John William Boone's professional career was launched with the event and John Lange, Jr. Boone was invited back for a concert in March, 1880 one in which he was featured with a second sightless Black pianist, Tom Wiggins Bethune known as ' Blind Tom'. The event was an annual gift to the community by a very successful builder and contractor, John Lange, Jr. The gifted young musician was invited to participate in a festival at the Second Baptist Church in Columbia. The Christmas holidays of 1879 were to bring dramatic positive change to Boone’s life. Wanderlust gripped him, however, and he strayed from home repeatedly at times, with regrettable consequences. Rachel had married widower Harrison Hendrix, the father of five, when John was eight years old. In Warrensburg, Boone lived in the Black community for the first time in his life. School officials finally expelled him from school but a conductor befriended and allowed him to ride the train home in exchange for entertaining passengers by playing his harmonica.
As an adolescent driven to find outlets for his interests and talents, Boone would sneak out to the 'adult' area of town to hear the Ragtime piano. Despite his musical gifts, instead the school was teaching him to make brooms. He quickly demonstrated his ability to reproduce on the piano any musical piece he heard. Warrenberg's city fathers purchased the railroad ticket that brought John William to the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Rachel sought ways to have John educated and succeeded in recruiting the town's assistance. Soon John organized a band with instruments that included tin whistle, drum, and tambourine.
He had a tin whistle at age five with which he could play tunes and imitate the sounds of birds. At age three, he was capable of beating out rhythms. Greatly loved, young John William was a happy, musically gifted child. John William lost his sight, but not his brain capacity and intelligence. There was one way to accomplish that, by surgical removal of the eyes. Only a very radical surgical procedure offered a chance to save the child's life releasing pressure from the swelling of the brain. At six months of age, the Young Boone became very ill with "brain fever." Shortly after Boone was born, his mother moved to Warrensburg, Missouri where she earned a living by cleaning the homes of prominent white families. The regiment's bugler was his father, but they were never to know each other. She used the surname, Boone, on the 1870 Federal Census. The descendants of white pioneer Daniel Boone owned her. He was a Black musician.īorn at a federal army camp near Miami, Missouri, his mother, Rachel, was a runaway slave who had taken refuge with the regiment of the Union Army as a cook. John William “Blind” Boone was born on this date in 1864.