John Heyl Vincent

John Heyl Vincent (1832-1920) was an American educator and religious leader. He was instrumental in establishing the Chautauqua lectures, an important means of adult education in 19th-century America.

John Heyl Vincent was born on Feb. 23, 1832, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., moved with his family to Pennsylvania in 1837, and was educated at home and in various academies in the Lewisburg area. After sundry work experiences, Vincent was licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1849, and in 1851 he became a circuit rider in New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois.

Vincent studied at a Methodist seminary and became minister of the important Trinity Church in Chicago in 1865. There he established and edited journals aimed at improving the educational arm of the church. He was reassigned to New York as general agent of the Methodist Sunday School Union in 1866. For the next 20 years he was a leader of the American Sunday School movement.

Vincent created the Sunday School Assembly at a campsite on Lake Chautauqua, N.Y., a summer experience for church instructors, in 1874. With Vincent as superintendent, the venture was enormously successful and soon abandoned denominational concerns in favor of general cultural studies with strong infusions of morality and inspiration. The festive, family-vacation atmosphere attracted thousands of visitors from all parts of the nation. Those unable to make the pilgrimage to New York were served, after 1878, by the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circles, a home reading and correspondence course that followed a 4-year curriculum designed by Vincent. The circles, instantly popular, filled a need not met by the classically oriented colleges.

In 1881 the Chautauqua School of Theology was chartered, and in 1883 the Chautauqua University, with Vincent as chancellor, was created. But the public appetite for culture was insatiable. Another camp was started in Ohio, and by 1900 fully 200 pavilions had been established in 31 states, bringing lectures by the period's most eminent scholars and statesmen to thousands.

In 1888 Vincent's election as a bishop of the Methodist Church diverted him from popular culture. He served in New York and Kansas until his retirement in 1904 in Switzerland as director of Methodist interests in Europe. He spent his retirement lecturing and writing, usually on themes connected with Chautauqua. He died on May 9, 1920.

Further Reading

There is no adequate biography of Vincent. Leon H. Vincent, John Heyl Vincent: A Biographical Sketch (1925), is uncritical. Vincent's role in Chautauqua is described in Victoria and Robert Ormond Case, We Called It Culture: The Story of Chautauqua (1948), and in Rebecca Richmond, Chautauqua (1943), but both books have larger concerns. Similarly, John H. Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement (1886), is more concerned with the movement than with its founder.

Quotes:

"Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs."

• Born: 1902
• Died: 1977
• Genres: Rhythm & Blues
• Instrument: Producer

Biography

As owner of and producer for Ace Records, John Vincent played an important part in the prime years of New Orleans R&B in the late '50s, working with Huey Smith, Frankie Ford, Jimmy Clanton, and others. Born John Vincent Imbragulio, he got into the music business as a retailer, distributor, and talent scout. At this time he was also starting to produce blues and country singers in Jackson, MS, including Big Boy Crudup. He bumped up another level when he started working for Specialty Records as head of their New Orleans operations in 1952. It was at the suggestion of Specialty's Art Rupe that he changed his name to John Vincent.

Working for Specialty, Vincent crossed paths with John Lee Hooker, the Soul Stirrers, Lloyd Price, and others, and produced Guitar Slim's "The Things That I Used to Do," usually regarded as a pivotal moment in the transition from R&B to rock music. He left Specialty in 1955 as relations between him and Rupe became strained, founding his own label, Ace Records, that year. From his work in New Orleans for Specialty and other companies, Vincent already had solid contacts to much Crescent City talent, and got his first R&B hit quickly with Earl King's "Those Lonely, Lonely Nights." Vincent began recording frequently in the famous New Orleans studio of Cosimo Matassa.

For a while a teenage Mac Rebennack, later to become famous as Dr. John, worked for Ace as a producer, session musician, and recording artist. In his autobiography, Dr. John recalled the experience in a manner that made it difficult to determine whether he admired or despised Vincent: "Johnny Vincent was a very good con artist. For instance, if the session was with Huey Smith, he'd say, 'Huu-ree, put some sh*t into it.' And everybody would respond and, sure enough, put some sh*t into it. That was it; that was the compiled wisdom of Johnny Vincent's approach to making records."

Ace didn't become a leading independent company, however, until Vincent got hits with Huey "Piano" Smith, first crossing over to the pop market in a mild fashion with "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," then getting a pop smash with Smith's "Don't You Just Know It." Smith epitomized the good-time, humorous aspect of early New Orleans rock & roll, and whatever his exact contributions to A&R, Vincent deserves credit for recognizing his potential and releasing his music. It was also Smith who did the original version of "Sea Cruise," rightly recognized as the finest early New Orleans rock record. In a somewhat controversial decision, Vincent replaced the vocal on Smith's version (by Bobby Marchan of Smith's band the Clowns) and dubbed a different one by white teenager Frankie Ford onto the same backing track. Ford's version became a big national hit and all-time classic, and when tapes of the original Marchan-sung track become available on reissues, it seemed clear that Vincent had exercised good judgment in using Ford's vocal rather than Marchan's.

Vincent made other ventures into white New Orleans rock & roll with another young singer, Jimmy Clanton. Although Clanton's hits "Just a Dream" and "Go, Jimmy, Go" are sometimes classified as teen idol rock, and Clanton was certainly marketed to the teen idol music, they did retain a New Orleans R&B-rock feel. It was Clanton and (to a lesser degree) Ford who gave Ace its greatest success as the 1950s ended, although Vincent continued to record more blues- and R&B-directed artists such as James Booker and Alvin "Red" Tyler.

In the early '60s, Ace Records began to struggle as the New Orleans sound began to sound passé in the midst of other developing pop/rock trends. Vincent made a distribution deal for Ace with one of the biggest independents in the country, Vee-Jay, but this backfired badly when Vee-Jay went out of business in the mid-'60s. Vincent even lost control of his masters, and left the music business altogether for a time, selling the publishing rights to some of his hits for far less than they were worth. He did assume control of a reactivated Ace in the 1990s, when some of the Ace catalog was transferred to CD. (Vincent's Ace Records, incidentally, was and is totally unrelated to the label of the same name based in London, which is one of the world's leading reissue labels.) ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide