Chapter 4

1. Ad, Parks-Tolliver [sic] Musical Comedy Company, Indianapolis Freeman, November 28, 1914; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 126.

2. However, the “blues queen” honorific was later expropriated by cultural outsiders for commercial purposes—it became synonymous with “blues record star.”

3. John W. Work, American Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1940), 32–33. Sterling Brown’s presence at the interview is noted in Derrick Stewart-Baxter, Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), 42. Brown was in Nashville for the 1928–29 school year, teaching at Fisk University, where Work was also teaching. Ma Rainey had an engagement at the Bijou Theater the week of March 18, 1929, which may be when the interview took place (Business files of Hatch Show Print, Nashville). Thanks to Bruce Nemerov and Paul Ritscher.

4. The most substantial sources for such evidence are Howard Odum’s 1905–8 southern field studies, published in The Journal of American Folk-Lore; more limited field studies conducted pre-1910 by Charles Peabody and other early folklorists; and the entertainment columns of the Indianapolis Freeman (1888–1920) and other publications of the era.

5. This phrase became a catchword for a new orientation in popular ragtime songs. According to an 1897 report, “The musical repertoire of Black Patti’s Troubadours is a large and varied one. It embraces the most popular airs of the standard grand and comic opera, and all up-to-date coon songs, ballads and character songs” (“Amusements,” Kalamazoo Gazette, February 10, 1897 [America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank]).

A 1900 report from the Buckingham Theater in Tampa, Florida, said: “May Hicks, the newcomer this week, made a tremendous hit with her up-to-date coon songs” (“Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 1, 1900). Three weeks later, at the same location: “Richard Barnett is making good with his up to date coon songs and funny sayings” (“Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 22, 1900). In June 1901 a report from the Mascotte Theater in Tampa, revealed: “Mae Fisher is hitting ’em hard with her up-to-date coon songs” (“Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 15, 1901). An April 1902 communication from the Mascotte added: “Wingie Donaldson (El Brazo Colto) follows with an up to-date [sic] budget of coon songs” (“Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 5, 1902). See also Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 25–35.

6. For a more intensive consideration of the evolution of this self-directed cultural orientation, see Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 357–58.

7. See Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, for an enumeration of other factors related to this development.

8. The first to report her date and place of birth was her brother Thomas Pridgett, in a one-page article, “The Life of Ma Rainey,” Jazz Information 2, no. 4 (September 6, 1940): 8. The first to report the February 2, 1904, date of her marriage to William Rainey was Charles Edward Smith, in his entry on “Rainey, Gertrude Pridgett” in Edward James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women 1607–1950, Volume III, P-Z (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971), 110–11. Smith cites their “marriage certificate (Muscogee County Court, Columbus, Ga.).”

9. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 25, 1906. Will Rainey was probably singing Jos. Mittenthal, words, Winthrop Brookhouse, music, “Let Him Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Stone” (New York: Jos. W. Stern, 1906), a provocative coon song about a chicken-stealing preacher.

10. Ad, Indianapolis Freeman, December 15, 1906, reproduced in Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 263.

11. “A Rabbit’s Foot Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 15, 1907. The Raineys were probably singing Ed Rose, words, Fred Fischer, music, “I’ve Said My Last Farewell (Toot, Toot, Good Bye)” (New York: Helf and Hager, 1906).

12. “A Rabbitt’s [sic] Foot Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 15, 1907; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 262.

13. “Benbow’s Chocolate Drops At Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 17, 1909.

14. “Benbow’s Vaudeville Company, Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 12, 1909.

15. Italics denote authors’ emphasis. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 20, 1909; “The Luna Park Theater, Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 18, 1909.

16. “Georgia Sunbeam Company Doing Well,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 22, 1910.

17. “The Unknown Theater Becomes Well Known,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 12, 1910. Henry Lodge, “Temptation Rag” (New York: M. Whitmark and Sons, 1909).

18. “Belmont Street Theater, Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 19, 1910; “The Belmont Street Theater At Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 5, 1910.

19. “Opening Of Ocmulgee Park Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 23, 1910. This report erroneously placed the park in Gertrude Rainey’s hometown, Columbus, Georgia.

20. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 7, 1910. Kerry Mills, “That Fascinating Ragtime Glide” (New York: F. A. Mills, 1910).

21. Different birth dates appear on various official documents, including the U.S. Census reports of 1900 and 1910, her 1923 marriage license application, and her 1937 obituary notice in the Baltimore Afro-American. The 1900 U.S. Census gives her birth date as “July 1892” and her age as 7. The 1910 U.S. Census estimates her birth date as “abt 1894” and gives her age as 16. Her 1923 marriage license application gives her birth date as April 15, 1894. A feature article in the Chicago Defender, March 28, 1936, apparently based on information supplied by Bessie Smith herself, gives April 15, 1898. Her obituary in the Baltimore Afro-American, October 9, 1937, gives April 10, 1895. See also Paul Oliver, Bessie Smith (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1959), 1; Derrick Stewart-Baxter, Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers, 44; Chris Albertson, Bessie (New York: Stein & Day, 1972), 24–25; Harris, Blues Who’s Who, 462; Eileen Southern, Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 343; Paul Oliver, “Smith, Bessie,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (London: Macmillan, 2nd ed., 2002) 3, 604; Chris Albertson, Bessie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 7; Michelle R. Scott, Blues Empress in Black Chattanooga: Bessie Smith and the Emerging Urban South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 139n4.

22. “7,000 Attend Funeral of Bessie Smith,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 9, 1937. Compare with Albertson, Bessie (1972), 26; Albertson, Bessie (2003), 11–13.

23. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 8, 1909.

24. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 12, 1909. Evelyn White, one of Bessie Smith’s stagemates on this early appearance, had a particularly noteworthy career. During the 1920s she toured with the Silas Green from New Orleans Company, billed as “Dixie’s own favorite blues singer” (“Silas Green Show,” Chicago Defender, February 19, 1927). Evelyn White’s minstrel show career can be followed in Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right.

25. “Luna Park, Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 13, 1910. Jack “Ginger” Wiggins plowed straight through the T.O.B.A. era as a “challenge buck dancer.” An article by Bob Hayes in the Chicago Defender, August 13, 1938, referred to “the late Jack ‘Ginger’ Wiggins.”

26. “Luna Park Theater, Atlanta, Georgia,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 27, 1910.

27. “Pekin Theatre, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 3, 1910.

28. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 24, 1910.

29. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 1, 1910. The original letter was probably submitted by the Pekin’s amusement director, J. Arthur Conley.

30. “Belmont Theater, Pensacola,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 19, 1910.

31. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 17, 1910.

32. “Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 7, 1911.

33. “The Savoy Theatre, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 22, 1910; “Arcade Theatre, Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 5, 1910; “Belmont Theater, Pensacola,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 19, 1910; “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 17, 1910.

34. “The Savoy Theatre, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 22, 1910.

35. “Savoy Theatre, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 5, 1910.

36. “The Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 12, 1910.

37. “F. A. Barrasso’s Tri-State Circuit, Mobile, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 11, 1911.

38. “The American Theater Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 18, 1911.

39. “Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 17, 1911.

40. “Notes From Pekin Theater, Savannah, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 22, 1911.

41. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 12, 1911.

42. “Bijou Theater, Bessemer, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1911.

43. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 4, 1911. A short item informs: “That Boy, Wayne M. Burton, now in his tenth week at Birmingham, Ala … Now with the Chamberlain shows.”

44. Wayne Burton, “The Show Is A Success,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 9, 1911. Again, black comedian-producer Leroy White, who was staging the shows, should not be confused with white minstrel performer Leroy “Lasses” White, author of the landmark 1912 composition “Negro Blues.”

45. “Notes From Lyre Theater, Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 2, 1912.

46. Geo. Slaughter, “Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 9, 1912.

47. The Lyre Theater opened under the management of Julius J. Seals, an African American. African American brothers William and Louis Evans, who also owned Louisville’s Garden Theater, purchased and renovated the Lyre in July 1911. Around the first week in October 1911, the Evans brothers gave it over to William Hogan and Leonard Haley (“Lyre Theatre A Beautiful New Playhouse,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 16, 1910; “The Lyre Theater, Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5, 1911; George Slaughter, “Lyre Theater, Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1911).

48. “Louisville Theaters—The Ruby—The Lyre,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 2, 1911.

49. “The Alabama Blossoms At Corinth, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 19, 1910; “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 25, 1911; “Houpperto Amphitheater Birmingham, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 11, 1911; “That Boy, Wayne W. Burton, At Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 8, 1911; “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5; October 14; December 8, 1911; Wayne Burton, “The Show Is A Success,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 9, 1911.

50. Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 233.

51. “Eastern Theatrical News,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 1, 1912.

52. Sylvester Russell, “Frank Kirk, Comic Musical Tramp, Scores Immensely at the Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 22, 1912.

53. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 29, 1912.

54. “The New Crown Garden,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 29, 1912.

55. “Cincinnati Theatricals—The Pekin,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 10, 1912.

56. “Cincinnati, Ohio—The Pekin,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 10, 1912.

57. “Booker Washington Airdome, St. Louis, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 28, 1912. “Dixie White” may be Evelyn White.

58. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 30, 1912.

59. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 25, 1913.

60. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 1, 1913.

61. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 24, 1913; “Circle Theater, Philadelphia, Pa.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 31, 1913; The Owl, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 14, 1913; “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 5, 1913; “Globe Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1913; The Owl, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1913; “Auditorium Theater, Philadelphia,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 8, 1913. It was during this tour that Burton introduced his new nickname: “The Burtons, Buzzin’ Wayne and Effie [sic], playing United time, Beacon theater, this week.”

62. “Theater News Of Rome, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 1, 1913.

63. J. W. Seer, “Globe Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 21, 1911.

64. Ibid.

65. “Mrs. Rainey’s Letter Of Protest,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 28, 1911.

66. F. J. W. Seer, “Globe Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 4, 1911. For more information on Eugene Francis Mikell, see Southern, Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians, 271.

67. “Wizard Theater, Norfolk, Va.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 1, 1911.

68. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 20, 1911.

69. “Stage Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1911.

70. “The Stage Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 6, 1912; C. D. M., “Largest Vaudeville Bill Ever Put On In Colored Playhouse,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 27, 1912.

71. “Colored Theater In Columbus, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 20, 1912.

72. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 14, 1913; “Miller, Lyles and Marshall Organize an Amusement Company …,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 21, 1913. “Strawberries,” a.k.a. “Here Comes the Strawberry Man,” was a 1909 sheet music production—Thomas S. Allen, “Strawberries” (Boston: Jos. M. Daly, 1909). “Easy Rider” was Shelton Brooks’s current blues-tinged hit, a.k.a. “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone.” “The Blues” may have been H. Franklin Seals’s “Baby Seals Blues.”

73. “Cincinnati, Ohio,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 28, 1913.

74. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 9, 1913.

75. Albertson, Bessie (1972), 27–28.

76. Juli Jones, Jr., “From Chicago To Atlanta,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 7, 1914.

77. L. Don Bradford, “L. Don Bradford in Atlanta, Georgia,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 28, 1914.

78. Ibid.

79. The Buzzer, “Atlanta, Ga., Theatres,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 25, 1914.

80. The Mule, “Atlanta Show Shops,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 11, 1914.

81. The Mule, “Atlanta Show Shops,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 18, 1914.

82. The Mule, “Show Scoops by the Mule,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 1, 1914.

83. “Bradford Signs,” Chicago Defender, November 8, 1924. “Double Crossin’ Papa” and “He’s a Mean, Mean Man” were actually recorded by Edith Wilson for Columbia on December 17, 1924. That same month, however, Bessie Smith recorded Bradford’s song “Sinful Blues.”

84. H. D. Garnett, “The Koppin,” Chicago Defender, March 8, 1924.

85. “Bessie Smith’s Revue,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 1926; “Bessie Smith Well Received,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 21, 1928.

86. “Bessie Smith Packs Grand,” Chicago Defender, January 29, 1927.

87. Ad, Elmore Theater, Pittsburgh Courier, October 27, 1928. The Taskiana Four, Victor recording artists, made a tour with the Dinah Scott Revue in 1928. See Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, To Do This, You Must Know How (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 175.

88. Bob Hayes, “Here And There,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1938.

89. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 354.

90. “Chattanooga, Tenn.—Queen Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 20, 1915.

91. “Notes From The Florida Blossoms Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 18, 1915; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 290–306.

92. “Notes From The Florida Blossom’s Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 1, 1916.

93. Morrison, “Chattanooga, Tenn., News,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 4, 1916.

94. “New Queen Theatre Birmingham Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 29, 1916.

95. “Notes From The Florida Blossoms Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 29, 1916.

96. Bessie Smith’s Baltimore Afro-American obituary identified Lonnie and Cora Fisher as the stage managers of the fabled Moses Stokes Company.

97. Allan McMillan, “New York Sees Bessie Smith; Wonders Where She’s Been,” Chicago Defender, March 28, 1936. This statement has received very little notice over the years. Paul Oliver referenced it in his 1959 book Bessie Smith, 2–3. Sandra J. Lieb brought it up in her Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 16, only to reject Cora Fisher in favor of Ma Rainey, the subject of her study: “Bessie herself asserted that her inspiration was Cora Fisher, an obscure singer from Chattanooga, but the statement is dubious” because Smith “had a vulnerable ego and felt extremely competitive with other women blues stars,” so “she probably would not have cared to attribute her art to another reigning blues queen.”

98. “Notes From The Florida Blossoms Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1916.

99. “Rainey’s Big Comedy Four At Nashville, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 11, 1913.

100. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 22, 1913.

101. “Theatrical News Of Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 17; 24, 1914; “Pensacola, Fla., Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 7; 21, 1914.

102. Ad, Indianapolis Freeman, May 1, 1915. For a more complete history of Alexander Tolliver’s Smart Set, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 121–56.

103. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 23; November 6, 1915. The Raineys only traded as “Assassinators of the Blues” for two or three months. The last time they used the slogan in print was in an ad that ran in the 1915 Christmas Day issue of the Freeman. The comedy team of Dude Kelly and Amon Davis styled themselves “Assassinators of the Blues” early in 1911 (“Kelly And Davis,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 14, 1911).

104. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 29, 1916.

105. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 12; October 7; October 21, 1916.

106. Tolliver’s band for the 1916 season was headed by clarinetist Fred Kewley with Willie Hightower, cornet; “Zoo” Robertson, trombone; David Jones, mellophone; “Caggie” Howard, piano; J. W. Craddock or John Porter, string bass and tuba; and “Rabbit” Robinson, drums. For more, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 135–39.

107. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 17, 1916.

108. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 11, 1916.

109. Belfair [sic] Washington, “Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 24, 1917.

110. “Knox Receives Letter,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 13, 1917.

111. Arthur Violet, “New Queen Theater, Birmingham, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 20, 1917.

112. L. B. Mound, “The Douglass,” Chicago Defender, January 26, February 2, 1918.

113. Billy E. Lewis, “Smith and Tolliver, the Girls from Down Home, Singers,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 6, 1918. For information and photographs of Mabel Tolliver, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 122–25.

114. Billy E. Lewis, “Bessie Smith, The Girl From Down Home With the Big Voice,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 25, 1918.

115. Tony Langston, “The Monogram,” Chicago Defender, June 22, 1918.

116. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 29, 1918.

117. Sylvester Russell, “Sylvester Russell’s Review,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 28, 1929. Russell died in Chicago, October 1, 1930 (“Sylvester Russell Dead,” Chicago Defender, October 11, 1930).

118. Ad, “Douglas Gilmor Theatre,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 13, 1918, reproduced in Albertson, Bessie (1972), 29; (2003), 16; Secret Sam, “Secret Service,” Chicago Defender, September 28, 1918.

119. “Notes From The Liberty Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 7, 1918.

120. Eddie Green, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (New York, Pace & Handy Music, 1918).

121. Bessie Smith, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Columbia 14250, 1927, reissued on Frog CD DG45.

122. Ma Rainey, “Hear Me Talking To You,” Paramount 12668, 1928, reissued on Document DOCD-5156. Other recordings of this song include Leona Williams (a.k.a. Leonce Lazzo), “Bring It With You When You Come,” Columbia A3815, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5523; Alberta Hunter, “Bring It With You When You Come,” Paramount 12018, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5423; Cannon’s Jug Stompers, “Bring It With You When You Come,” Victor 23263, 1930, reissued on Document DOCD-5033. Recorded versions of this song from the 1960s “folk music revival” include the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, “Wild About My Loving,” Vanguard LP VSD-2158, 1963; and the Lovin’ Spoonful, “Wild About My Lovin,” Kama Sutra LP KLP 8050, 1965.

123. “Stage Notes Of Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 25, 1920. The “peanut circuit boss” referred to the manager of the rival 91 Theater. Regarding “Flu,” Defender columnist Joseph “Jonesy” Jones later noted that “Flue (just plain Flu), the actor’s friend, still conducts her eatery at 93 Decatur St. and a hotel at 102 1/4” (“Says Jonesy,” Chicago Defender, July 11, 1925).

124. Pete Porter, “Drake-Walker Company To Open Reevins’ New $10,000 Theater In Chattanooga, Tenn., October 15,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 29, 1917.

125. Pete Porter, “Queen Theatre, Chattanooga, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 22, 1917.

126. Porter, “Drake-Walker Company To Open Reevins’ New $10,000 Theater In Chattanooga, Tenn., October 15.”

127. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 6, 1917. The nature and ultimate disposition of Ma Rainey’s suit against the railroad are not known.

128. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 10, 1917.

129. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 8, 1917.

130. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 16, 1918.

131. “Young” Knox, “The Washington Players Going Big All Thru The South,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 17, 1918.

132. Ad, “In All The World No Shows Like These,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 30, 1918. This ad actually refers to “Madam Reaney’s [sic] Southern Beauty Shows.” In December Park updated his ad to state: “I Own or Control the Madam Rainey Southern Beauty Shows” (ad, “Wanted For C. W. Park Enterprises,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 14, 1918).

133. Cornell and Russell, “Death Of W. M. Rainey,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 12, 1919.

134. Ibid.

135. “Notes From C. W. Park’s Smart Set Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 6, 1919.

136. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 17, 1920.

137. Ad, “Wanted For Dan Michaels & Ma Rainey Southern Beauty Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 8, 1920. For an account of the early career of black Jamaica-born performer-turned-promoter Dan Michaels (or Michael), see Bradford, “Dan Michael, One of New York’s Coming Colored Comedians,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 23, 1909.

138. “Dan Micheal [sic],” Indianapolis Freeman, July 24, 1920.

139. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 17, 1920; “Dan Michael’s Southern Beauties Last Week at the Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 17, 1920: “Other members in the company were J. H. Cambre [sic, Campbell], straight, Maud Wilson, Rosebud Wilson, Mrs. Glober, Mrs. J. H. Campbell, Elevyn [sic] White, William Hall, Vincent Abel, Rector Patterson and others.”

140. Gabriel Stanley, “Washington Theatre Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 24, 1920.

141. Claude D. Collins, “Gleanings From Hambone Jones Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1920.

142. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 30, 1920. In the parlance of black itinerant minstrel shows, to “double B. and O.” was to be able to fill a spot in both the parade band and the stage orchestra. That Rainey’s Southern Beauties advertised this requirement suggests they were fielding a minstrel show-type street parade while plowing the Texas backroads.

143. After canonizing her as the “Mother of the Blues,” Paramount may have chosen to distance Rainey from her older ragtime repertoire.

144. Virginia Liston had thirty-six titles released on the OKeh and Vocalion labels between 1923 and 1927. They have been reissued on Document DOCD-5446 and 5447. Laura Smith recorded thirty-three titles released on the OKeh, Plaza, and Victor labels between 1924 and 1927. They have been reissued on Document DOCD-5429, 5431, 5461, and 1005.

145. “Kenner And Lewis Amusement Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 13, 1909. Virginia Liston, “I’m Gonna Get Me A Man That’s All,” Vocalion 1032, 1926, reissued on Document DOCD-5447. She is credited on the record label as the song’s composer.

146. 1900 U.S. Census (Ancestry.com). While the census taker’s handwriting is open to interpretation, it would appear that Virginia Crawford’s parents were William and Jennie Crawford, originally from Alabama and Mississippi, respectively. William is listed as a “Laborer.” Their oldest daughter Daisy is listed as a “Performer.” Virginia is one of four children listed as “At School.”

147. “Opening Of Dixie Park At New Orleans,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 10, 1909.

148. In “Laura Reports,” Chicago Defender, December 2, 1922, Smith stated that her birth name was Loretta Bryant. But the name Smith also appears to have had some family authority; in “Laura Smith Calls,” Chicago Defender, May 4, 1929, she reported “the sad news of the death of her older sister, Bessie Smith (not the blues queen), who died in Grand Rapids, Mich., April 22.”

149. Sylvester Russell, “A Review Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 17, 1909. The Simms of King and Simms’ Minstrels was probably Joe Simms (or Sims), who logged a remarkable career in black vaudeville, worthy of estimation on its own merit. He can be heard on at least one race recording, singing and trading comic barbs with Clarence Williams (Joe Sims and Clarence Williams, “What Do You Know About That”/“Shut Your Mouth,” Paramount 12435, 1927, reissued on Blues Classics CD718).

150. “The Pekin Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 13, 1909; “The Pekin Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 25, 1909; “The Pekin At Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 15, 1910; “The Pekin In Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 29, 1910.

151. “Amuse U Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 18, 1909; “Kenner And Lewis Amusement Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 13, 1909.

152. “Steward And Miller At Eldorado Theater, Pensacola, Florida,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 19, 1910.

153. That Dave Liston was from New Orleans is confirmed, or at least suggested, by an October 9, 1915, Freeman report that his father, Dave Liston Sr., had recently “died at his home in New Orleans.” Moreover, a January 6, 1917, Freeman report from Salem Tutt Whitney’s Smart Set Company noted that while playing in New Orleans: “Dave Liston, with the company AND AT HOME IN N. O. Entertained members of the Smart Set, AT THE HOME OF HIS SISTER, with a delicious, LOUISIANA GUMBO DINNER.”

154. “People’s Theater At Houston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 30, 1910; “Alabama Chocolate Drops,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 14, 1910.

155. “Alabama Chocolate Drops,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 28, 1910; “Houston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 11, 1910.

156. “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 23, 1910.

157. “The Sandy [sic] Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 7, 1910.

158. “The Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 28, 1910.

159. “Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 4, 1910.

160. “The America [sic] Theater, Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 25, 1910.

161. “American Theater, Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 2, 1910. In 1912 Ed Daniels was the Savoy Theater’s business manager (ad, “Wanted! For Savoy Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 20, 1912).

162. “American Theater, Jackson, Mississippi,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 9, 1910; “The Savoy Stock Company At Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 6, 1910.

163. “Palace Theatre, Houston,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 2, 1910; “At The People’s Theatre, Houston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 17, 1910.

164. “Ruby Theatre, Galveston, Texas,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 5, 1910.

165. “Ruby Theatre, Galveston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 8, 1910.

166. “Ruby Theater, Galveston,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 12, 1910.

167. “Ruby Theatre, Galveston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 3, 1910.

168. “The Amuse Theater, Vicksburg, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 1, 1911.

169. “Circle Theater, Philadelphia, Pa.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 27, 1911. For a view of white coon shouter Artie Hall, see Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 17–21.

170. Numerous descriptive commentaries in the Freeman fail to reveal “Hambone” Jones’s given name. However, a report from the Dreamland Theater in Opelika, Alabama, in the spring of 1910, makes note of: “Will Jones, stage manager (better known as Hambone)” (“Dreamland Theater, Opelika, Alabama,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 16, 1910).

171. “At The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 3, 1913.

172. Ibid.

173. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 10, 1913.

174. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 17, 1913.

175. Cary B. Lewis, “Joe Joran [sic] and Evylin [sic] Joiner Stop Bill At Grand,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 31, 1913: “Other numbers rendered were: Do As Much For You; I Don’t Care; and Going Back To Virginia.”

176. The Tulsa Daily World of May 4, 1912, carried an ad for “Just as the Ship Went Down,” “the great ‘Titanic’ song” on sale at the local Darrow Music Company, 109 East Third Street (America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank). According to Meade, Spottswood, and Meade, Country Music Sources, 70, “There were over 160 songs copyright and/or published on the subject [the wreck of the Titanic] during the ensuing months.”

177. “Macon, Georgia,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 6, 1914; “Theatrical News Of Pensacola, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 17; 24, 1914; “Pensacola, Fla., Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 7; 21, 1914; L. B. Mound, “The Douglass Theatre, Macon Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 8, 1915. It is not clear how or if Ma Rainey’s 1914 “Titanic” is related to her 1925 recording of “Titanic Man Blues” (Paramount 12374, reissued on Document DOCD-5583).

178. The song index to Dixon, Godrich, and Rye documents more than a dozen songs about the sinking of the Titanic, or songs referencing the disaster, including “God Moves On The Water,” 1136; “Sinking Of The Titanic,” 1265; “Titanic Blues,” “Titanic Man Blues,” “The Titanic,” 1289; and “When That Great Ship Went Down,” 1305. Country Music Sources documents a similar number of Titanic-related songs recorded by white artists. A collection of eighteen historical recordings of “Titanic Songs” by artists of both races has been reissued by Unsinkable Music (TSCD 22798, Canada, 1998).

179. Race issues are forthrightly addressed in Huddie Ledbetter’s “The Titanic,” Library of Congress, 1935, reissued on Rounder CD 1097. (See also an excerpt of an autobiographical manuscript written by Ledbetter, reproduced in Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly [New York: Harper Collins, 1992], 247–48.) Matters of class and hubris were raised in Vernon Dalhart’s 1925 recording “The Sinking Of The Great Titanic” (Columbia 15032-D, reissued on Unsinkable Music TSCD 22798); one verse of which asserts: “The rich folk they declared / They wouldn’t ride with the poor. / So they sent the poor below, / They were cursed and had to go.” A variation is found in the black gospel duo William and Versey Smith’s “When That Great Ship Went Down” (Paramount 12505, 1927). Dalhart’s recording also recounts:

When they built the great Titanic

They said what they could do.

They said they’d build a ship

That water would not go through.

But God with his mighty hand

Showed the world it could not stand.

Blind Willie Johnson’s “God Moves On The Water” (Columbia 14520-D, 1929, reissued on Columbia/Legacy CD C2K 52835), and the Dixon Brothers’ (white) “Down With The Old Canoe” (Bluebird 7449, 1938, reissued on Document DOCD-8048) also touch on the subject of hubris.

180. “At The New Crown Garden, Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 12, 1914.

181. “At The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 3, 1913.

182. Leadbelly claimed that he first sang his Titanic ballad in 1912 on the streets of Dallas in company with Blind Lemon Jefferson (Wolfe and Lornell, 44). Other Titanic blues ballads—such as “Hi” Henry Brown’s “Titanic Blues” (Vocalion 1728, 1932, reissued on Document DOCD-5098) and Richard “Rabbit” Brown’s “Sinking of the Titanic” (Victor 35840, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5003)—do not include the “fare thee Titanic, fare thee well” refrain.

183. “The Brooklyn Theater At Charlotte, N.C.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 8, 1913; “At The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 3, 1913; Cary B. Lewis, “Joe Joran [sic] and Evylin [sic] Joiner Stop Bill At Grand.”

