The Leighton Brothers (alt. "Leighton and Leighton") was the name of a vaudeville performance team consisting of brothers Frank Leighton and Bert Leighton.. [1] They also composed various songs, most notably "Steamboat Bill," the tune used in the Disney animated short, Steamboat Willie. [2]
Born to Irish immigrants, the Leighton Brothers grew up in Decatur, Illinois during the latter part of the 19th century. [3] Frank Leighton was the first of the brothers to enter show business, joining a Medicine Show in 1897 and then the Burt Sheppard Minstrel Show in 1898. [1] Bert joined Milt G. Barlow's minstrel group in 1899. The brothers came together for the first time in 1900, joining Vogle and Deming Minstrels. The duo found success as both blackface performers and vaudeville performers for the next few years, culminating in their joining of the Lew Dockstader minstrel group in 1904. [1] The Leighton Brothers were invited to perform on the Orpheum Circuit, highlighting their original music as well as their new compositions of popular songs. [4] Frank Leighton died in 1927, [3] after which Bert went into real estate. Bert died in 1964. [4]
The Leighton Brothers composed many ragtime pieces for use in minstrel shows and vaudeville, including "There's A Dark Man Coming With A Bundle" (sung by Bob Roberts), "Far away in Honolulu (They've got the tango craze)" (sung by Van and Schenck), and an arrangement of "Frankie and Johnny" with Ren Shields that would set the tone for all future versions of the song [5]
It was with Shields that the Leightons composed their most memorable and influential song, "Steamboat Bill," in 1910. [2] The song was a parody of best-selling "The Ballad of Casey Jones," by Seibert and Newton, which had itself been based on a song from the Leightons' vaudeville routine. [6] Steamboat Bill was recorded by Arthur Collins in 1911 [7] and would go on to inspire Charles Reisner to write a movie for Buster Keaton titled Steamboat Bill, Jr., which released as a silent film in 1928. That same year, Walt Disney found inspiration in the movie and in the song to create the first synchronized cartoon with sound, Steamboat Willie.
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Victorian Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
Ned Washington was an American lyricist born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
"You Are My Sunshine" is a song popularized by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell in 1939. It has been declared one of the state songs of Louisiana because of its association with Davis, a country music singer and governor of the state in the years 1944–1948 and 1960–1964.
Arthur Francis Collins was an American baritone who was one of the most prolific and beloved of pioneer recording artists, regarded in his day as "King of the Ragtime Singers".
"Steamboat Bill" is a 1910 song with music by the vaudeville group The Leighton Brothers and lyrics by Ren Shields which became one of the first hit recordings in the United States through its 1911 recording by Arthur Collins. "Steamboat Bill" notably inspired two major works of American film with long-lasting influence: the 1928 Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. and "Steamboat Willie", the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.
Bryant's Minstrels was a blackface minstrel troupe that performed in the mid-19th century, primarily in New York City. The troupe was led by the O'Neill brothers from upstate New York, who took the stage name Bryant.
"Frankie and Johnny" is a traditional American popular song. It tells the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds her man Johnny making love to another woman and shoots him dead. Frankie is then arrested; in some versions of the song she is also executed.
Abner Silberman as pen name Abner Silver, was an American songwriter who worked primarily during the Tin Pan Alley era of the craft.
The Rabbit's Foot Company, also known as the Rabbit('s) Foot Minstrels and colloquially as "The Foots", was a long-running minstrel and variety troupe that toured as a tent show in the American South between 1900 and the late 1950s. It was established by the African-American entrepreneur Pat Chappelle and taken over after his death in 1911 by Fred Swift Wolcott. It provided a basis for the careers of many leading African-American musicians and entertainers, including Arthur "Happy" Howe, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Butterbeans and Susie, Tim Moore, Big Joe Williams, Louis Jordan, Brownie McGhee, Rufus Thomas, and Charles Neville.
"The Ballad of Casey Jones", also known as "Casey Jones, the Brave Engineer" or simply "Casey Jones", is a traditional American folk song about railroad engineer Casey Jones and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line, and how Jones remained on board to try to stop the train as Webb jumped to safety. It is song number 3247 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
An album musical is a type of recording that sounds like an original cast album but is created specifically for the recording medium and is complete entertainment product in itself, rather than just promoting or reflecting an existing or planned musical theatre production or revue. Although there has been no one term consistently used to describe this type of recording, the genre predates the use of the term "concept album" by several decades, dating back to the era of 78-rpm records with such original works as Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower and The Letter (1959) starring Judy Garland, and Stan Freberg's Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume One: The Early Years (1961). On most contemporary concept albums, the performers or bands sing as themselves, whereas on an album musical the performers are playing characters in a story.
Ren Shields was an American folk musician born in 1868 in Chicago, Illinois. He died on 25 October 1913 in Massapequa, New York. He co-wrote the song with George "Honey Boy" Evans "In the Good Old Summer Time" amongst other songs such as "Dreamy Eyes", and "Come, take a Trip in My Air-ship".
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by Walt Disney Studios and was released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie, although both characters appeared several months earlier in a test screening of Plane Crazy. Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but was the first to be distributed because Walt Disney, having seen The Jazz Singer, had committed himself to produce one of the first fully synchronized sound cartoons.
The Dillon Brothers were a popular American comedic Vaudeville act from the late 1880s into the early 1900s, composed of brothers Harry and John Dillon.
Patrick Henry Chappelle, was an American theatre owner and entrepreneur, who established and ran The Rabbit's Foot Company, a leading traveling vaudeville show in the first part of the twentieth century. He became known as one of the biggest employers of African Americans in the entertainment industry, with multiple tent traveling shows and partnerships in strings of theaters and saloons. Chappelle was described at that time as the "Pioneer of Negro Vaudeville" and "the black P. T. Barnum," and was the only African American to fully operate a traveling show solely composed of African-American entertainers.
William Hammerstein was an American theater manager. He ran the Victoria Theatre on what became Times Square, Manhattan, presenting very popular vaudeville shows with a wide variety of acts. He was known for "freak acts", where celebrities or people notorious for scandals appeared on stage. Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre became the most successful in New York.
William J. Flannery was a vaudeville comedian and minstrel show performer. He also sang in operettas and musical comedies. He was a member of the National Variety Artists. He went by the stage name of Billy Gould.
Bertie Odell Swor, Sr. was a minstrel show performer.
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.