Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham was an African American entertainer. Though best known as a comedian, Markham was also a singer, dancer, and actor. His nickname came from a stage routine, in which he declared himself to be "Sweet Poppa Pigmeat". He was sometimes credited in films as Pigmeat "Alamo" Markham.
Benjamin Clarence "Bull Moose" Jackson was an American blues and rhythm-and-blues singer and saxophonist, who was most successful in the late 1940s. He is considered a performer of dirty blues because of the suggestive nature of some of his songs, such as "I Want a Bowlegged Woman" and "Big Ten Inch Record".
Lucius Venable "Lucky" Millinder was an American swing and rhythm-and-blues bandleader. Although he could not read or write music, did not play an instrument and rarely sang, his showmanship and musical taste made his bands successful. His group was said to have been the greatest big band to play rhythm and blues, and gave work to a number of musicians who later became influential at the dawn of the rock and roll era. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1986.
Loretta Mary Aiken, known by her stage name Jackie "Moms" Mabley, was an American stand-up comedian and actress. Mabley began her career on the theater stage in the 1920s and became a veteran entertainer of the Chitlin' Circuit of black vaudeville. Mabley later recorded comedy albums and appeared in films and on television programs including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Theatre Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s. The theaters mostly had white owners, though about a third of them had Black owners, including the recently restored Morton Theater in Athens, Georgia, originally operated by "Pinky" Monroe Morton, and Douglass Theatre in Macon, Georgia owned and operated by Charles Henry Douglass. Theater owners booked jazz and blues musicians and singers, comedians, and other performers, including the classically trained, such as operatic soprano Sissieretta Jones, known as "The Black Patti", for black audiences.
The race film or race movie was a genre of film produced in the United States between about 1915 and the early 1950s, consisting of films produced for black audiences, and featuring black casts. Approximately five hundred race films were produced. Of these, fewer than one hundred remain. Because race films were produced outside the Hollywood studio system, they were largely forgotten by mainstream film historians until they resurfaced in the 1980s on the BET cable network. In their day, race films were very popular among African-American theatergoers. Their influence continues to be felt in cinema and television marketed to African-Americans.
HaroldSeeger was an American animated cartoon producer and director who owned his own studio, the Hal Seeger Studio. He is most famous as the creator of the 1960s animated series Batfink, Milton the Monster and Fearless Fly. During the 1930s and 1940s he was also active as a comics writer and artist, most famously for the Betty Boop comic strip and Leave It to Binky.
Stump and Stumpy were a tap dance/comedy/acting duo popular from the mid-1930s to the 1950s, consisting of James "Stump" Cross, and either Eddie Hartman or Harold J. Cromer as "Stumpy". Their act was mostly jazz tap, and comedy expressed through song and movement.
Preston Haynes Love was an American saxophonist, bandleader, and songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska, United States, best known as a sideman for jazz and rhythm and blues artists like Count Basie and Ray Charles.
That's Black Entertainment is a 1989 documentary film starring African-American performers and featuring clips from black films from 1929–1957, narrated and directed by William Greaves. The clips are from the Black Cinema Collection of the Southwest Film/Video Archives at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. It is 60 minutes long and was distributed by Video Communications of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Clinton "Dusty" Fletcher was an African-American vaudeville performer, who was best known for the comedy routine which became a hit record in 1947, "Open the Door, Richard".
Killer Diller is a 1948 American musical comedy race film directed by Josh Binney and released by All American. Academic and comedienne Eddie Tafoya wrote that "Killer Diller is really more concerned with showcasing black talent appearing at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater than it is with providing audiences with a satisfying story." The movie features The Clark Brothers, Nat King Cole, Moms Mabley, Dusty Fletcher, Butterfly McQueen, the Andy Kirk Orchestra and the Four Congaroos. René J. Hall was the film's arranger.
Una Mae Carlisle was an American jazz singer, pianist, and songwriter.
Paradise in Harlem is a 1939 American musical comedy-drama film written by Frank H. Wilson and directed by Joseph Seiden. It was first shown in 1939 starring Frank H. Wilson. It was released by Jubilee Production Co.
Henry Bernard Glover was an American songwriter, arranger, record producer and trumpet player. In the music industry of the time, Glover was one of the most successful and influential black executives. He gained eminence in the late 1940s, primarily working for the independent King label. His duties included operating as a producer, arranger, songwriter, engineer, trumpet player, talent scout, A&R man, studio constructor, while later in his career he became the owner of his own label. Glover worked with country, blues, R&B, pop, rock, and jazz musicians, and he helped King Records to become one of the largest independent labels of its time. Thanks to the efforts of family, friends and fans, Glover's hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth in 2021 by inducting him into the downtown "Walk of Fame," the Mayor's "Proclamation," "Key to the City," and named a parklet "Henry Glover Way," along Black Broadway after him. In 2018, Glover was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the King Records 75th Anniversary. In 2013, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Henry "Crip" Heard was an American professional dancer who appeared mostly in black vaudeville theaters and nightclubs during the late 1940s and 50s. What distinguished Heard from nearly all his peers was that he was a double amputee, dancing with only one leg and one arm. And lacking a sufficient stump for wearing an artificial leg, he walked using a crutch that he danced both with and without.
Harold J. Cromer was a vaudevillian, Master of Ceremony, Hoofer, Choreographer, and Comedian. He was known as Stumpy in the dance/comedy/acting duo Stump and Stumpy.
The Paradise Club or Club Paradise was a nightclub and jazz club at 220 North Illinois Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was one of two major black jazz clubs in Atlantic City during its heyday from the 1920s through 1950s, the other being Club Harlem. Entertaining a predominantly white clientele, it was known for its raucous floor shows featuring gyrating black dancers accompanied by high-energy jazz bands led by the likes of Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford, and Lucky Millinder. In 1954 the Paradise Club merged with Club Harlem under joint ownership.
Harold "Josh" Binney was an actor, film producer, film company executive, and film director in the United States. He worked as an actor before establishing the Florida Film Company in Jacksonville, Florida in 1918 and produced and producing their films through his Harold J. Binney Productions division. He moved on to Canada and then Sonoma, California.
Leonard Anderson was an American film editor and film director, and he co-owned a film production company. Anderson's short films of African-American musical acts include footage of Anna Mae Winburn with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Lucky Millinder and his orchestra, and Henri Woode.