184. John Queen, words; Walter Wilson, music, “Fare Thee, Honey, Fare Thee Well” (New York: Howley, Haviland & Dresser), 1901. For reference, there is white coon song shouter Marie Cahill’s 1916 recording of “Fare Thee Honey, Fare Thee Well” on Victor 45125. “Fare Thee, Honey, Fare Thee Well” was sung at the Mascotte saloon-theater in Tampa, Florida, in 1901, by black vaudeville performer Jessie Thomas (“Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 9, 1901).

185. “Ma” Rainey, “Titanic Man Blues,” Paramount 12374, 1925, reissued on Document DOCD-5583.

186. Joe Calicott, “Fare Thee Well Blues,” Brunswick 7166, 1930, reissued on Document DOCD-5002; Johnnie Head, “Fare Thee Blues” (Parts 1 & 2), Paramount 12628, 1928, reissued on Document DOCD-5169; Memphis Jug Band, “I’ll See You In The Spring, When The Birds Begin To Sing,” Victor 21066, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5021. See also Blind Willie McTell and Kate McTell, “East St. Louis Blues (Fare You Well)” (Vocalion unissued, 1933, issued on JEMF LP 106); and Blind Willie McTell, “East St. Louis” (Regal unissued, 1949, issued on Document DOCD-6014).

187. Georgia White’s “Fare Thee Honey Fare Thee Well” (Decca 7405, 1937, reissued on Document DOCD-5303) also includes the couplet: “You told me way last spring, when the birds began to sing.” A Mamie Smith recording titled “Fare Thee Honey Blues” (OKeh 4194, 1920, reissued on Document DOCD-5357) is only tangentially related; it has a different melody and does not employ the chorus refrain, but does include the line “I told him way last spring, when the bluebirds began to sing.” Hezekiah and Dorothy Jenkins’s “Fare Thee Well,” Ida Cox’s “Fare Thee Well Poor Gal,” and Johnnie Temple’s “Fare You Well,” are unrelated songs.

188. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 7, 1913.

189. “Cincinnati Theatricals,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 19, 1913.

190. “Alpha Theater, Cleveland, O.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 2, 1913.

191. “At The New Crown Garden, Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 12, 1914.

192. “Stage Gossip,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 26, 1914; January 16, 1915; Herbert T. Meadows, “St. Louis Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 6, 1915.

193. Herbert T. Meadows, “St. Louis Amusement Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 20, 1915.

194. “Bert A. Williams And Follies Members Entertained By Turpin,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 27, 1915.

195. “From Air Dome Theater, Columbia, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 24, 1915.

196. “The Cincinnati Theaters—The Pekin And The Gaither,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 1, 1911.

197. “The Cincinnati Theaters,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 8, 1911.

198. “The Garden Theater, Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 22, 1911.

199. “Laura Smith And Mattie Whitman,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5, 1911.

200. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 12, 1911.

201. For more on the colorful career of Mattie Dorsey Whitman, see Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, “Sweet Mattie Dorsey: Been Here, But She’s Gone,” 78 Quarterly, no. 8 (1994): 103–12.

202. “The Cincinnati Theaters,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 16, 1911.

203. “The Cincinnati Theaters,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 23, 1911.

204. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 23, 1911.

205. Ibid.

206. “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 2; 9; 23, 1912.

207. “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 23, 1912.

208. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 17, 1913.

209. “Park Theater, Dallas, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1913.

210. “Alcazar Theater, Dallas, Texas,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1913.

211. “Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 11, 1914.

212. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 25, 1914.

213. “The Lyric Theater, Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 26, 1914.

214. “Lincoln Theatre, Galveston, Texas,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 15, 1915.

215. Herbert T. Meadows, “St. Louis Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 30, 1915.

216. “Theatrical Jottings,” New York Age, February 10, 1916.

217. “New Monogram,” Chicago Defender, April 22, 1916.

218. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 18, 1918. On July 27, 1918, Freeman columnist Billy Lewis disclosed: “Laura’s home address is 3800 Indiana avenue, Chicago, Ill.”

219. Billy Lewis, “Washington Theatre,” “Laura Smith—Everybody’s Favorite,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 27, 1918.

220. “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 21, 1918.

221. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 26; July 5, 1919; “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 30, 1919.

222. “Theatrical Notes From Pittsburgh, Pa.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 20, 1919.

223. Sylvester Russell, “Tim Moore, Billy McCarver And Laura Smith—Rival Team Stars at the Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 3, 1920. To explain this headline, the husband-and-wife teams of Tim and Gertie Moore and Billy and Sadie McCarver shared the Monogram bill with the team of Smith and Butler.

224. Sylvester Russell, “Laura Smith Showered With Silver at the Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 4, 1919.

225. G. Stanley, “Washington Theatre Last Week,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1919. Tosti’s “Goodbye” was an emblem of “high-class” singing.

226. “Stage Notes And Cabaret News,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 6, 1919; Tony Langston, “The Monogram,” Chicago Defender, December 13, 1919.

227. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1919.

228. Perry Bradford, “Perry Bradford Sells Song,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 14, 1920; ad, “Performers! Don’t be Misled: get the Original,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 6, 1920.

229. “Where Are They In Stageland,” Chicago Defender, July 3, 1920.

230. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, July 17, 1920.

231. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 1; 21; September 18, 1920.

232. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, December 4, 1920; Tony Langston, “New Show Pleases Avenue Crowds,” Chicago Defender, December 25, 1920.

233. “Laura Makes It,” Chicago Defender, September 16, 1922.

234. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Varnell’s Review,” Billboard, December 30, 1922.

235. “Butler Dead,” Chicago Defender, February 24, 1923.

236. Laura Smith, “Letters,” Chicago Defender, April 28, 1923.

237. “Lincoln,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 1, 1923 (Pro-Quest, Black Studies Center).

238. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, January 5; 12, 1924; Jack L. Cooper, “Dixie Theater,” Chicago Defender, January 19, 1924; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Varnell’s Review,” Billboard, October 20, 1923.

239. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, February 2, 1924.

240. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 19, 1924.

241. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, July 19, 1924.

242. “Laura Flies,” Chicago Defender, August 2, 1924.

243. Ad, “OKeh’s New And Exclusive Artist Laura Smith,” Chicago Defender, September 27, 1924.

244. “They’ve Done It,” Chicago Defender, October 4, 1924.

245. “Much Better,” Chicago Defender, January 24, 1925.

246. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, October 24, 1925.

247. “Record Star Living Here,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 18, 1926 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

248. W. L. Rector, “Reyno Comedians In North Carolina,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1916.

249. “Stage Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 20, 1917; “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, March 10, 1917.

250. R. W. Thompson, “The Passing Show In Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 28, 1917.

251. “Benbow’s Merrymakers Making Good—Will Open On Klien’s [sic] Time October 8,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 6, 1917.

252. “Ideal Players Highly Entertained At Roanoke, Va.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 27, 1917.

253. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 3, 1917.

254. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 22, 1917. Like “Hambone” Jones, “Slim” Jones managed to keep his real first name out of print. In 1925 he married Laura Smith.

255. John V. Snow, “Warning,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 19, 1918.

256. “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 6, 1919; G. Stanley, “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1919.

257. G. Stanley, “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1919.

258. Sylvester Russell, “Hambone Jones And Co. At The Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 27, 1919.

259. Sylvester Russell, “Hambone Jones Dead,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 25, 1919.

260. “Ham Bone Jones Takes Ill—Goes To Detroit Hospital,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1919.

261. Russell, “Hambone Jones Dead”; John H. Mason, “The Late Hambone Jones,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 1, 1919.

262. Ad, “Ham-Bone Jones Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 10, 1920.

263. See Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, for more about Sam H. Gray’s professional activities prior to teaming with Virginia Liston, and also afterward, as producer/performer with the Silas Green from New Orleans Minstrel Company.

264. “Hambone Jones Co. Better Than Ever—Big Hit In Dallas, Tex.—Broke All Records In Houston, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 17, 1920.

265. Ibid.

266. Ad, “Ham-Bone Jones Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 24, 1920; “Routes,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 31, 1920.

267. Members of the Ethiopian Quartette were W. Reid Connor, first tenor; C. Collins, second tenor; J. McPheeters, baritone; and S. H. Gray, bass. Members of the Girls High Brown Chorus were Mae Harper, Maggie Elliot, Carrie Madison, Mary Green, Minerva Jackson, and Kate Keye (ad, “Ham-Bone Jones Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 21, 1920).

268. J. M. Gray, “Gibson’s New Standard Theatre, Philadelphia,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 5, 1920.

269. Claude D. Collins, “Gleanings From Ham Bone Jones Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1920.

270. Ibid.

271. “Chintz Moore Shot,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1920.

272. “Attention! Attention!” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1920.

273. Ad, “Ham Bone Jones Co.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 4, 1920. The ad also lists “George Williams, Rubber Legs Dancer” as a star of the current roster. George “Rubberlegs” Williams’s 1940s recordings for Continental and Savoy are backed by the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, and (perhaps) Miles Davis.

274. Indianapolis Freeman, March 5, 1921, quoted in “Feature Program With Pictures At Attucks Next Week,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, April 2, 1921.

275. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among The Folks,” Billboard, June 10, 1922.

276. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Lemare’s Cabaret,” Billboard, July 22, 1922; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Review Closes,” Billboard, September 30, 1922; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among The Folks,” Billboard, October 7, 1922. The “Shuffle Along Review” does not appear to have been directly connected to Shuffle Along “proper.”

277. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among The Folks,” Billboard, October 21, 1922.

278. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Go Get It,” Billboard, November 4, 1922; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “‘Go Get It’ Has Got It,” Billboard, November 18, 1922.

279. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “‘Go Get It’ Gets Thru,” Billboard, January 6, 1923.

280. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” Billy Chambers, “Chambers’ Review,” Billboard, March 24, 1923.

281. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among the Folks,” Billboard, May 19; June 23, 1923.

282. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among The Folks,” Billboard, July 28, 1923.

283. Ma Rainey, “Jealous Hearted Blues,” Paramount 12252, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5582. The Indianapolis Freeman of March 5, 1921, claimed “Jealous Hearted Blues” was written by Coleman Minor. The label credits Lovie Austin as composer.

284. Dixon, Godrich, and Rye.

285. Ad, Chicago Defender, November 10, 1923.

286. “OKeh Notes,” Chicago Defender, January 5, 1924.

287. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 10, 1913.

288. Liston, Gray, and Williams receive composer credit on the label copy of Clara Smith’s Columbia, Maggie Jones’s (as “Fae Barnes”) Paramount, and Viola McCoy’s Banner records of “You Don’t Know My Mind,” all from 1924. Thanks to Roger Misiewicz. Liston’s claim to authorship of “You Don’t Know My Mind” was reiterated in a review of her 1926 appearance at the Lincoln Theater in Kansas City (“At The Playhouses,” Kansas City Call, December 31, 1926).

289. Clara Smith, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” Columbia 14013, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5364; Lead Belly, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” ARC originally unissued, 1935, issued on Collectibles 46776. Other recorded versions include Judson Brown, “You Don’t Know My Mind Blues,” Brunswick 7220, 1930, reissued on Document DOCD-5192; Barbecue Bob, “Honey You Don’t Know My Mind,” Columbia 14246-D, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5046; Pete Johnson Blues Trio, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” Blue Note 12, 1939; and Mabel Robinson, “You Don’t Know My Mind,” Decca 8580, 1941, reissued on Document DOCD-5468.

290. Virginia Liston, “You Don’t Know My Mind Blues,” OKeh 8115, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5446.

291. Virginia Liston, “Bill Draw,” OKeh 8173, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5446.

292. Virginia Liston, “Happy Shout”/“House Rent Stomp,” OKeh 8134, 1923; Virginia Liston—Sam Gray, “You Can Have It (I Don’t Want It)”/“Just Take One Long Last Lingering Look,” OKeh 8126, 1924, all reissued on Document DOCD-5446.

293. Laura Smith, “Gonna Put You Right In Jail,” Banner 1977, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5429.

294. Laura Smith, “Texas Moaner Blues,” OKeh 8157, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5429; Clara Smith, “Texas Moaner Blues,” Columbia 14034-D, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5365; Alberta Hunter, “Texas Moaner Blues,” Gennett 5594, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5424.

295. Clarence Williams’ Blue Five, “Texas Moaner Blues,” OKeh 8171, 1924, reissued on Classics CD 679.

296. Laura Smith, “Two-Faced Woman Blues,” OKeh 8169, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5429.

297. Virginia Liston, “Jail House Blues,” OKeh 8122, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5446. Bessie Smith recorded “Jail-House Blues” in September 1923 (Columbia A4001, reissued on Frog CD DGF40). An almost identical lyric couplet appears in black fiddle and guitar duo Andrew and Jim Baxter’s 1929 recording “It Tickles Me” (Victor 38603, reissued on Document DOCD-5167) and Julia Johnson’s “Tickling Blues” (Gennett 6519, 1929, reissued on Document DOCD-5503).

298. Laura Smith, “Humming Blues,” OKeh 8246, 1925, reissued on Document DOCD-5429. According to “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, December 5, 1925, Lukie Johnson was the composer.

299. Laura Smith, “Cool Can Blues”/“Lucy Long,” OKeh 8366, 1925; “JacKass [sic] Blues,” OKeh 8331, 1926, all reissued on Document DOCD-5429.

300. Laura Smith, “Don’t You Leave Me Here,” Banner 1977, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5429.

301. “Alcazar Theater, Dallas, Texas,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1913; “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 21, 1918; G. Stanley, “Washington Theatre Last Week,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1919.

302. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, April 27, 1929. An article the following week (“Laura Smith Calls,” Chicago Defender, May 4, 1929) asserted that, “She has just made several successful recordings for the Q. R. S. rolls and Paramount Movietone.”

