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When the much-hallowed Abraham Lincoln was a still presidential candidate, there lived in Georgia a blind, autistic, slave boy with a flawless memory. Folks came far and wide to marvel how he never forgot a thing. At the ripe old age of eleven, he made White House history. Yet today, as another milestone is marked, who even remembers him?
'Blind Tom' was born Thomas Greene, died Thomas Wiggins, and for much of the time in between, was known as Thomas Bethune, his changing surname a measure not of his genealogy but slave status. By the time he arrived in Washington in the summer of 1860, he had been sold on the auction block by a master unwilling to shoulder a 'useless burden'; installed in the Big House under the watchful eye of another master who saw in him the stirrings of a musical prodigy; and licensed out to a Barnumstyle showman who touted him as "The Wonder of the World; The Marvel of the Age."
And indeed, Blind Tom's powers were inexplicably fantastic. As well as a flawless memory, he had an all-consuming passion for sound and a mind-boggling ability to replicate - musically and vocally - anything he heard. Thunderstorms...