Donald Pippin, a boy from Knoxville, lived out his dream on Broadway

John Shearer
·4 min read
Publicity photo of Donald Pippin during the height of his career. Once a child in Knoxville, he went on to receive prestigious Tony and Emmy awards and was the music director and conductor of some of the more famous Broadway musicals over the last 60 years, including “Mame,” “A Chorus Line,” “Applause,” and “La Cage aux Folles.” He died June 9, 2022, at age 95.

When Donald Pippin was a small child in Knoxville in the 1930s, he became acquainted with a young piano instructor named Evelyn Miller.

Through her skillful and challenging teaching and his gifts and drive, he later moved through the world of Broadway and show business as easily as he did across his keyboard as a youngster.

In fact, he went on to receive Tony and Emmy awards and was the music director and conductor of some of the more famous Broadway musicals over the last 60 years, including “Mame,” “A Chorus Line,” “Applause,” and “La Cage aux Folles.”

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The accomplishments and longtime friends have come to the forefront again because Pippin died on June 9 outside his longtime home in New York City at the age of 95.

Donald Pippin as a Baylor School student in Chattanooga. Once a child in Knoxville, he went on to receive prestigious Tony and Emmy awards and was the music director and conductor of some of the more famous Broadway musicals over the last 60 years, including “Mame,” “A Chorus Line,” “Applause,” and “La Cage aux Folles.” He died June 9, 2022, at age 95.

While his death in retirement received little attention outside New York and the world of Broadway and entertainment, he might have been one of the more accomplished music directors ever to come out of East Tennessee.

The McClung Historical Collection is full of old Knoxville newspaper clippings of his various accomplishments and his longtime friendship with Miller.

This collaboration reportedly began in the early 1930s in a meat market, an unlikely place for developing a fine small motor skill like playing the piano.

Pippin’s father, Earl (whom some sources have called Earle), was the meat market manager at an A&P in East Knoxville after the family moved from the younger Pippin’s birthplace of Macon, Georgia. He became acquainted with Miller and told her about Donald, as well as wife Irene’s interest in him playing the piano.

Evelyn Miller, age 94, is photographed in 2004 with the piano in her room at Shannondale, where she usually practiced for four hours a day.
Evelyn Miller, age 94, is photographed in 2004 with the piano in her room at Shannondale, where she usually practiced for four hours a day.

She agreed to teach him from her home at 2133 Magnolia Ave. before moving out to the Asheville Highway and Chilhowee Drive areas in the Depression. He reportedly showed such promise early that he won a statewide youth competition against older children.

At the time, the Pippin family lived at such North Knoxville addresses as 210 and 201 Colonial Ave. and 432 Radford Place, and Donald attended McCampbell and Lincoln Park elementary schools.

Sadly, his mother died on June 22, 1938, after the active member of Lincoln Park Methodist had been ill for three weeks.

Distraught, Donald’s father sent Donald and his son Earl Jr. to Baylor School in Chattanooga before moving down there. He later remarried and did grocery-related work that later included owning businesses. Miller helped from afar, finding an accomplished Chattanooga teacher for Donald.

The youth began playing the piano and organ around Chattanooga at churches and a radio station and later attended the Juilliard School after a stint in the Army. He continued to pursue his dream in New York, playing at bars and churches there and working in smaller theaters and with the fledgling ABC and NBC TV networks.

His big break came when he boldly went into noted producer David Merrick’s office and told him he would love to be the musical director for Merrick’s 1963 production of “Oliver” after previously working in a more minor role on a previous Merrick production.

Surprisingly, he was hired. Also somewhat surprising for a first-timer, he won the Tony for musical directing and conducting. He reportedly was so new to the upper level of Broadway that he was not initially sure what a Tony was after learning he had been nominated.

He would go on to work with such greats as Angela Lansbury and Lauren Bacall and become the music director of Radio City Music Hall as it began its revival.

He won an Emmy Award for a 1987 PBS TV showing of “Broadway Sings: The Music of Jule Styne.”

He was also married to actress and singer Marie Santell for a period.

This home at 1620 W. Clinch Ave. in Fort Sanders, shown on June 28, 2022, was owned for a number of years by well-known local piano instructor Evelyn Miller and where noted musical director and former student Donald Pippin visited her while directing the music of several Broadway hit shows.
This home at 1620 W. Clinch Ave. in Fort Sanders, shown on June 28, 2022, was owned for a number of years by well-known local piano instructor Evelyn Miller and where noted musical director and former student Donald Pippin visited her while directing the music of several Broadway hit shows.

Despite rubbing shoulders with some of the big-name performers, he never forgot Miller and Knoxville. A 1969 newspaper story discusses him stopping by to visit his aunt, Mrs. Charles Graham of Concord, and Miller, who then lived at 1620 W. Clinch Ave. Miller, who later started the Young Pianist Series and was an accomplished pianist in her own right, lived there and taught for several years before moving to Sequoyah Hills.

And on March 16, 1996, about 10 years before her death at the Shannondale retirement center at the age of 96, Pippin conducted the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum and dedicated the show to Miller.

Of her, this man known for his warm manner once said, “Through the years she became like my surrogate mother. She was family to me.”

The longtime Magnolia Avenue United Methodist organist had similar praises for Pippin, saying, “From the beginning, he was continuously growing in talent and execution, always capitalizing on every opportunity that came his way.”

From those initial Knoxville piano lessons with Miller in the 1930s that cost 50 cents, he would go on to deeply enrich the lives of everyone.

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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Donald Pippin: Knoxville boy lived his dream on Broadway