303. “Drake and Walker Show Scores Hit at the Grand,” Chicago Defender, June 1, 1929.

304. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, June 8, 1929.

305. Bob Hayes, “Drake and Walker Please Grand Theater Audiences,” Chicago Defender, August 31, 1929.

306. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, September 21, 1929; “Laura Smith Finds Success Out West,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1929.

307. Frankye Marilyn Whitlock, “Coast Breezes,” Chicago Defender, January 11, 1930.

308. “Hits And Bits,” Chicago Defender, August 15, 1931.

309. “Old Time Singers Sang At Laura Smith Funeral,” California Eagle, February 19, 1932.

310. “At The Lincoln,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 1, 1924. According to “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Pittsburg Pa.,” Billboard, March 15, 1924, personnel of the OKeh Jazz Five consisted of “G. W. Jackson, H. D. Hooper, Ho. [sic] Billups, H. A. Henson and B. Cooper.”

311. “At The Elmore,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 5, 1924.

312. “Liston’s Show,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1924.

313. Unidentified Memphis daily newspaper, quoted in “Virginia Liston,” Chicago Defender, May 31, 1924.

314. “Buncoed Again,” Chicago Defender, May 31, 1924.

315. “Star,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 20, 1924 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

316. “Gray And Liston,” Chicago Defender, January 3, 1925.

317. “‘Eliza Scandals,’” Chicago Defender, January 10, 1925.

318. Macon Telegraph, quoted in “Eliza Scandal Co.,” Chicago Defender, February 14, 1925.

319. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” Billy Chambers, “Reviews,” Billboard, February 21, 1925.

320. “The Gray Show Draws,” Chicago Defender, March 14, 1925. Another review of “Eliza Scandals” indicated that Liston was being billed as the “Titanic blues singer” (J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Eliza Scandals,” Billboard, January 17, 1925).

321. According to a Theater Owners Booking Association contract, when the “Eliza Scandals” Company of ten people played the Douglass Theater in Macon, week of February 2, 1925, they received no more than the standard payment of $325 (C. H. Douglass Business Records Collection, Middle Georgia Archives, Washington Memorial Library, Macon, Georgia).

322. “Eliza Scandal Co.,” Chicago Defender, April 11, 1925.

323. Jos. Jones, “Says Jonesy,” Chicago Defender, May 9, 1925.

324. Ibid.

325. “Virginia Liston’s 1925 Revue,” Chicago Defender, September 5, 1925.

326. “S. H. Gray Complains,” Chicago Defender, August 1, 1925.

327. “Virginia Liston’s 1925 Revue.”

328. “Benton Overstreet Out Of Jail; Claims False Charge,” Chicago Defender, August 15, 1925.

329. “Virginia Liston’s 1925 Revue”; Wyatt D. James, “Texas Tattles,” Chicago Defender, September 12, 1925.

330. Young Dud (S. H. Dudley, Jr.), “Shufflin’ Sam Co.,” Chicago Defender, December 12, 1925; John Mitchell, “Shufflin’ Sam,” Chicago Defender, February 27, 1926.

331. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 10, 1926.

332. “Darktown Strutters,” Chicago Defender, May 15, 1926.

333. H. D. Garnett, “Koppin Theater,” Chicago Defender, December 18, 1926.

334. “Stage—Records—Radio—Screen,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 19, 1927. This “ex-sweetheart” may have been the same “Mr. Brown” that Liston was reported to have married ten years earlier.

335. J. Ernest Webb, “Naptown Doings,” Chicago Defender, November 26, 1927.

336. “Miss Liston Marries,” Chicago Defender, October 19, 1929.

337. Harris, Blues Who’s Who, 331.

338. Laura Smith, “Little Ginger,” did not even get an entry in Blues Who’s Who.

339. It may be fair to question whether contemporary popular African American musicians and comedians entertaining sympathetic, attuned, peer-group audiences pause to consider how their coded references might be perceived fifty or one hundred years from today. Black vaudeville comedians were likewise unconcerned, their motives similarly grounded in opaque historical realities.

340. Frankie Jaxon, “It’s Heated,” Vocalion 1539, 1929, reissued on Document DOCD-5258.

341. J. D. Howard, “Cole and Johnson,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 21, 1908; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 73–74.

342. “Allen’s Minstrels,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 27, 1909. See Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 234.

343. Coy Herndon, “Coy Cogitates,” Chicago Defender, April 15, 1925. See Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 423.

344. Peck, “Amuse Theater Vicksburg, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5, 1911.

345. “Circle Theater,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 21, 1914. It is not certain that this act included female impersonation.

346. “Fagingy Fagade Is Type of Harlem Theatrical Language,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 1937 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

347. Clarence Major, ed., Juba to Jive—A Dictionary Of African American Slang (New York: Viking, 1994), 122, defines Crow Jane as “a very black or especially dark-complexioned woman.” As late as 1982 a black fashion reporter wrote: “Unfortunately, many of our fine young black women equate manners, poise, and perhaps, charm with a Crow-Jane attitude signifying acceptance of white order” (Edith Davis, “The Importance of Beauty, Fashion and Good Attitude,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 24, 1982 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]). Amiri Baraka included a group of “Crow Jane” poems in his 1964 collection, The Dead Lecturer. In “Crow Jane in High Society,” she “wipes her nose on the draperies.”

348. Skip James, “Crow Jane,” Skip James Today! Vanguard LP VSD-9219, 1965.

349. Sonny Terry, “Crow Jane Blues,” Capitol 40097, 1947; Carl Martin, “Crow Jane,” Bluebird 6139, 1935, reissued on Document DOCD-5229; Julius Daniels, “Crow Jane Blues,” Victor 21065, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5160; Ida Cox, “Crow Jane Woman Blues,” Paramount 12738, 1928, reissued on Document DOCD-5325. Another recorded example is the seemingly mistitled “Poor Jane,” recorded by Jack Gowdlock in 1931 (Victor 23419, reissued on Document DOCD-5574).

350. Foster and Harris (Ma Rainey’s Boys), “Crow Jane Alley,” Paramount 12709, 1928, reissued on RST BDCD-6021.

351. “Sloppy” Henry, “Hobo Blues,” OKeh 8683, 1929, reissued on Document DOCD-5482.

352. Blind Willie McTell, “Bell Street Lightnin’,” originally unissued, 1933, issued on Document DOCD-5008.

353. “Rose Melville At The Park,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 8, 1911.

354. “Vaudeville In Full Blast At the Washington Theatre, Indianapolis—Ora Criswell Received With Shouts Of Applause,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 30, 1916.

355. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 1, 22; August 31, 1901; June 7, 1902.

356. Ad, Rialto Theater, Indianapolis Freeman, May 25, 1901.

357. “Acts New To Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 18, 1911. The report went on to recall that Criswell made the song “In Tennessee” famous while singing it in this show.

358. “A Great Team,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1913. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 51–53.

359. Harry Bradford, “What The Colored Vaudeville Artists Are Doing In The East,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1909. Bradford gave Criswell’s name as Ora Henry.

360. “Jacksonville Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 16, 1910.

361. “Jacksonville, Fla., Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 28, 1910.

362. “Savoy Theater At Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 9, 1910.

363. F. A. Barrasso, “American Theater, Jackson, Mississippi,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 9, 1910.

364. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 3, 1910.

365. Sylvester Russell, “Musical And Dramatic,” Chicago Defender, January 14, 1911.

366. “Acts New To Indianapolis.”

367. Billy E. Jones, “Eastern Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 3, 1912. Criswell was probably singing Irving Berlin and Ted Snyder’s “Piano Man” (New York: Ted Snyder, 1910).

368. “Satisfactory Arrangements,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 17, 1912; Billie E. Jones, “Eastern Theatrical News,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 2, 1912.

369. Billy E. Jones, “Eastern Theatrical News,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 7; November 9, 1912.

370. Billy E. Jones, “What The Performers Are Doing,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 21, 1912.

371. Arw-Tee, “The Passing Show in Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 1, 1913.

372. The Owl, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 26, 1913.

373. Jno. H. Hall, “Washington D. C. Theaters,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 19, 1913; “Criswell And Bailey At The Crown Garden,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 23, 1913.

374. “At the New Crown Garden,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 16, 1913.

375. “The Auditorium Theater, Philadelphia, Pa.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 31, 1913.

376. Walter S. Fearance, “St. Louis, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 23, 1913.

377. James Austin, “The Stage,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 1, 1914.

378. “At The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 20, 1913.

379. “St. Louis, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1913.

380. “Criswell and Bailey Playing Return Engagement,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 6, 1913.

381. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 25, 1914.

382. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 15, 1914.

383. See Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 101, 103–4, for commentary about S. H. Dudley’s blackface characterizations.

384. “At The New Crown Garden Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 5, 1914.

385. “The New Crown Garden Theatre—Tim E. Owsley, Proprietor,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 17, 1914. The Jubalaires, a black vocal quartet under the leadership of Willie Johnson, recorded “When The Midnight Choo Choo Leaves For Alabam” for a Standard radio transcription (Standard 261), circa 1950.

386. “James Marshall And Wife,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 14, 1914.

387. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 19, 1914.

388. Will H. Lewis, “Annual Review Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 16, 1915.

389. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 20, 1915.

390. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 17, 1915.

391. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1915.

392. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 1, 1915. Russell’s comment reflects the critical discernment underlying his attitudes toward the use of blackface makeup.

393. “Venable, Owens And Harper, Ora Criswell, Buster And Bailey, Dawson And Booth At The New Crown Garden,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 29, 1915.

394. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 19, 1915.

395. D. F. Tobe, “Stage Notes From The Lyric Theatre, Wilmington, N. C.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 9, 1915.

396. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 8, 1916.

397. “Ora Criswell,” Chicago Defender, September 2, 1916; “Additional Stage Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 2, 1916.

398. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1916.

399. “Vaudeville In Full Blast At The Washington, Theatre, Indianapolis—Ora Criswell Received With Shouts Of Applause,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 30, 1916.

400. “Ora Criswell Holding Over At The Washington Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 6, 1917.

401. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 57–60.

402. Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Partisan Review 25, no. 2 (Spring 1958), reprinted in Shadow And Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 45–59. Ellison offers this explanation: “[T]he Negro’s masking is motivated … by a profound rejection of the image created to usurp his identity. Sometimes it is for the sheer joy of the joke; sometimes to challenge those who presume, across the psychological distance created by race manners, to know his identity.… We wear the mask for purposes of aggression as well as for defense; when we are projecting the future and preserving the past. In short, the motives hidden behind the mask are as numerous as the ambiguities the mask conceals.” Ellison, it should be noted, was speaking of blacks in blackface performing before white audiences, not their own group.

403. “Theatrical Notes,” Nashville Globe, January 19, 1917.

404. “Vaudette Theater, Detroit, Mich.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 24, 1917.

405. “Death Of Ora Criswell,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 2, 1917.

406. “Miss Ora Criswell Was Not Neglected During Illness,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 9, 1917.

407. “Laura Bailey Has Something To Say,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 30, 1917.

408. “Annual Review Of Colored Performers,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 29, 1917.

409. The 1940 U.S. Census gives “Birthplace: Georgia,” “Age: 52,” and “Estimated Birth Year: abt 1888” (AncestryLibrary. com). Sheldon Harris, Blues Who’s Who, 474, states, without attribution, “Born: 1895, Atlanta.” The New York, New York, Death Index notes, “Birth Year: abt 1900” (AncestryLibrary.com). A 1917 Freeman article stated that Smith was “in her 15th year of the business and has been doing a single as a headliner for over 11 years” (“News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 3, 1917). Another account (“Champion ‘Blues’ Singer Here,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 11, 1924) says she was “a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and a former student of Selma University of that city.” Selma University was actually located in Selma, Alabama.

410. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 29, 1910.

411. “The Florida Blossoms,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1909.

412. “The Olympia Theater At Anderson, S. C.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 28, 1910.

413. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 29, 1910.

414. J. W. Seer, “The Globe Theatre, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 24, 1910.

415. “Globe Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 31, 1910.

416. “F. A. Barrasso’s Tri-State Circuit, Mobile, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 11, 1911.

417. J. Chicken Rell [sic, i.e., “Chicken Reel”] Beaman, “Notes From Airdome, Tampa, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 27, 1911.

418. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 3, 1911. For more about the illustrious career of Cordelia McClain, see Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight and Ragged but Right.

419. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 29, 1911.

420. “McKinney Theater Augusta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5, 1911.

421. Jas. H. Price, “The Brooks-Smith Players At The Lyre Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 28, 1911. Speedy Smith’s character was alternately identified as “Lize, the boot black.” “That Railroad Rag” may be related to “Railroad Blues,” one of Trixie Smith’s outstanding recordings from 1925 (Paramount 12262, reissued on Document DOCD-5333).

422. “The Crown Garden Theater, Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 2, 1911. The other three “Lady Barbers” were “Pansy,” played by Theresa Burroughs; “Daisy,” played by Ludella Price; and “Violet,” played by Pearl Lee.

423. “Twelfth Avenue Theater, Nashville, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 25, 1912.

424. “The New Grand Theater, Augusta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 24, 1912.

425. “Lyric Theater, Miami, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 22, 1913.

426. “Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 11, 1914; “Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 25, 1914.

427. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 29, 1914.

428. Col. Brown, “Cincinnati, O., News,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 17, 1914.

429. “At The New Crown Garden Theatre—Tim E. Owsley, Proprietor,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 24, 1914. It may be worth noting that Ora Criswell was singing a song (or songs) designated as “Haunting Melody” (February 1, 1913) and “The Melody” (January 6, 1917).

430. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 31, 1914.

431. Columbus Bragg, “On And Off The Stroll,” Chicago Defender, October 31, 1914; Columbus Bragg, “Sacred Cantata At Bethel Church,” Chicago Defender, November 7, 1914.

