Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life.
Bessie Smith was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.
Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.
Wilbur Coleman Sweatman was an American ragtime and dixieland jazz composer, bandleader and clarinetist. Sweatman was one of the first African-American musicians to have fans nationwide. He was also a trailblazer in the racial integration of musical groups.
Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. Founded by Harry Pace with W.C. Handy, Black Swan Records was established to give African Americans more creative liberties. Eighteen months earlier, in 1919, the Broome Special Phonograph Records was the earliest label owned and operated by African American George W. Broome in Medford, Massachusetts, featuring Black classical musicians including Harry T. Burleigh and Edward Boatner. Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of its historic jazz and blues recordings.
Spirituals is a genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs", work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres such as the blues emerged from the spirituals songcraft.
Chappelle and Stinnette Records, sometimes known as C&S Records was a small independent United States record label founded in New York City around 1921.
Harry Burleigh was an American classical composer, arranger, and professional singer known for his baritone voice. The first black composer who was instrumental in developing characteristically American music, Burleigh made black music available to classically trained artists both by introducing them to spirituals and by arranging spirituals in a more classical form. Burleigh also introduced Antonín Dvořák to Black American music, which influenced some of Dvořák's most famous compositions and led him to say that Black music would be the basis of an American classical music.
Robert Nathaniel Dett, often known as R. Nathaniel Dett and Nathaniel Dett, was a Canadian-American composer, organist, pianist, choral director, and music professor. Born and raised in Canada until the age of 11, he moved to the United States with his family and had most of his professional education and career there. During his lifetime he was a leading Black composer, known for his use of African-American folk songs and spirituals as the basis for choral and piano compositions in the 19th century Romantic style of Classical music.
Clarence Cameron White was an American neoromantic composer and concert violinist. Dramatic works by the composer were his best-known, such as the incidental music for the play Tambour and the opera Ouanga. During the first decades of the twentieth century, White was considered the foremost black violinist. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
Joseph Samuels was an American musician and bandleader, who is today virtually only known through his recordings.
Nora Douglas Holt was an American critic, composer, singer and pianist who was the first African American to receive a master's degree in music in the United States. She composed more than 200 works of music and was associated with the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance and the co-founder of the National Association of Negro Musicians. She died in 1974 in Los Angeles.
Florence Cole Talbert-McCleave, also known as Madame Florence Cole-Talbert, was an American operatic soprano, music educator, and musician. Called "The First Lady in Grand Opera" by the National Negro Opera Guild, she was one of the first African American women and black opera artists performing abroad who received success and critical acclaim in classical and operatic music in the 20th century. Through her career as a singer, a music educator, and an active member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, she became a legendary figure within the African American music community, also earning the titles of "Queen of the Concert Stage" and "Our Divine Florence."
The National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc. is one of the oldest organizations in the United States dedicated to the preservation, encouragement, and advocacy of all genres of the music of African-Americans. NANM had its beginning on May 3, 1919 in Washington, D.C. at a temporary initial conference of “Negro” musicians under the leadership of Henry Grant and Nora Holt. In concert with the Chicago Music Association, its first national convention was held in Chicago, Illinois in the same year. The organization is dedicated to encouraging an inclusive musical culture throughout the country. Within NANM, members lend their support and influence—educators and professional musicians share their musical knowledge, amateurs and enthusiasts grow in their musical enjoyment, and people of all ages come together to share and participate in the musical experience.
Hattie King Reavis, also known as H. King Reavis or Hattie Beatrice Reavis, was a singer, song writer, and theater performer from the United States. She performed with fellow African Americans in New York City in the 1920s, toured Europe on various trips through 1930, and recorded with Black Swan Records. In addition to singing, she worked as a recruiter for the Southern Syncopated Orchestra and later managed the career of Urylee Leonardos. From the 1930s to the end of 1940, she acted in New York in various shows, such as in the touring ensemble of the 1932 Broadway revival of Show Boat and several performances of On Strivers Row by Abram Hill. In 2019, selections from artists of Black Swan Records, including Reavis, were digitized, edited, and released by Parnassus Records.
Daisy Tapley (1882–1925) was a classical singer (Contralto) and vaudeville performer. Born Daisy Robinson in Big Rapids, Michigan, she was raised in Chicago, where she played piano and the organ with music teachers Emil Liebling, Clarence Eddy, and later with Pedro Tinsley. At age twelve She became the featured organist at Chicago's Quinn Chapel as a musical prodigy. As a teenager, Robinson began training her voice after listening to recordings of the British contralto, Clara Butt. Daisy made history on December 7, 1910, when she became the first African American female to be recorded commercially, in a duet with Carroll Clark.
Wendell P. Talbert, better known as Wen Talbert and sometimes performing as the Sultan of Jazz, was an American pianist, cellist, and jazz bandleader.
Anita Patti Brown was an American concert singer. She was sometimes billed as "the Bronze Tetrazzini".
Dora Cole Norman was an African-American educator, dancer, theater producer, playwright and sportswoman. As a young woman she played basketball for one of the first African-American women's basketball teams, the New York Girls. She taught for the New York Public School System and was the founder-director of the Colored Players Guild at the Harlem YWCA. She collaborated with W. E. B. Dubois on the 1913 production of his historical pageant The Star of Ethiopia, and gave Paul Robeson his first acting roles in the early 1920s.
