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African-American musical theater includes late 19th- and early 20th-century musical theater productions by African Americans in New York City and Chicago. Actors from troupes such as the Lafayette Players also crossed over into film. The Pekin Theatre in Chicago was a popular and influential venue. [1]
The African Grove Theatre opened in New York City in 1821.
Before the late 1890s, the image portrayed of African Americans on Broadway was a "secondhand vision of black life created by European-American performers." Stereotyped "coon songs" were popular, and blackface was common. Minstrel shows were often performed in early history and were inspired by black music. These shows were first performed by white people who used blackface in the 1800s. Many of these performers wore old ripped clothing, some stolen from slaves, to "represent" the enslaved African Americans. Along with the clothing, the white performers portrayed black people as lazy, thieves, and dumb.
The Hyers Sisters have been credited with creating the first American musicals in the 1870s. Trained opera singers, they toured the United States for 20 years, performing 'comic operas' that broke with minstrel show stereotypes and told stories about slavery and freedom. [2] Another pioneering Black touring group was Sherman H. Dudley's Smart Set Company, whose musical comedies in the early 1900s bridged the gap between old Minstrel-style stereotypes and more upscale, authentic and self-referential humour. [3]
Will Marion Cook and Bob Cole brought black-written musical comedy to Broadway in 1898. Cook's Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk , an hour-long sketch that was the first all-black show to play in a prestigious Broadway house, Casino Theatre's Roof Garden. Cole's A Trip to Coontown was the first full-length New York musical comedy written, directed and performed exclusively by blacks. The approach of the two composers were diametrically opposed: Cole believed that African Americans should try to compete with European Americans by proving their ability to act similarly on- and offstage, while Cook thought African Americans should not imitate European Americans but instead create their own style.[ citation needed ]
Bob Cole and brothers John Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson focused on elevating the lyrical sophistication of African American songs. Their first collaboration was "Louisiana Lize", a love song written in a new lyrical style that left out the watermelons, razors, and "hot mamas" typical of earlier "coon songs." [4]
Cole and the Johnson brothers went on to create musicals such as The Belle of Bridgeport, The Red Moon (with Joe Jordan), The Shoo-Fly Regiment, In Newport, Humpty Dumpty, and Sally in Our Alley (featuring Bob Cole's "Under The Bamboo Tree"). Bob Cole's suicide in 1911 ended "one of the promising musical comedy teams yet seen on Broadway". [ citation needed ]
Bert Williams and George Walker, called the "Two Real Coons", found fame in 1896 with a musical farce called The Gold Bug. The duo's performance of the cakewalk was successful. Williams met Walker in San Francisco in 1893, while they played Dahomeyans in an exhibit of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. They played different venues while putting together their act.[ citation needed ]
Williams and Walker were dropped from "Isham's Octoroons", one of the first African American companies to break from the minstrel style performance. [5] They then put together a number of small productions including A Lucky Coon, Sons of Ham , and The Policy Players, but their ultimate goal was to produce and star in their own Broadway musical. So they thought back to the times in San Francisco and produced In Dahomey (1903) alongside Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jesse A. Shipp, and Will Marion Cook. Abyssinia (1906) and Bandanna Land (1908) were also significant parts of Williams and Walker's claim to fame. Their dreams of stardom come to life and they took musicals in a new direction, back to Africa. George Walker died during the run of Bandanna Land and his wife Ada Overton Walker substituted for him during the final week of the run. [6]
By 1911, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, and George Walker had died. Will Marion Cook and the Johnson brothers, James and J. Rosamond, had pursued new careers and Bert Williams moved to the Ziegfeld Follies and black musical theater went into a hiatus. [7]
In 1915 ragtime composer Scott Joplin attempted to stage an opera Treemonisha in Harlem but the show was a financial and critical failure and Joplin was ruined and retreated into retirement until his death in 1917.[ citation needed ]
In May 1921, the surprising hit Shuffle Along made its way to New York City with almost $18,000 in debt. "One of the most popular black shows of the 1920s; began to tinker with the pattern of segregation". The creators of the astronomical point in history are The Dixie Duo, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, who met at a party in Baltimore, Maryland in 1915. Their career was brief but successful. "Shuffle Along was a milestone in the development of the black musical, and it became the model by which all black musicals were judged until well into the 1930s." [8] F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles, who wrote the book for Shuffle Along (1921) had met in 1906, and began performing at the "Pekin Theater Stock Company" near Chicago from 1906 to 1909, along with other African American stars such as Harry Lawrence Freeman.[ citation needed ]
In 1921, Miller and Lyles appeared in a short film made in Photokinema, a sound-on-disc process, singing their composition "De Ducks", while Sissle and Blake made three films in the Lee De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process in 1923. These short films are a record of music similar to the work these four men were doing on stage at the time...[ citation needed ]
