copy is inscribed by Hughes to Tambourines' producer Schenker at the beginning of his own impressive career. Famed "as a producer or co-producer of serious theater, he won the acclaim of critics like Brooks Atkinson when he and Cheryl Crawford revived O'Casey's Shadow of the Gunman in a widely hailed Actors Studio production. They followed up their success with Rivalry, a work based on the Lincoln-Douglas debates…. and Schenker in 1963 returned with another long-running hit, A Case of Libel… he also produced Peter Shaffer's 1964 epic Royal Hunt of the Sun and the 1971 revival of Pinter's Homecoming (New York Times).
Book fine; mere trace of edge-wear, faintest soiling to lovely about-fine dust jacket. LP fine.