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Hutchinson
Family Singers, Collection of George Fullerton.
During the administrations of John Tyler, James
Knox Polk and Zachary Taylor, guest performers entertained
at the White House with increasing frequency. Most
often they were folk singers, whose music reflected
the growing political and social unrest of the era.
Tyler was the first of seven presidents who would
hear the famous Hutchinson Family Singers in the
decades ensuing. A stirring symbol of the Yankee
spirit in music, the Hutchinsons expressed their
genuine concern for human misery and social reform
in subjects involving woman’s suffrage, alcohol,
war, prisons, and especially slavery. A similar
group, the Baker Family, sang songs with a more
sentimental than social message for President Zachary
Taylor and his family in 1849. But perhaps the most
moving musical expression at the White House during
these years was the program given by thirty blind
and deaf-mute children for President Polk in 1846,
proving that music as a mystical language could
fortify the spirits of those who knew no other means
of communication. Elise
Kirk, Musical Highlights from the White House,
30-33.
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