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Clarence Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1928.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1926.
Bill Robinson, nicknamed Bojangles, was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid Black entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.
Florence Mills, billed as the "Queen of Happiness", was an American cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian.
Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington and with Fats Waller.
Lew Leslie was a Jewish American writer and producer of Broadway shows. Leslie got his start in show business in vaudeville in his early twenties. Although white, he was the first major impresario to present African American artists on the Broadway stage. He had two well-known wives, torch singer Belle Baker and Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Irene Wales.
Eva Taylor was an American blues singer and stage actress.
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.
Tim Moore was an American vaudevillian and comic actor of the first half of the 20th century. He gained his greatest recognition in the starring role of George "Kingfish" Stevens in the CBS TV's The Amos 'n' Andy Show. He proudly stated, "I've made it a point never to tell a joke on stage that I couldn't tell in front of my mother."
Blackbirds of 1928 was a hit Broadway musical revue 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.
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.
Edith Wilson was an American blues singer, vaudeville performer, and actress from Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. An African-American who performed and recorded in the classic female blues style in the 1920s, Wilson worked in vaudeville and stage productions, first in Louisville and later throughout the U.S. and abroad. From the 1930s onward, she acted in radio plays and television, and from 1948 to 1966 represented the Aunt Jemima brand for Quaker Oats in personal appearances and on television. She remained an active performer until 1980.
Blackbirds of 1933 is a musical revue with a book by Nat N. Dorfman, Mann Holiner, and Lew Leslie. It is a sequel to Blackbirds of 1928. The original production premiered on December 2, 1933 at the Apollo Theatre in New York.
Irvin Colloden Miller was an American actor, playwright, and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including Broadway Rastus (1921), Liza (1922), Dinah (1923), which introduced the wildly popular black bottom dance, and Desires of 1927 starring Adelaide Hall. For thirty years he directed the popular review, Brown Skin Models, influenced by the Ziegfeld Follies but exclusively using black performers. "In the 1920s and 1930s, he was arguably the most well-established and successful producer of black musical comedy."
Harland Dixon was a Canadian-American dancer and choreographer, whose career encompassed vaudeville, musical theatre, and films. For much of his career he partnered Jimmy Doyle, as Doyle and Dixon.
Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson was a comedian, singer, tap and acrobatic dancer whose nickname was inspired by his ability to perform a comical, and incredibly slow, dance routine. His career included work in circus, medicine, minstrel, vaudeville, and Broadway.
Eddie Rector was an American tap dance artist and master of ceremonies. His career spanned the 1920s-40s as he danced in Harlem, across the US, and in Europe. He is known as a “soft shoe expert,” and he invented the Slap Step. Rector was the protégé of John Leubrie Hill and later danced as a team with Ralph Cooper. He danced in notable revues including Darktown Follies (1914), Tan Town Topics (1926), Blackbirds of 1928, Hot Rhythm (1930), Rhapsody in Black (1931), Blackberries of 1932, and Yeah Man (1932).
Gladys Lillian Bryant was an American blues singer and vaudeville performer.
Evelyn Anderson (1907–1994) was an American dancer. She appeared in productions by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle and on Broadway in the revue Blackbirds of 1928. She was 18 years old when she was selected for an all-Black vaudeville troupe due to perform in Paris. La Revue Negre was headlined by Josephine Baker and toured both Germany and Belgium. After La Revue Negre broke up, Anderson stayed in Europe for 15 years. She performed alongside Florence Mills and Hattie King Reavis.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Cullen, Frank; Hackman, Florence; McNeilly, Donald (2007). Vaudeville, old & new : an encyclopedia of variety performers in America. New York: Psychology Press. ISBN 0-415-93853-8. OCLC 62430748.
- ↑ Rye, Howard (2004-02-10). "Showgirls and stars: Black-cast revues and female performers in Britain 1903–1939". Popular Music History. 1 (2): 167–188. doi:10.1558/pomh.v1i2.167. ISSN 1743-1646.
- 1 2 Seibert, Brian (2015). What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-86547-953-1. OCLC 898419561.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "OKeh matrix S-73027. I'm a little blackbird looking for a bluebird / Clarence Williams’ Blue Five; Eva Taylor". Discography of American Historical Recordings, UC Santa Barbara Library. Retrieved 17 December 2022.