Robert McFerrin Sr.

Robert Keith McFerrin was born on the nineteenth of March 1921 at Marianna, in Lee County, Arkansas, the son of the Reverend Melvin McFerrin, an itinerant Baptist preacher, and Mary McKinney McFerrin. One of eight children, he was raised largely in Memphis, Tennessee, where the family settled when he was about two years old. Though his father did not wish him to sing secular music, the young McFerrin's gift carried him beyond the church walls; as a teenager he went to St. Louis to attend Sumner High School, and he later studied at Fisk University and the Chicago Musical College, from which he earned his degree in 1948.

His voice, a warm and commanding baritone, opened doors long closed to Black artists. He made an early operatic appearance in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1949 and steadily built a concert and stage career through the early 1950s, winning the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air in 1953.

On the twenty-seventh of January 1955, McFerrin stepped onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera as Amonasro in Verdi's Aida, becoming the first Black man to sing with that company — his debut following the barrier-breaking appearance of contralto Marian Anderson by less than three weeks. In 1956 he sang the title role in Rigoletto, becoming the first African American to perform a title role at the Met. Beyond the opera house, he lent his voice to the screen, supplying Porgy's singing for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess.

McFerrin was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1995 and was the father of the celebrated singer and conductor Bobby McFerrin, with whom he sometimes performed. He died on the twenty-fourth of November 2006 in St. Louis. May the pioneer who sang open a door that others might walk through it be forever honored.