Edward Abbe Niles papers

Edward Abbe Niles, Trinity class of 1916, came from a line of Trinity graduates, the first being his grandfather William Woodruff Niles, class of 1857. After graduation from both Trinity and Berkeley Divinity School, W.W. Niles came back to Trinity College and taught both Latin and History. During his tenure he married a local woman, Bertha Olmsted, who had two sons — who would also attend Trinity College — Edward Cullen Niles (Trinity 1887) and the Reverend William Porter Niles (Trinity 1893). Edward Abbe Niles was the son of Edward Cullen Niles.

A copyright lawyer for the New York firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, "Abbe" Niles was also an amateur pianist with an interest in music. He played often and collected sheet music that interested him. It was during his time at Trinity that he obtained his first piece of sheet music by William Christopher "W.C." Handy, "The Memphis Blues." Niles recounts the story of how this piece of music resonated with him in his forward to W.C. Handy’s autobiography, Father of the Blues. Niles calls the score “an olive branch among the mallows of that year’s popular music” and notes that then he didn’t know what to make of the piece except that it was a blend of blues and ragtime. "I did not identify what was to become the 'blues pattern,' and I cannot say that I then and there consciously recognized the fact that here was a mature voice, speaking in its natural accents," he said of the score.

While at the time Niles didn’t know what made the piece of music so different, he followed his own advice: "listen to what makes you uncomfortable." This was his approach to music and in later years, it is what made Niles one of the leading critics of the new style of music that would emerge — Jazz. Robert Goffin in Jazz: From the Congo to the Metropolitan describes jazz as "a sort of commedia dell’ arte. The original manuscript is only a rough outline, to be given body and soul by the musician. What is important in jazz is not the written text, but the way it is expressed by the musician." He goes on to compare jazz to classical music: "A Symphony is 'eternal'; jazz is dynamic and many-sided."

Niles also worked with this idea when he wrote about music. He had a regular column in The Bookman (Ballads, Songs, and Snatches), and wrote for The Nation and The New Republic, among others. At the time, he wrote critiques of jazz recordings as well as newly published books on jazz. Niles became immersed in the jazz world and had many friends in the jazz and blues circles. One of his close friends was W.C. Handy, who he befriended a number of years after discovering blues, but in time to assist Handy with his autobiography, as well as to offer him legal advice.

Edward Abbe Niles died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1963 while refereeing a match at the National Amateur Tennis Championship in Long Island, New York.