Blackbirds of 1928

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Blackbirds of 1928
Blackbirds of 1928 Playbill Inside.jpg
Title page of Broadway program
Music Jimmy McHugh
Lyrics Dorothy Fields
Basismusical revue
Productions1928 Broadway

Blackbirds of 1928 was a hit Broadway musical revue [1] that starred Adelaide Hall, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Tim Moore and Aida Ward, with music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. It contained the hit songs "Diga Diga Do", the duo's first hit, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "Bandanna Babies" and "I Must Have That Man" all sung by Hall.

Contents

Hall on the front cover of the French edition of Vu (magazine),1929 Vu (magazine) Ndeg77.JPG
Hall on the front cover of the French edition of Vu (magazine),1929

History

Blackbirds of 1928 was the idea of impresario Lew Leslie, who planned to build the show around Florence Mills in New York City after her success in the hit show Blackbirds of 1926 in Paris and London. Mills died from tuberculosis in 1927 before rehearsals for the new show had started and Hall was enlisted to replace her.

Blackbirds of 1928 started its life as a floorshow at Les Ambassadeurs Club on 57th Street, New York with songs written by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields.

Fields recalled, [2] "Lew Leslie (the producer) hired us to do a show called Blackbirds of 1928. First, we'd written songs for a show of his in a club called Les Ambassadeurs, where we had Roger Wolfe Kahn (Otto Kahn’s son) and his orchestra, and a lovely lady named Adelaide Hall, who sang".

McHugh recalled, "I knew about Roger Wolfe Kahn wanting to close the club, and I told Lew Leslie, and Lew went up and made arrangements to take it over. This was the start of the show called Blackbirds of 1928. Leslie opened Les Ambassadeurs with the first half of the show". The show was a great hit. McHugh continued, "From there we wrote a second half and we took the show to Atlantic City".

After the tryout in Atlantic City the show opened on Broadway. It was the first Broadway show for which Fields and McHugh had written the entire score and turned out to be a milestone in their respective careers and was one of the most successful shows they were ever connected with.

Adelaide Hall in Blackbirds of 1928 Adelaide Hall 1921.jpg
Adelaide Hall in Blackbirds of 1928

Productions

The show originally opened on January 4, 1928, under the heading The Blackbird Revue at Les Ambassadeurs Nightclub in New York, before transferring in May 1928 to the Liberty Theatre on Broadway, [3] where Lew Leslie changed the shows name to Blackbirds of 1928. [4] The original Broadway production opened at the Liberty Theatre on May 9, 1928, where it ran for 518 performances, becoming the longest running all-black show on Broadway. It was directed by producer Lew Leslie and starred Adelaide Hall, [5] Bill Bojangles Robinson. [6] Aida Ward, Tim Moore, Blue McAllister, the Blackbirds Beauty Chorus and the Famous Blackbirds Orchestra conducted by Felix Weir. Also in the cast were Johnny Hudgins, Eloise C. Uggams, Elisabeth Welch, Mantan Moreland, Cecil Mack, Evelyn Anderson, and Nina Mae McKinney. Orchestral arrangements were by Will Vodery.

On 7 June 1929, the original Broadway production opened at the Moulin Rouge, Paris, France, where it became the hit of the season. In Paris it ran for three months before returning to the US for an American road tour.

Musical numbers and Sketches (in order of performance)

Prologue: Way Down South

Revue Part One

Aunt Jemima Stroll

Scene in Jungleland

Bear Cat Jones Last Fight

I Can't Give You Anything But Love

What a Night

Bandanna Babies

Playing According to Hoyle

Three Bad Men From Harlem

Porgy (with apologies to the Theatre Guild and Dorothy and DuBose Heyward)

Finale (part one)

Revue Part Two

Magnolia's Wedding Day

Earl Tucker Giving His Conception of the Low-Down Dance

Picking a Plot

Doin' the New Low-Down

Getting Married in Harlem

I Must Have That Man

Here Comes My Blackbird

Finale (part two)

Recordings

1933 recordings

In February 1933, Jack Kapp of Brunswick Records assembled an all-star group of Brunswick artists to record the entire score. Issued on six 10" 78s (6516 through 6521), available in an album set (the first such set of popular music from a Broadway show) and also sold individually:

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ "Blackbirds of 1928 – Broadway Musical – Original". IBDb.com. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Charlotte Greenspan. Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical. pp. 62/3. ISBN   9780199779796.
  3. ↑ "Blackbirds of 1928 on Broadway - Information, Cast, Crew, Synopsis and Photos - Playbill Vault". Archived from the original on 2015-02-04. Retrieved 2015-03-12.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Williams, Iain Cameron (15 September 2002). "Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall". Continuum. Retrieved 14 October 2023– via Amazon.
  5. ↑ "Museum of the City of New York - Bill Robinson and Adelaide Hall in Lew Leslie's "Blackbirds of 1928."". Collections.mcny.org. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  6. ↑ "NYPL Digital Collections". Digitalcollections.nypl.org. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
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