Rang Tang was premiered July 12, 1927, on Broadway at the Royale Theater and ran for 119 performances, including a 14-week overrun, finishing at the Majestic October 24, 1927.[ citation needed ]
In 1928, white producer and director Lew Leslie staged the first of a popular series of Blackbirds revues, featuring such talents as singers Adelaide Hall and Aida Ward, dancer extraordinaire Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and top-flight funnyman Tim Moore. Further Blackbirds revues were staged in 1930 with Ethel Waters, Buck and Bubbles, and Flournoy Miller, in 1933 with Edith Wilson, and in 1939 with Lena Horne and Tim Moore. [9] The key to Leslie's success was the exceptional talent he found. “Leslie managed to build his black revues around one or more dynamic performers, who could carry a modest show to success.” [10] Although these productions showcased black talent, they were almost completely created by white writers and composers. In an interview, Leslie made a remarkable claim that “They (white men) understand the colored man better than he does himself. Colored composers excel at spirituals, but their other songs are just 'what' (dialect for 'white') songs with Negro words." [11]
George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935) – starring Will Marion Cook's wife Abbie Mitchell among many others – is the most famous black musical of the 1930s. It is called a black musical because of the African American cast, even though neither the music or plot is of the “Negro inspiration” like the creators proclaim. "Porgy and Bess marked the nadir in the history of black musical comedy, symbolizing the end of tradition and experimentation in black musical theater on Broadway". [12] This also led the Works Progress Administration to start the Federal Theater Project that established the Negro Unit with programs in 22 cities. This gave a new break to the struggling artists. The Negro Unit avoided musical comedies, but had a few musicals with black cast including Eubie Blake's Swing It, which closed in 1937 and lessened hope for the Federal Theater Project.
However, one black musical comedy succeeded and twisted the new realm of musical theater, The Swing Mikado (1937), a "modernization" of Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic operetta, The Mikado . This was followed by The Hot Mikado (1939). [13] Another modern version of the classics was Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical Carmen Jones (1943), a version of Georges Bizet’s Carmen with an all-black cast. [14]
In the late 20th and 21st century, predominantly Black musical theatre shows became more common. Notable shows include Once on This Island, The Color Purple, MJ the Musical , Dreamgirls, The Lion King, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Ain't Too Proud, Passing Strange, and The Wiz. Sister Act is led by a Black character while Hairspray features multiple Black characters, ensemble members and a story about integration. Michael R. Jackson's A Strange Loop won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, becoming the first African American musical to win this award. [15]
Robert Allen Cole Jr. was an American composer, actor, and playwright who produced and directed stage shows. In collaboration with Billy Johnson, he wrote and produced A Trip to Coontown (1898), the first musical entirely created and owned by black showmen. The popular song La Hoola Boola (1898) was a result of their collaboration. Cole later partnered with brothers J. Rosamond Johnson, a pianist and singer, and James Weldon Johnson, a pianist, guitarist and lawyer, creating more than 200 songs.
William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk (1898) and In Dahomey (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States.
In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy is a landmark 1903 American musical comedy described by theatre historian Gerald Bordman as "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." It features music by Will Marion Cook, book by Jesse A. Shipp, and lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was written by Jesse A. Shipp as a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement of the earlier nineteenth century.
Shuffle Along is a musical composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle and a book written by the comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. One of the most notable all-Black hit Broadway shows, it was a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s.
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of Black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they were not yet identified with "coon" epithet. The genre became extremely popular, with White and Black men giving performances in blackface and making recordings. Women known as coon shouters also gained popularity in the genre.
Flournoy Eakin Miller, sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", he wrote many successful vaudeville and Broadway shows, including the influential Shuffle Along (1921), as well as working on several all-black movies between the 1930s and 1950s.
"I'm Just Wild About Harry" is a song written in 1921 with lyrics by Noble Sissle and music by Eubie Blake for the Broadway show Shuffle Along.
George Walker was an American vaudevillian, actor, and producer. In 1893, in San Francisco, Walker at the age of 20 met Bert Williams, who was a year younger. The two young men became performing partners. Walker and Williams appeared in The Gold Bug (1895), Clorindy (1898), The Policy Player (1899), Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903), Abyssinia (1906), and Bandanna Land (1907). Walker married dancer Ada Overton, who later also was a choreographer.
Joseph Taylor Jordan was an American pianist, composer, real estate investor, and music publisher. He wrote over 2000 songs and arranged for notable people such as Florenz Ziegfeld, Orson Welles, Louis Armstrong, Eddie Duchin, Benny Goodman, and others.