432. Al Wells, “Alexander Tolliver’s Big Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 9, 1915.

433. Harry Humbolt, “Pekin Theatre, Savannah, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 30, 1915.

434. “Gibson’s New Standard Theatre, Philadelphia,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 15, 1916.

435. “Rose Theater News, Augusta, Georgia,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 20, 1916.

436. “Gibson’s New Standard Theatre,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 28, 1916.

437. “Vaudeville At The Washington Theatre, Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 14, 1917.

438. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 21; June 2, 1917.

439. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 21, 1917; J. H. Gray, “Gibson’s New Standard Theatre, Philadelphia—Speedy Smith, The Coming Comedian, Trooper Of Troop K. Receives An Ovation,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 28, 1917.

440. Billy E. Jones, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 4, 1917.

441. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 3, 1917.

442. “The Pekin, Cincinnati, O.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 8, 1917.

443. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 15, 1917.

444. “Trixie Smith Heard From At Last,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 21, 1918.

445. “Stage Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 13, 1919. Trixie and Camanche [sic] Muse remained together and had at least two more children. In 1925 she reported that “her four-year-old daughter Madeline can already sing and dance” (“Trixie On Watch,” Chicago Defender, March 28, 1925). Shortly thereafter news came that “Trixie Smith has a little son, born on April 25” (“A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, May 2, 1925). While the public documents refer to Trixie Muse, she remained Trixie Smith in the entertainment columns of the African American press.

446. “I. W. James’ Crescent Players Going Big At Bijou, Nashville, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1919.

447. “The Victory Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 6, 1920.

448. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 10, 1920.

449. Tony Langston, “‘Fair and Warmer’ Pleases Avenue Patrons …,” “The Monogram,” Chicago Defender, July 24, 1920.

450. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 16, 1920; Tony Langston, “‘September Morn’ Closing Engagement …,” Chicago Defender, October 2, 1920.

451. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 25, 1920.

452. Ad, “New Lincoln Theatre,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 27, 1921.

453. Lester A. Walton, “Music And The Stage,” New York Age, November 16, 1911. For an anecdotal account of the founding of the Clef Club, see Tom Fletcher, 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business: The Tom Fletcher Story (New York: Burdge, 1954), 251–52. For more on the Clef Club Orchestra, see Reid Badger, A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

454. Lucien H. White, “Europe And The Castles And Tempo Club Affair,” New York Age, October 15, 1914; “Memphis Blues Band,” Chicago Defender, June 14, 1919.

455. Ruth E. Whitehurst, “Society ‘400’ Applauds New Sort o’ Opera,” Chicago Defender, January 28, 1922. Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who helped judge the contest, became mayor of New York City in 1933. The other named judge, Fred R. Moore, was elsewhere identified as the publisher of the New York Age. The current governor of New York State, Nathan L. Miller was also present, along with his family and staff.

456. “A New Blues Star,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 3, 1922.

457. “Trixie Wins,” Chicago Defender, February 11, 1922. The report further noted that, “Bob Slater, well known in theatricals, is credited with having unearthed Trixie Smith.” In Black Pearls—Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 245, Daphne Duval Harrison mistakenly proposed that “Trixie, [was] described as the ‘dark horse’ in the contest probably because she was the lone black contender.”

458. “Champion ‘Blues’ Singer Here.”

459. Ibid. The reporter also insinuated that, “To add to the chagrin of one of the competing singers, who had laughed at Trixie on the night of the contest, the contracts of this lady were cancelled, and 30 of the numbers she was to have made were recorded by Trixie Smith, under the other girl’s name.” However, the actual corpus of recordings by Trixie Smith, Lucille Hegamin, Daisy Martin, and Alice Leslie Carter provides no evidence to support this assertion.

460. “Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, July 1, 1922. Smith was part of the all-star “Shuffle Along Review” that played twelve weeks at the Hotel LaMare cabaret. The roster included Garland Howard, Mae Brown, and the Manhattan Quartet featuring basso Sam H. Gray, accompanied by Leroy Smith’s Orchestra (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Lemare’s Cabaret,” Billboard, July 22, 1922; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Review Closes,” Billboard, September 30, 1922).

461. Lucille Hegamin launched her Arto label recording career in the fall of 1920; Daisy Martin started recording for Gennett, then OKeh, in the spring of 1921; and Alice Leslie Carter recorded for Arto in August 1921. Hegamin’s earliest recordings are reissued on Document DOCD-5419; Carter’s on Document DOCD-5508; and Martin’s on Document DOCD-5522.

462. “Fourteen Black Hussars,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 26, 1907; “Our London Letter,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 31, 1907; “Our London Correspondence,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 14, 1907.

463. Billy E. Jones, “Eastern Theatrical News,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 25; August 15, 1914.

464. “The Globe Theatre, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 24, 1911. The company was directed by George Freeman, Leonard Harper, and Clarence Muse. Len Kunstadt reported in “The Lucille Hegamin Story,” Record Research, no. 39 (November 1961), that her maiden name was Nelson, and she is identified in this Freeman report as Lucille Nelson.

465. Sylvester Russell, “Musical And Dramatic,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 28, 1912.

466. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1918. The “bunch” included Ada “Bricktop” Smith and Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton.

467. Kunstadt, 5.

468. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, November 29, 1919.

469. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 106, 111–14.

470. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 139, 143–44, 153.

471. Tony Langston, “‘After Office Hours’ Pleases At Avenue; ‘Hello 1919’ Taxes Capacity Of Grand,” Chicago Defender, February 21, 1920.

472. “Daisy Scatters Xmas Joy,” Chicago Defender, January 6, 1922.

473. Many northern-resident woman blues singers recorded before Trixie Smith, beginning with Mamie Smith in February 1920. Southern vaudevillian Lizzie Miles recorded for OKeh in February 1922; Sara Martin made her first record, also for OKeh, in October 1922. A raft of southern vaudeville performers including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Clara Smith, and Virginia Liston were enlisted into the recording ranks in 1923.

474. “15th Infantry’s First Band Concert and Dance,” New York Age, January 28, 1922, is the source of information that James P. Johnson and his band provided instrumental accompaniment for the contestants in the Manhattan Casino blues singing contest. This information appears, without attribution, in Sam Charters and Leonard Kunstadt, Jazz: A History of the New York Scene (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 101.

475. Dixon, Godrich, and Rye, 837–39. Trixie Smith’s complete recordings, including those made for Decca in 1938, are reissued on Document DOCD-5332, 5333, and 5573.

476. “Orpheum Has Good Bill,” Chicago Defender, October 3, 1925.

477. Jackie Mabley worked under cork during the 1920s (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Wesley Varnell’s Reviews,” Billboard, August 26, 1922).

478. In 1930 Trixie Smith played “Sister Dephene” in a mixed-race drama titled Lily White, a “Schubert production” (Chappy Gardner, “‘Lily White’ Tense Play, Mixed Cast,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 24, 1930). In 1931 she toured with a Mae West show, The Constant Sinner (Billy Jones, “Stars That Shine,” Chicago Defender, November 21, 1931). In 1939 she joined rehearsals for the play Black Cotton (Ann Lewis, “Show Life Up And Down The Harlem Rialto,” New York Amsterdam News, September 16, 1939 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]). Her film credits include at least four “all sepia” pictures: The Black King (1932), Drums o’Voodoo (1934), God’s Step Children (1938), and Swing! (Oscar Micheaux, 1938).

479. “Trixie Muse” in the New York, New York, Death Index (AncestryLibrary.com).

480. Over the years, her first name also appeared in black press reports as Stella and/or Estella Harris. That Hot Springs was her place of birth was reported in the Freeman of August 9, 1902. The 1885 approximation of her date of birth is based on available data from various African American press reports.

481. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 8, 1899.

482. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 20; November 10, 1900. Charles Huff was Harris’s current stage partner.

483. W. A. Seymour was a Hot Springs–based theater manager, promoter, director, playwright, and self-proclaimed “legitimate actor,” an all-around entertainment entrepreneur who promoted himself as the “Black Booth.”

484. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 6, 1901.

485. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 18, 1902.

486. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 8, 1902. “Zulu Babe” was originally sung by Bert Williams and George Walker in their big musical comedy production of 1900, The Sons of Ham.

487. A Freeman report of August 9, 1902, said Johnson was “of Cincinnati, O.” According to the Freeman of October 24, 1903, his date of birth was January 8, 1882.

488. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 25, 1902.

489. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 12, 1902.

490. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 24, 1902. The article specifies “R. Johnson” (not Billy Johnson) was proprietor of this company.

491. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 7, 1902.

492. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 12; August 9, 1902.

493. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 12, 1902.

494. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 2, 1902.

495. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 30, 1902.

496. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1902. A “Route” listing for the A Rabbit’s Foot Company in the Freeman of August 30, 1902, has them playing a two-day engagement in Birmingham, August 26–27.

497. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 18, 1902. The show was also known as Mahara’s Northern Minstrels.

498. Frank Mahara letter to George L. Knox, posted June 3, 1903, and published in “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 4, 1903.

499. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 26, 1903.

500. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 29, 1903.

501. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 19; May 14, 1904.

502. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 11, 1904.

503. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 16; August 6, 1904.

504. Sylvester Russell, “The Black Patti Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 17, 1904.

505. Ibid.

506. Billy Johnson may have doubled in both shows for at least a few days. In Sylvester Russell’s review of the opening night performance of the Smart Set Company in Newburgh, New York, on September 10, he mentions “William Johnson” in the role of “Buster” (Sylvester Russell, “‘Smart Set’ In Newburg,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 15, 1904). The Johnsons are not mentioned in a lengthy review of the Black Patti Troubadours’ late-September 1904 engagement at the Park Theater in Indianapolis (“‘A Swell Bunch,’ Says Howard,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 1, 1904).

507. “The ‘Smart Set’ Cullings,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 12, 1904. She was probably singing Will Marion Cook’s “Darktown Barbaque” (New York: John H. Cook, 1904).

508. Ibid. She was probably singing Cecil Mack and Will Accooe, “In A Birch Canoe” (New York: M. Witmark & Sons, 1904).

509. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 29, 1905. Smith’s name is attached to many proto-blues publications of the pre–World War I era, including “I’ve Got The Blues” (1901), “All In Down And Out” (1906), “You’re in the Right Church but the Wrong Pew” (1909), “The Blues (But I’m Too Blamed Mean to Cry)” (1912), and “Ballin’ the Jack” (1913).

510. “Shows Of The Week,” “Alhambra,” Variety, December 23, 1905; Sime, “Shows Of The Week,” “Imperial,” Variety, March 17, 1906; Rush, “Shows Of The Week,” “Amphion,” Variety, April 14, 1906.

511. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 2, 1906.

512. “Funny Folks Comedy Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 15, 1907; “The Florida Blossoms Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 28, 1909. Chris Smith and Billy Johnson reunited in 1911 for another tour in mainstream vaudeville: “Smith played the piano in rag time and Johnson danced in a very novel way” (Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5; September 2, 1911).

513. “Amuse U Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 19, 1910. In spite of its headline, this item brought news from the Savoy.

514. “Amuse U Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 19, 1910: “Will Blake, cornet; Buddy McGill, piano; Alex Dukes, drums; Jim Scott, trombone; Williams, first violin”; “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 30, 1910.

515. “Unrecorded Interview Material and Research Notes,” 187.

516. “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 29, 1910.

517. “Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 4, 1910; “The Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 12, 1910; “Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 19, 1910.

518. “Notes From The Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 24, 1910.

519. “The Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 28, 1910.

520. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 22, 1901.

521. “Savoy Theater, Memphis,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 19, 1910. Buddy McGill’s purported familiarity with the Yaqui Indians remains unexplained.

522. “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 30, 1910.

523. “Savoy At Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 10, 1910.

524. “The Majestic Theater, Hot Springs, Ark.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 11, 1911.

525. Lew Hall, “The New Savoy Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 11, 1911; “Savoy Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 1, 1911.

526. “Gossip of the Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 9, 1911. Perhaps “The Blues in Indian Style” was related to the “war dance” that Buddy McGill had arranged back in 1910.

527. Fred A. Barrasso Memphis City Burial Permit #21926; Fred A. Barrasso obituary, Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 26, 1911.

528. “Metropolitan Theater, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 18, 1913: “Estell Harris McGill [sic],” piano, with Alex Porter, violin; Leslie Davis, cornet; Albert Fredricks, trombone; and Charlie Porter, drums. By 1914, the Metropolitan Theater band was “under the leadership of Prof. ‘Buddie’ McGill” (“Metropolitan Theatre, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 21, 1914).

529. Carey B. Lewis, “The Monogram Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 7, 1913. The May 10, 1913, edition of the Freeman advertised “The Princess Prance” as written by Charles A. Hunter and Artie Matthews.

530. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 21, 1913.

531. “The New Crown Garden Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 28, 1913.

532. Walter S. Fearance, “Good Acts At The Booker Washington Annex,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 5, 1913; G. S. Baker, “Louisville, Ky.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 19, 1913.

533. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 12, 1914.

534. “New Additions to the Billy King Stock Company,” Savannah Tribune, January 31, 1914.

535. “The Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 22; June 5, 1915. Joe Sudler recorded with Charles Elgar’s Creole Orchestra. Curtis Mosby recorded in several settings, including his own Dixieland Blue Blowers. George Wilkson’s name is elsewhere given as Wilks.

536. Edward Lankford, “Lyric Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 29, 1915. Reports from the Lyric Theater consistently give Gretchen Burns’s name as “Greathan.”

537. “Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 3, 1915.

538. Ibid. Higgins and Overstreet later collaborated on the jazz classic, “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.”

539. “Stage Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 18, 1915.

540. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 25, 1915.

541. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 9, 1915.

542. Jelly Roll Morton, “History of the Elite No. 2,” unpublished manuscript, 1938, as given in Russell, “Oh, Mister Jelly,” 58–59.

543. “W. Benton Overstreet To Go In Vaudeville Coming Season,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1915.

544. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 16, 1915.

545. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 6, 1915.

546. R. W. Thompson, “The Passing Show In Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 11, 1916.

547. “Last Week’s Happenings In Washington, D. C.,” Savannah Tribune, May 6, 1916.

548. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 6, 1916; Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, May 6, 1916.

549. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, May 6, 1916.

550. Ibid.

551. See advertisement attached to Pasquale Forte, words; W. Benton Overstreet and James Altiere, music, “I Wonder If Your Loving Heart Still Pines for Me” (Chicago: Royal Music, 1916).

552. W. Benton Overstreet, “The ‘Jazz’ Dance” (Chicago: Will Rossiter, 1917).

553. Ernest Hogan, “La Pas Ma La” (Kansas City: J. R. Bell, 1895). See Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 444–45.

554. A. G. Lindsay, “A Negro Not A Coward,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 21, 1895. The article’s author asserted: “you may find a Negro anywhere that can dance every step as neat and pretty as you want to see, from the old ‘back step’ down to the ‘Pas Malas,’ the latest out.”

As far back as the 1820s, newspaper reports described the back step performed at country dances and sheep shearing “jubilees” (“A Parody, On Collin’s Ode on the Passions,” Otsego Herald (Cooperstown, New York), June 19, 1820; “Shearing,” Nantucket Inquirer, June 28, 1828 (America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank). The “Shearing” article specifically referred to the “Narragansett back-step.”

During the 1850s and 1860s, the back step was observed in the southern states, sometimes in ostensibly African American contexts, as in this line from a political parody: “I’ll gib ’em ‘Conjamingo’ back step and old ‘Jim Crow.’” (“Song. Tune—‘Old Zip Coon.’ By Old Alabama Jim,” Natchez Mississippi Free Trader, September 15, 1852 [America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank]).

An account of a “Fiddlers’ Carnival” which took place at the Texas State Fair Grounds in Dallas in 1900 included an illustration and description of Jonas Goodwin, an African American, “who cut the pigeon-wing, sifted sand, double-shuffled, back-stepped and heel-and-toed” (“A ‘Fiddlers’ Carnival,” Dallas Morning News, April 8, 1900 [America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank]).

555. Recordings of instrumental versions include Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis, “That Jazz Dance,” Columbia A-2419, 1917, reissued on Memphis Archives CD MA7006; and Blake’s Jazzone Orchestra, “The Jazz Dance,” Pathe 20430, 1917.

556. Norfolk Jazz Quartet, “Monday Morning Blues,” OKeh 4345, 1921, reissued on Document DOCD-5381; Blind Willie McTell, “Georgia Rag,” OKeh 8924, 1931, reissued on Document DOCD-5007. “Monday Morning Blues” was also recorded by Mary Stafford (Columbia A3511, 1921, reissued on Document DOCD-5517). The chorus of Overstreet’s “The Jazz Dance”:

First you place your hands on your hips just so, then glide,

Then you do the “Suey” ’way down low then slide,

Then you rise and cast your eyes to the skies,

Then get ’way back, and do that happy shout;

Now “Eagle Rock” from left to right then drag,

Then you “set ’em,” with all your might and rag,

And then you buzz around like a bee,

And you sway like a ship at sea,

That’s the “Jazz-dance” the little Jazz-dance that ev’ry body’s crazy ’bout.

557. Sylvester Russell, “Estelle Harris Now A Vaudeville Star,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 7, 1916.

558. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, May 6; August 12; 26, 1916.

559. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, May 13, 1916.

560. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 27, 1916.

561. “Stella Harris,” Chicago Defender, May 27, 1916.

562. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, May 27; June 17, 1916.

563. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, August 12, 1916. “Happy Shout” was recorded by Virginia Liston in 1923 (OKeh 8134, reissued on Document DOCD-5446).

564. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, July 1, 1916. Billy Farrell’s career stretched back to the early days of Sam T. Jack’s Creole Burlesque Company.

565. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, August 26, 1916.

566. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, June 3, 1916. This, no doubt, was a parody of Chris Smith and Cecil Mack’s late-breaking hit “Never Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice.”

567. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 24, 1916.

568. Cary B. Lewis, “Billy King—A Big Success,” Chicago Defender, May 20, 1916.

569. Sylvester Russell chronicled plot after plot in his “Chicago Weekly Review.”

570. Ad, “The Grand Theatre,” Chicago Defender, June 24; July 15, 1916; Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 26; September 9, 1916.

571. For more on the “Walking the Dog” craze, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right.

572. W. H. Smith, “Theatrical Notes And Comments,” Chicago Broad Axe, September 9, 1916. William Foster wrote the screenplay, under his old pen name, Juli Jones, and cabareteer Teenan Jones put up the production money.

573. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 9, 1916. Though Russell attributed it to J. Rosamond Johnson, “I Hear You Calling Me” was actually composed by Harold Harford, words, and Charles Marshall, music (London: Boosey, 1908). Thanks to Wayne D. Shirley.

574. Ibid. The statement that Harris had authored the lyrics of “The ‘Jazz’ Dance” is not reflected on the sheet music publication.

575. “Estella Harris,” Chicago Defender, September 30, 1916.

576. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 7, 1916.

577. Tony Langston, “Theatrical Review,” Chicago Defender, October 7, 1916.

578. Shortly before Estelle Harris’s string trio played it at the Grand Theater, “Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble” was recorded by a full military band, the American Republic Band (Pathe 20026, 1916).

579. “The Profession at Milwaukee,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 1, 1909; Cary B. Lewis, “Past Week At Chicago,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 22, 1910; “‘Bill’ Cole, Famous Musician of Pekin Fame, Passes Away,” Chicago Defender, June 29, 1918.

580. Cary B. Lewis, “Past Week At Chicago,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 22, 1910.

581. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1916.

582. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 25, 1916.

583. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 16, 1916.

584. A Christmas party at the white Cort Theater in Chicago featured music “by Sam Arnold and his Pekin Quintette” (“A Joy Spreader,” Chicago Defender, December 30, 1916). Arnold spent the summer of 1917 in Milwaukee with the Weaver Brothers’ Orchestra (“A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 18, 1917).

585. “Madam Fairfax & Son, Estelle Harris, Queen of Ragtime, and a Good Show at the New Monogram,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 19, 1917.

586. Spencer Williams, “Steppin’ on the Puppy’s Tail” (Chicago: Frank K. Root, 1917).

587. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 24, 1917.

588. Billy Lewis, “High Vaudeville At Washington Theater, Indianapolis, This Week,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 2, 1917. The comment that Overstreet “finds it difficult to keep his own stuff [apparently referring to “playlets”] when he produces it” may allude to the fact that just one week prior to Overstreet and Harris’s arrival at the Washington Theater, the Bruce and Bruce Stock Company presented Overstreet’s skit The Grocery Man.

589. “Harris & Overstreet,” Chicago Defender, July 14, 1917.

590. “Notes From Clarence Powel’s [sic] Minstrels With the Greater Sheesley Show,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 27, 1917; ad, “Booking Independent, Ivy Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 15, 1917; “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, December 22, 1917.

591. Ad, “Held Over!” Richmond Planet, November 17, 1917.

592. “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 16, 1918.

593. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 29, 1918; “Chicago Cullings,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 13, 1918.

594. “Chicago Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 9, 1918.

595. “New Song Hit,” Chicago Defender, May 24, 1919; “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 9, 1924: “W. Benton Overstreet, piano pinger par excellence at the Standard theater, Philadelphia, threatens to invade the West this season.” Legendary brass bass player Mose McQuitty was a member of Overstreet’s Standard Theater Orchestra at least through 1924 (Chicago Defender, September 20, 1924). For more on McQuitty’s career, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, and Alex Albright, “Mose McQuitty’s Unknown Career: A Personal History of Black Music in America,” Black Music Research Bulletin II, no. 2 (Fall 1989).

596. “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, March 1, 1930.

597. Overstreet’s 1927 sides with Elnora Johnson are reissued on Document DOCD-5514. His 1929 sides with Sam Theard are reissued on Document DOCD-5479.

598. “New Song Hit,” Chicago Defender, May 24, 1919.

599. Tom Lemonier, “Lemonier’s Letter,” Chicago Defender, September 4, 1919.

600. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, January 31, 1920.

601. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 3, 1920.

602. “Stella Shows ’Em,” Chicago Defender, June 7, 1924.

603. “At Louisville Theatres,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 26, 1925.

604. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 29, 1926; Charles O’Neal, “In Old Kaysee,” Chicago Defender, November 13, 1926; “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, December 3; 10, 1927.

605. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 1929.

606. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, February 23, 1929.

607. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, March 9, 1929.

608. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, May 11, 1929.

609. Bob Hayes, “Here and There With Bob Hayes,” Chicago Defender, June 1, 1929.

610. “Maybelle Whitman and Company Aid Invalid,” Chicago Defender, September 28, 1929.

611. “Hits And Bits,” Chicago Defender, April 1, June 10, 1933.

612. Bob Hayes, “Here and There,” Chicago Defender, August 25, 1934. Hayes identified her as “the widow of Benton Overstreet, well known composer.” However, Overstreet was spotted in Detroit one week after Harris’s death was reported (Bob Hayes, “Here & There,” Chicago Defender, September 1, 1934).

613. Ad, “Estelle Harris, The Sister That Shouts,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 30, 1916.

614. All eight sides are included on Document DOCD-5512.

Second Interlude

1. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 1, 1901. For another early idea regarding black vaudeville circuitry, see ad for Chappelle Bros. Circuit, Indianapolis Freeman, March 1, 1902.

2. “Unrecorded Interview Material and Research Notes,” 188. Compare with Russell, Oh, Mister Jelly, 50–51.

3. For information about the popularity of tent shows in the state of Mississippi, see Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 214–17.

4. “American Theater, Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 25, 1910.

5. “American Theater, Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 2, 1910.

6. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 29, 1910.

7. “Savoy Theater At Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 9, 1910.

8. “F. A. Barrasso’s Tri-State Circuit, Mobile, Ala.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 11, 1911; “The American Theater Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 18, 1911.

9. “Temple Theater, New Orleans,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 12, 1910.

10. “The Majestic Theater, Hot Springs, Ark.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 11, 1911. Lizzie Miles, Virginia Liston, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmie Cox, Happy Howe, and Tillie Johnson also appeared on the Tri-State Circuit (“The Tri-State Circuit, Vicksburg, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 8, 1910; “The Amuse Theater, Vicksburg, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 1, 1911; “The Majestic Theater, Hot Springs, Ark.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 1; 22, 1911; “American Theater, Jackson, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 3, 1910).

11. “The Tri-State Circuit, Vicksburg, Miss.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 8, 1910.

12. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 8, 1910.

13. “Notice Performers, Memphis, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 30, 1911. The Tri-State Circuit was last noted in the Indianapolis Freeman in an ad of November 18, 1911.

14. 1910 U.S. Census; World War I Civilian Draft Registrations, 1917–1918 (AncestryLibrary.com).

15. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 8, 1909. He originally had a partner named Glickstein.

16. “Notes From The Airdome Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 19, 1910.

17. “Globe Theatre, Jacksonville, Fla.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 3, 1910.

18. “L. D. Joel, Manager, Goes To Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 24, 1910.

19. “Of Much Importance,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 5, 1910.

20. Tim E. Owsley, “Theatrical News From Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 22, 1911.

21. Tim E. Owsley, “Joel And Bailey Consolidate,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 27, 1911.

22. “Dissolution,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 6, 1912.

23. Ad, “Wanted!” Indianapolis Freeman, December 7, 1912; ad, “Performers Take Notice,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 21, 1912; ad, “Do You Want 10 Weeks Work in Atlanta, Georgia?” Indianapolis Freeman, December 14, 1912. The Joel Theater was located at 147 Peters Street.

24. “A Merry Christmas And Happy New Year,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 28, 1912.

25. “L. D. Joel Theater Company Purchases Grand At Chattanooga,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 11, 1913.

26. “The Joel Theater, Chattanooga, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 1, 1913.

27. Ad, “Don’t Lay Off Work,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 21, 1913.

28. Ad, “Arcade Theatre!” Indianapolis Freeman, August 16, 1913.

29. “L. D. Joel, Famous Theatrical King Is Not Dead,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 25, 1914.

30. Ad, “Important!” Indianapolis Freeman, June 13, 1914.

31. Joel’s last ad in the Freeman ran in the issue of May 30, 1914.

32. Joel, however, identified himself on his World War I draft registration card as proprietor of the Casino Theater, a Jacksonville moving picture house (AncestryLibrary.com).

33. Ad, “81 Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 12, 1915.

34. “The 81 Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 26, 1916.

35. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 106–7. See also Athelia Knight, “In Retrospect: Sherman H. Dudley: He Paved the Way for T.O.B.A.,” Black Perspective in Music 15, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 152–81.

36. S. Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 9, 1912.

37. “Dudley Adds Other Links To His Chain,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 6, 1912.

38. “What’s What On The Dudley Circuit,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 20; 27, 1912.

39. Ad, “Some are Wise, Some are Otherwise,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 28, 1912.

40. Cary B. Lewis, “Plans Perfected,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 5, 1913.

41. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 31, 1914.

42. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 7, 1914.

43. “Emma Griffin Dies,” Chicago Defender, September 7, 1918.

44. “The Crown Garden, 521 Indiana Avenue,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 10, 1910.

45. “The Griffin Sisters,” Chicago Defender, March 22, 1913; Ar-w-tee, “The Passing Show In Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 5, 1913.

