William Warfield - Vocal Decline

Vocal Decline

Beginning in 1962, Warfield began to have some trouble with his voice, as he himself admitted in his autobiography. This was only slightly noticeable on the 1962 studio recording of Show Boat. By the time he made the 1966 recording of the Lincoln Center production of the musical, his voice had deepened from merely bass-baritone to a full-fledged bass, and he could not sing the climactic high note on Ol' Man River as easily as he had in the 1951 film version, though he sounded fine on his lower notes. Because of this problem, however, he compensated by learning how to sing even more expressively than he had before.

By 1976, Warfield, although still making various stage and television appearances, was not singing as much as he had in the past. He served as narrator in various orchestral works, such as Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and occasionally performed sprechstimme roles in works by Arnold Schoenberg. However, he did sing on occasion during his final years, despite the fact that by then his singing voice was practically gone. In those years, when he sang Ol' Man River, he would not perform it with the original lyrics, but with the altered ones that Paul Robeson used in his recitals beginning in 1938.

He died in 2002, from injuries he sustained in a fall.