William D. Foster, sometimes referred to as Bill Foster, was a pioneering African-American film producer who was an influential figure in the Black film industry in the early 20th century, along with others such as Oscar Micheaux. He was the first African American to found a film production company, establishing the Foster Photoplay Company in Chicago in 1910. Foster had a vision for the African-American community to portray themselves as they wanted to be seen, not as someone else depicted them. He was influenced by the black theater community and wanted to break the racial stereotyping of blacks in film. He was an actor and writer under the stage name Juli Jones, as well as an agent for numerous vaudeville stars. His film The Railroad Porter, released in 1912, is credited as being the world's first film with an entirely black cast and director. The film is also credited with being the first black newsreel, featuring images of a YMCA parade. Foster's company produced four films that were silent shorts.
Black Vaudeville is a term that specifically describes Vaudeville-era African American entertainers and the milieus of dance, music, and theatrical performances they created. Spanning the years between the 1880s and early 1930s, these acts not only brought elements and influences unique to American black culture directly to African Americans but ultimately spread them beyond to both white American society and Europe.
Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk is a one-act musical by composer Will Marion Cook and librettist Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Jesse Allison Shipp, Sr. was an American actor, playwright, and theatrical director, who is best remembered as a pioneer African-American writer of musical theater in the United States, and as the author of the book upon which the landmark play In Dahomey was based. Shipp played an influential role in expanding black theater beyond its minstrel show origins and is recalled as perhaps the first African-American director of a Broadway performance.
John William Isham was an American vaudeville impresario who was known for his Octoroons and Oriental America shows. These had their roots in traditional minstrel shows but included chorus girls, sketches and operas. They were part of the transition to the American burlesque shows of the early 20th century.
George Walker and Bert Williams were two of the most renowned figures of the minstrel era. However the two did not start their careers together. Walker was born in 1873 in Lawrence, Kansas. His onstage career began at an early age as he toured in black minstrel shows as a child. George Walker became a better known stage performer as he toured the country with a traveling group of minstrels. George Walker was a "dandy", a performer notorious for performing without makeup due to his dark skin. Most vaudeville actors were white at this time and often wore blackface. As Walker and his group traveled the country, Bert Williams was touring with his group, named Martin and Selig's Mastodon Minstrels. While performing with the Minstrels, African American song-and-dance man George Walker and Bert Williams met in San Francisco in 1893. George Walker married Ada Overton in 1899. Ada Overton Walker was known as one of the first professional African American choreographers. Prior to starring in performances with Walker and Williams, Overton wowed audiences across the country for her 1900 musical performance in the show Son of Ham. After falling ill during the tour of Bandana Land in 1909, George Walker returned to Lawrence, Kansas where he died on January 8, 1911. He was 38.
J. Edward Green was an actor, playwright and production manager in the United States. He was born in New Albany, Indiana in 1871. In his early years, he was part of the Black American Troubadours, Black Patti's Troubadours, Scott's Real Refined Negro Minstrels, the King and Bush Colored Minstrels, and Rusco & Holland's Minstrels. He organized the Rag Time Opera Company in 1901 in Birmingham, Alabama, where he produced two musical plays, African Princes and Medicine Man. For several years, he was the straight man for Ernest Hogan, sometimes called the father of ragtime. In September 1906, Robert Motts hired Green to be the Director of Amusements at the Pekin Theatre, replacing Charles S. Sager. While there, he authored, directed, and acted in shows, staging works including musical comedies Captain Rufus, In Zululand, The Man from 'Bam, Mayor of Dixie, Two African Princes, Honolulu, Queen of the Jungles, Twenty Minutes from State Street, My Nephew's Wife, My Friend from Georgia, A Trip to Coontown, The Count of No Account, In Eululand, The Grafters and Doctor Dope. Doctor Dope was by Stanley Woods (playwright).
A Trip to Coontown is an American musical comedy. It was performed, directed, and produced by African-Americans. It was written and performed in by Bob Cole and Billy Johnson. and debuted it New Jersey in 1897 before touring in the U.S. and internationally. Its New York City debut was at the Third Avenue Theatre on April 4, 1898.
Willis J. Accooe was an American performing musician and composer, mainly of musicals. He was "an important songwriter during the birth of the black musical" according to the Library of Congress website.
African American comedy has had a substantial role in American culture from minstrel shows, vaudeville, blackface, and coon songs to some of the world's most popular comedians, shows and filmmakers.
Andrew Tribble (1879–1935) was an American actor, comedian and female impersonator of the early 20th century who played a variety of female characters at Chicago's Pekin Theatre, on Broadway and in touring companies throughout the United States. He is best known for his characters Lily White, a washerwoman, and Ophelia Snow, from Cole and Johnson's production The Red Moon. He has been described as "a real genius" and "one of the greatest female impersonators".