Born in Mississippi and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas,[1] Still attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music[2][3] as a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and then Edgard Varèse.

[4] Because of his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, Still is considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance.

He taught himself to play the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello and viola, and showed a great interest in music.

[13]: 3 His mother wanted him to go to medical school, so Still pursued a bachelor of science degree program at Wilberforce University, a historically black college in Ohio.

[1]: 7 Upon receiving a small amount of money left to him by his father, he began studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

[10] On February 8, 1939, he married pianist Verna Arvey, driving to Tijuana for the ceremony because interracial marriage was illegal in California.

[10] During this time, Still was involved with many cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance including the likes of Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Arna Bontemps, and Countee Cullen.

[20] Later in the 1920s, Still served as the arranger of Yamekraw, a "Negro Rhapsody", composed by the Harlem stride pianist James P.

[10] By the end of World War II, the piece had been performed in orchestras located in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, and London.

[10] In 1934, Still moved to Los Angeles after receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship,[23] allowing him to start work on the first of his nine operas, Blue Steel.

[25][19] Still arranged music for films such as Pennies from Heaven, starring Bing Crosby and Madge Evans, and Lost Horizon, starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe,[10] the latter of which, he arranged the music of Dimitri Tiomkin.

Still was also hired to arrange music for the 1943 film Stormy Weather, but left because "Twentieth-Century Fox 'degraded colored people.

Three years after his death, A Bayou Legend became the first opera by an African-American composer to be performed on national television.