46. “Griffin Sisters,” Chicago Defender, November 22, 1913; “The Griffin Sisters,” Chicago Defender, December 6, 1913; “Griffin Sisters,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 14, 1914.

47. “Griffin Sisters Helping Stage,” Chicago Defender, January 10, 1914.

48. “Griffin Sisters,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 14, 1914.

49. Ar-W-Tee, “The Passing Show In Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 23, 1915; Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 17, 1915.

50. “Griffin Benefit,” Chicago Defender, July 27, 1918; “Emma Griffin Dies,” Chicago Defender, September 7, 1918.

51. “S. H. Dudley Again Writes In Interest Of Show Business,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 30, 1915.

52. “Comments Concerning the Explanatory Letter Written by S. H. Dudley,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 27, 1915.

53. Ad, “Look What Has Happened,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 8, 1917; ad, “Consolidated Vaudeville Exchange,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 24, 1917.

54. Ad, “The Queen Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1916.

55. Ad, “The Liberty Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 20, 1917.

56. Ad, “Attention!” Indianapolis Freeman, December 15, 1917.

57. Sam E. Reevin, “An Open Letter To The Performers,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 9, 1918.

58. “Martin Klein Submits A Letter,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 4, 1918.

59. “Some Nuts For Klein To Crack. Sam Reevin Tells Mr. Klein,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 11, 1918.

60. “Martin Klein Talks Back To Mr. Reevin,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 25, 1918; “Mr. Reevin To Mr. Klein,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 1, 1918.

61. The managers were Anselmo Barrasso, representing the Metropolitan Theater in Memphis; Alfred Starr, Bijou Theater, Nashville; Charles P. Bailey, 81 Theater, Atlanta; Charles H. Douglass, Douglass Theater, Macon; L. Don Bradford, Pekin Theater, Savannah; Pete Delaney, Lincoln Theater, Pensacola; C. C. Schriner, Pike Theater, Mobile; Buddie Austin, Strand Theater, Jacksonville; J. F. Arnold, Dixie Theater, Bessemer; and J. L. Savage, New Queen Theater, Birmingham (“Southern Managers Meet; Affiliate With Mutual Circuit,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 17, 1918).

62. Tim E. Owsley, “The Plain Truth,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 24, 1918.

63. “S. H. Dudley Enterprises Add Two More Houses To Their List,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 1, 1917.

64. Ad, “Notice to All Acts,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 12, 1918.

65. Ad, “The Colored Consolidated Vaudeville Exchange,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 28, 1918.

66. Ad, “The Consolidated Time,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 5, 1919. Acts riding the Colored Consolidated time during the summer of 1919 included Jimmy and Baby Cox, Tommy Parker and Company, Watts and Willis’s Ebony Vampires, and Mary Mack’s Merry Makers of Mirth (ad, “Attractions that are Booked Solid for One Year by S. H. Dudley for the Consolidated Time,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 26, 1919; ad, “Stovall & Mack,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 26; August 16, 1919).

67. Ad, “Grand Opening Of The South’s Most Beautiful Theatre, The Palace,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 16, 1919.

68. Ad, “Last Call,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1919.

69. “Officers Of The Consolidated Time To Meet In Pensacola, Fla., Oct. 15,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 11, 1919.

70. “Gang” (W. H. G. B.), “To Boost Means Success—Come On Mr. Manager, The South Affords A Future Artist—Don’t Go Wrong,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 8, 1919.

71. “Consolidated Circuit Elect Officers,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 15, 1919.

72. “Dudley Fights For The Acts, A Hint To The Wise From One Who Knows,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 17, 1920.

73. Owsley, “The Plain Truth.”

74. “Irvin C. Miller Says,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 23, 1919.

75. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard while Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 14, 1920.

76. Ad, “The Southern Consolidated Vaudeville Circuit, Inc.,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 6, 1920.

77. S. H. Dudley, “The White Man’s ‘Nigger,’” Indianapolis Freeman, March 20, 1920.

78. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1920. For another, more puzzling editorial opinion, see Clay Price, “‘The Theatrical Pharisee,’ By Carter’s Summary Of The Dad And Dud, the Goat Controversy,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1920.

79. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 24, 1920.

80. Ad, Dudley, Klein & Reevin’s United Vaudeville Circuit (Inc.),” Indianapolis Freeman, June 5, 1920; Chicago Defender, June 12, 1920.

81. Ad, “The Southern Consolidated Vaudeville Circuit, Inc,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 12, 1920.

82. Ad, “Big Special Important Announcement!” Indianapolis Freeman, July 3, 1920.

83. Ad, “Southern Consolidated Vaudeville Circuit, Inc.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 24, 1920.

84. Ad, “Watch This Space,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 25, 1920.

85. “New Organization,” Chicago Defender, January 29, 1921.

86. “Milton Starr Makes Statement,” Chicago Defender, February 12, 1921.

87. “Important Developments In The Vaudeville World,” Chicago Defender, May 21, 1921.

88. “War at End,” Chicago Defender, May 28, 1921.

89. C. A. Leonard, New York Times, reprinted in “Our Stage History, Almost Forgotten, Is Well Worth Knowing and Being Proud Of,” Chicago Defender, August 10, 1929.

90. “Big Protest,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921 (Garnett Warbington letter to Tony Langston).

Chapter 5

1. “Announcing a New Department,” Billboard, October 30, 1920. For background on J. A. Jackson see Anthony D. Hill, Pages from the Harlem Renaissance: Chronicle of Performance (New York: Peter Lang, 1967).

2. Louis A. Hirsch, Gene Buck, and Dave Stamper, “It’s Getting Dark On Old Broadway” (New York: Harms, 1922). The lyrics, in part:

It’s getting very dark on old Broadway,

You see the change in ev’ry cabaret;

Just like an eclipse on the moon,

Ev’ry café now has the dancing coon.

Pretty choc’late babies shake and shimmie ev’rywhere

Real Darktown entertainers hold the stage,

You must black up to be the latest rage.

Yes, the great white way is white no more,

It’s just like a street on the Swanee shore;

It’s getting very dark on old Broadway.

3. J. A. Jackson, “It’s Getting Darker On Broadway,” Billboard, August 5, 1922.

4. Dan Burley, “The ‘Crazy Blues,’” New York Amsterdam News, March 2, 1940 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

5. “String Beans And Benbow,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 5, 1916.

6. Jack Trotter, “New York Notes of Stage And Sport,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 16, 1917.

7. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “At The Lafayette, New York,” Billboard, September 15, 1923.

8. See Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 42–107, for background on the big shows of Williams and Walker, Ernest Hogan, Cole and Johnson, and S. H. Dudley.

9. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “The Year With the Colored Performer,” Billboard, December 16, 1922.

10. Albert B. Mordecai, “In New York,” Chicago Defender, June 4, 1921; “Year’s Run Record For ‘Shuffle Along,’” Chicago Defender, May 27, 1922.

11. See Tony Langston, “Big Slump in Business Affects Chicago Theaters and Other Amusements,” Chicago Defender, June 18, 1921; “A Statement,” Chicago Defender, June 18, 1921; Charles P. McClane, “Another Angle,” Chicago Defender, August 6, 1921; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” Milton Starr, “Business Conditions,” Billboard, August 6, 1921; Lew Henry, “Bad Business,” Chicago Defender, July 1, 1922.

12. “‘Shuffle Along,’ Race Musical Comedy, is Real Broadway ‘Wow,’” Chicago Defender, August 27, 1921.

13. Ibee, “Shuffle Along,” Variety, May 1921, reproduced in Robert Kimball and William Bolcom, Reminiscing with Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake (1973; New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 98.

14. Mordecai, “In New York.”

15. Kimball and Bolcom, 118.

16. Gertrude Saunders interviewed by Frank Driggs, 1968 (UMKC Marr Sound Archives).

17. “Letters,” Chicago Defender, September 3, 1921. The two records and the moving picture that Saunders alluded to have not been traced.

18. Dixon, Godrich, and Rye, Blues and Gospel Records 1890–1943; Gertrude Saunders, “I’m Craving For That Kind Of Love”/“Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home,” OKeh 8004, reissued on Document DOCD-5517.

19. Incipient scat singing, possibly influenced by Gertrude Saunders, can be heard in the recordings of Isabelle Washington (“I Want To,” Black Swan 14141, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5342); Maude De Forrest (“Doo Dee Blues,” Black Swan 14143, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5342), and others of the period.

20. Saunders interviewed by Driggs; Bill Egan, Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 246.

21. Sylvester Russell, “‘Town Top-Piks’ Last Week At the Grand Theatre,” Chicago Defender, September 25, 1920.

22. David Evans, liner notes to Female Blues Singers, Vol. 13, Document DOCD-5517, 1997.

23. Egan, 60–61. Mills and Thompson had been featured with the Tennessee Ten in burlesque the previous year (“George Day Writes,” Chicago Defender, September 4, 1920).

24. Kimball and Bolcom, 118.

25. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Now The Plantation Room,” Billboard, March 4, 1922; Egan, 66–67.

26. New York Clipper, reproduced in “Clippings,” Chicago Defender, March 4, 1922.

27. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Florence Mills In Lights,” Billboard, May 20, 1922.

28. It should be noted, however, that during her February 1923 engagement at the Lafayette Theater in New York, Mills reportedly sang “Aggravatin’ Papa” and “Homesick Blues.”

29. Eva Taylor, “May We Meet Again (Florence Mills)”/“She’s Gone To Join The Songbirds In Heaven,” OKeh 8518, 1927, reissued on Document DOCD-5409; Juanita Stinnette Chappelle, “Florence,” Victor 21062-A, 1927; Bert Howell, “Bye Bye Florence,” Victor 21062-B, 1927; Egan, 249–56.

30. Ziggy Holmes, “Philly Dope,” Chicago Defender, November 12, 1921.

31. Edith Wilson as told to Paige Van Vorst, “My Story,” Mississippi Rag (February 1975): 1.

32. Bob Rusch, “Edith Wilson: Interview,” Cadence 5, no. 8 (August 1979): 20.

33. Howard Rye, liner notes to RST JPCD-1522–2; Derrick Stewart-Baxter, Ma Rainey and the Classic Blues Singers, 27; Harrison, Black Pearls, 167.

34. “Eubie Blake and His Friends,” Eubie Blake Music EBM3, 1971; Edith Wilson with Little Brother Montgomery and the State Street Ramblers, “He May Be Your Man,” Delmark DS-637, 1977.

35. “Handiwork Of Handy Lauded,” Chicago Defender, December 6, 1924; J. A. Jackson, “Picked up by the Page,” Billboard, December 6, 1924. Jackson provided details of a program presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, by Vincent Lopez and his orchestra of forty pieces, which included W. C. Handy’s symphony “The Evolution of the Blues.” The concert was alleged to have “furnished ample material for discussion by the many who favor the blues as the symphonic basis for operatic music. Joseph Nussbaum created a splendid orchestration arrangement of Mr. Handy’s conception for the occasion.”

36. For a detailed consideration of this dialectical process as it related to African American vocal quartets and choruses, see Abbott and Seroff, To Do This, You Must Know How.

37. “‘Follow Me,’” “The Difference Determined,” Kansas City Call, February 9, 1923.

38. Basie, Good Morning Blues, 57.

39. Sylvester Russell, “Sylvester Russell’s Review,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1927.

40. Will M. Lewis, “Annual Review Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 16, 1915.

41. “The Washington Bill For This Week,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 26, 1918.

42. In 1914–15 Lankford managed the Lyric Theater in Kansas City (“The Lyric Stock Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 5, 1914; “Kansas City, Mo.,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 17, 1915); and in 1916 he pulled a long stint at the 81 Theater in Atlanta, serving as musical director and playing the villain in various dramatic productions (“The 81 Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 22, 1916; “The 81 Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 26, 1916; S. A. (Buddie) Austin, “The 81 Theater, Atlanta, Ga.,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 6, 1916).

43. “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 20, 1919.

44. G. Stanley, “The Washington Theatre,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1919.

45. Their marriage on September 22, 1920, is documented in the Marriage Records of Leavenworth County, Kansas (AncestryLibrary.com). When they played the Lafayette Theater in Harlem in December 1921, the “Gonzell White Entertainers” included fourteen performers (ad, “Lafayette Theater,” Chicago Defender, December 10, 1921).

46. “Gonzell’s Co.,” Chicago Defender, August 26, 1922.

47. “Race Talent Given A Chance In Burlesque,” Chicago Defender, August 22, 1925.

48. “Letters” (Gonzell White to “Dear Friend Tony”), Chicago Defender, October 7, 1922.

49. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “The Year With the Colored Performer,” Billboard, December 16, 1922.

50. Bell, “Burlesque Reviews,” “Jimmie Cooper’s Revue,” Variety, December 13, 1923.

51. “Big Acts For Burlesque,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 15, 1923; “Race Talent Given A Chance In Burlesque—Large Percentage of the Columbia Shows Are Using Race Features,” Chicago Defender, August 22, 1925. See also Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 2; 17; May 1; 8, 1926.

52. “Show Sails,” Chicago Defender, May 26, 1923. According to this report, those who made the trip included White and Lankford with Harry Smith, Gus Aiken, Jake Frazier, Amanzie “Jazzlips” Richardson, Rastus Crump, Earl Frazier, Billie Young, Margaret Johnson, Alfreda Thomas, and Mabel Webb. A later report (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Gonzell White To Come Back,” Billboard, October 6, 1923) supplied this band roster: “Bill Beard, Harry Smith, Gus Aiken, Amanzie Richardson, Earl Fraser, Rastus Crump, Billy Young and Eddie Langford.” The passenger list for the S.S. Porto Rico, sailing from New York May 19, 1923, arriving at San Juan May 24, 1923, confirms: Augustus Aiken, Fred R. Crump, Earl W. Fraser, Jacob W. Fazier, Marquette Johnson, Edward Lankford, Gonzell White Lankford, Amanzie Richardson, Harry Smith, Alfreda Thomas, Billie Young, and no doubt others (AncestryLibrary.com).

53. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “The Gonzelle White Co.,” Billboard, July 7, 1923; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “In Havana, Cuba,” Billboard, August 25, 1923.

54. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “In Havana, Cuba.”

55. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Picked Up by the Page,” Billboard, December 22, 1923.

56. J. A. Jackson, “Here and There Among the Folks,” Billboard, October 18, 1924.

57. “Going Smooth,” Chicago Defender, January 10, 1925.

58. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 11, 1925.

59. Band rosters from this period are given in “Gonzell And Gang,” Chicago Defender, September 20, 1924: “Earl Frazier, Rastus Crump, Smithy Frazier, Curley Brooks, Gus Aiken, Harry Smith, Johnnie Anderson”; and “Gonzell White’s Bunch,” Chicago Defender, September 5, 1925: “Harry Smith, music director; Rastus Crump, drums; Jackie Frasher [sic], trombone; Oasey Gary, cornet; Baby Adams, saxophone; Buster Maten [sic], piano.” Together or separately, Aiken and Frazier provided accompaniment for many female blues singers and also participated in early 1920s jazz band recording sessions. Details can be found in the “Index to Accompanists” in Dixon, Godrich, and Rye; Rust; and Michael Rader, K. B. Rau, with Dave Brown and Jorg Kuhfuss, “‘The Cornet Screamer’: The Mystery of Gus Aiken’s Recording Career,” Frog Blues and Jazz Annual 3 (2013) 152–62.

60. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, March 21; November 21, 1925; Dink Thomas, “The Koppin,” Chicago Defender, February 13, 1926.

61. “Gonzell White’s Bunch” (Moten’s name is given as “Maten” in the citation); “Sylvester Russell’s Review,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 25, 1926: “Harry Smith’s jazz band … included Ocie Gary, cornet; Jake Frazier, trombone; Fred Rastus Crump, drums, and Will Basie at the piano.”

62. Basie, Good Morning Blues, 86–87.

63. “At The Elmore,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 13, 1926.

64. Sylvester Russell, “Sylvester Russell’s Review,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 25, 1926.

65. Sylvester Russell, “Ed Lankford Dead,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 25, 1926; Gang Jines, “Edward Lankford Dead,” Chicago Defender, December 25, 1926; “Manager-Musician Dies In Indianapolis,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 1, 1927. Basie said in Good Morning Blues that Lankford died in Chicago, but the contemporaneous documentation suggests otherwise.

66. “Her Husband Dies,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 1, 1927.

67. Floyd J. Calvin, Pittsburgh Courier, January 1, 1927. Calvin was reproducing a message from Salem Tutt Whitney’s sickbed.

68. Basie, Good Morning Blues, 98.

69. Basie, Good Morning Blues, 98–105. Contemporaneous documents follow them to the 81 Theater, Atlanta, in March 1927 (“Gonzelle White In Atlanta,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 9, 1927); the Frolic, Birmingham; Frolic, Bessemer; and Palace, Ensley, Alabama, in April (“T.O.B.A. Routings,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 9, 1927; “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, April 30, 1927; “Routings,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 30, 1927); the Palace, Memphis, and Bijou, Nashville, in May (“On The T.O.B.A.,” Chicago Defender, May 7, 1927; “Routings,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 7, 1927); and on to the Eighteenth Street Theater, Kansas City, in March 1928 (“A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, March 10, 1928).

70. Basie, Good Morning Blues, 99.

71. “Ada Scores,” Chicago Defender, September 27, 1924.

72. “Ada Scores”; “Miss Ada ‘Lawd,’” Chicago Defender, January 10, 1925.

73. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, September 27, 1924.

74. “Ada Brown Hits,” Chicago Defender, October 18, 1924.

75. Ada Brown’s three 1923 OKeh label recordings with Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra are reissued on Document DOCD-5470.

76. Ada Brown with Fats Waller and his Rhythm, “That Ain’t Right,” V-Disc 165, 1943, reissued on Document DOCD-1019.

77. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1926. Press reports locate Swanagan with Ada Brown as early as October 18, 1924, and as late as July 6, 1929.

78. “Ada Brown Triumphs,” Chicago Defender, April 3, 1926. A 1941 Chicago Defender photo shows her in company with Butterbeans and Susie in a USO camp show headed by Noble Sissle (“Sissle’s Broadway And Harlem Camp Shows Invade West,” Chicago Defender, December 20, 1941 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]). See Blues Who’s Who, 70–72, for documentation of her continued stage successes and movie roles in the 1930s and 1940s. Blues Who’s Who also supplies some early bio data; but nothing has surfaced to support the suggestion that she “worked clubs” in Europe during the teens. A Pittsburgh Courier article of March 19, 1927 (“Ada Brown Sings ’Em With ‘Plantation Days’”) says she was formerly pianist at the Lincoln Theater in Kansas City. She died in 1950 (“Ada Brown Dies In Kansas City,” Atlanta Daily World, April 6, 1950 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]).

79. “Joe Jordan With Daley,” Chicago Defender, September 19, 1925. The personnel of the band is given as: “Wm. Logan, cornet; Ed Allen, cornet; Clifford Turner, clarinet, sax, alto; Bennie Morton, clarinet, sax; Clarence Miller, sax; Mike McKendrick, banjo; Joe Brown, trombone; Roy Burgin, bass; Happy Bolton, drums.”

80. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, October 23, 1926.

81. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, October 30, 1926: “Eddie Heywood is the pianist-leader; Henry Waite, banjo; Robert Check, trumpet; Theo. Johnson, traps; Ed Alexander, saxophone; Sweet Papa Jonas Walk, trombone.”

82. “‘7–11’ Still Going Big,” Chicago Defender, September 5, 1925. According to Rust, Jazz Records, the Original Jazz Hounds recorded six issued songs for Columbia in July and August 1925. Personnel is given as Thornton G. Brown, cornet; Jake Frazier, trombone; Bob Fuller, clarinet, alto sax; Ernest Elliot, clarinet, tenor sax; Mike Jackson, piano; Samuel Speed, banjo; and Perry Bradford on vocals. They are reissued on Frog DGF56.

83. “To Preserve Talent Of Famous Singers—Vocal Artists and Musicians of Race to Make Their Own Phonograph Records,” Chicago Defender, January 15, 1921. Though Black Swan is sometimes credited as the first black-owned and -operated phonograph record company, that distinction properly belongs to Broome Special Phonograph, which preceded Black Swan by two years. See Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry 1890–1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 464–70.

84. Helge Thygesen, Mark Berresford, and Russ Shor, Black Swan—The Record Label of the Harlem Renaissance (Nottingham, UK: VJM Publications, 1996).

85. “To Preserve Talent Of Famous Singers.” Black Swan ad, Chicago Defender, April 29, 1922; Thygesen, Berresford, and Shor, 58–59.

86. Laura Wilkie, “Records Racial Melodies As Sung By Members Of The Race,” Chicago Defender, June 4, 1921, reproduced from the Brooklyn Standard Union. See also Thygesen, Berresford, and Shor, 6–7.

87. “To Preserve Talent Of Famous Singers.”

88. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Third Black Swan Release,” Billboard, July 30, 1921.

89. Block ad for Black Swan Records, Chicago Defender, January 7, 1922.

90. Wilkie, “Records Racial Melodies As Sung By Members Of The Race.”

91. For a document-driven account of the early career of Essie Whitman and the Whitman Sisters, see Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 440–42. See also Nadine George-Graves, The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender and Class in African American Theater, 1900–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

92. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 22, 1915; “Young” Knox, “Chicago Ill.,” “Gleanings from the Stroll,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 26, 1915.

93. Waters with Samuels, 139. See also Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 20.

94. Billy E. Jones, “New York News—‘Hello, 1919,’ Big Hit,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 25, 1919. Waters was still a member of Frank Montgomery’s company in January–February 1920, when they performed at the Grand Theater in Chicago (Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 24, 1920).

95. In His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 171, Waters allowed: “I preferred being called the ‘ebony Nora Bayes’ because she was the one who never gave out with any unladylike shouts and growls but sang all her songs with refinement.”

96. Thygesen, Berresford, and Shor, 9.

97. “Ethel Must Not Marry,” Chicago Defender, December 24, 1921.

98. “No Vaudeville,” Chicago Defender, December 31, 1921. When first mentioned in the Defender, Ethel Waters and the Black Swan Troubadours were appearing at Gibson’s New Standard Theater in Philadelphia (“Sings Em,” Chicago Defender, November 26, 1921). See His Eye Is On the Sparrow, 145, for Waters’s account of New York agent Jack Goldberg’s offer to be her manager and put her into Keith vaudeville. She concluded: “I refused to sign the contract.”

99. Waters with Samuels, 146.

100. “Ethel Hits ’Em,” Chicago Defender, April 22, 1922.

101. Waters with Samuels, 146.

102. “Going South,” Chicago Defender, January 28, 1922.

103. “Musicians Quit; Ethel Waters Goes South,” Chicago Defender, February 11, 1922.

104. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Ethel Waters In the South,” Billboard, April 22, 1922.

105. “Negro Jazzers Stir WGV Fans; Miss Dove Star,” New Orleans Item, April 22, 1922; “Ethel Radiates,” Chicago Defender, April 29, 1922; “Blues Star Sings For Radiophone,” Kansas City Call, May 6, 1922. The Defender noted that this early broadcast made Ethel Waters “the first of her Race to do a real ‘radio’ stunt”; and Waters reiterated in His Eye Is on the Sparrow, 158, that “We were the first colored entertainers permitted to broadcast from that station.” However, a student quartet from Straight University had sung over WGV just two nights before the Ethel Waters broadcast (Abbott, “‘For Ofays Only,’” 5, 28n10).

106. “Ethel Radiates.”

107. Waters with Samuels, 173.

108. Many mainstream night clubs and cabarets featured late-night revues billed as “Midnight Frolics.” Notably, in 1915 Florenz Ziegfeld augmented his Ziegfeld Follies with a run of “Ziegfeld Midnight Frolics,” in order to “catch the late trade” on Broadway. The specter of white folks frolicking in historically black theaters below the Mason-Dixon Line was an entirely separate, distinctly southern phenomenon. It is not clear where or when these Jim Crow frolics originated, but they are noted in black press reports as early as the spring of 1920, when a member of the itinerant black New York Minstrels reported having “played a ‘Midnight Frolics’ for Ofays at Montgomery, Ala.” (Montgomery Advertiser, quoted in “Made ’Em Like It,” Chicago Defender, February 7, 1920).

109. “Negro Art,” New Orleans Item, July 3, 1923, quoted in D. Ireland Thomas, “Motion Picture News,” Chicago Defender, July 28, 1923.

110. Edw. C. Rogers, “Sing ’Em,” Chicago Defender, August 11, 1923.

111. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Observations,” “Jim Crow Frolics,” Chicago Defender, May 29, 1926.

112. Waters with Samuels, 161.

113. Jos. Jones, “Jottings From Virginia,” Chicago Defender, June 24, 1922.

114. Waters with Samuels, 146, 148.

115. In 1923 Billboard reported that Waters had “begun suit … against Harry Pace” for breaking her one-year contract regarding appearances with the Black Swan Troubadours (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Actress Sues For Salary,” Billboard, July 28, 1923).

116. “K.-A. Contract Precludes $1,500 Weekly For Waters,” Chicago Defender, August 29, 1925.

117. “A Consolidation,” Chicago Defender, April 19, 1924.

118. “OKeh Week,” Chicago Defender, May 5, 1923.

119. Mamie Smith is routinely credited as the first black blues singer on record, but Bert Williams recorded a blues title in 1919 (see Godrich, Dixon, and Rye, Blues and Gospel Records).

120. “Pace & Handy Music Open Mail Order Department,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 25, 1920.

121. “Pace & Handy,” Chicago Defender, July 31, 1920.

122. “OKeh Record Artist Has Rapid Rise To Stardom,” Chicago Defender, July 21, 1923.

123. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Crazy Blues,” April 2, 1921.

124. Before he learned the proper procedure, Bradford was known to make up copyright numbers for songs he wished to protect. In a 1914 Indianapolis Freeman correspondence, he threatened to prosecute any “thieves” caught singing his “Jacksonville Rounders Dance,” which he said held “Copyright number 12154 Sec. B” (“Old Mule And Jeanette The Favorites—Packing Them To The Streets In Detroit,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 17, 1914). In fact, this copyright number was assigned in 1901 to a song called “Blessed Is The Man” (Wayne Shirley letter to Lynn Abbott, June 21, 1994).

125. See Mule Bradford, “Performers, Stop Doing Me, And Let Me Live!” Indianapolis Freeman, August 7, 1915. The nickname started turning up in print as early as 1910 (“The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 12, 1910).

126. “‘Mule’ Here,” Chicago Defender, February 19, 1921.

127. “Blues Shower,” Chicago Defender, August 4, 1923 (reproduced from “Avalanche Of ‘Blues’ Songs Aimed For Disc Royalty,” Variety, July 26, 1923).

128. “Information” (block ad by Rogers & Roberts), Indianapolis Freeman, May 8, 1920; “Music Lovers,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 10, 1920. See “Sing ’Em Edith,” ad for Edith Wilson’s Columbia recording of “Nervous Blues”/“Vampin Liza Jane,” placed by Perry Bradford, Inc.; and “Everybody Likes Music,” ad for Ethel Waters’s Black Swan record “Oh Daddy”/“Down Home Blues,” placed by Albury & Delaney Music Publishing Co., which appear on the same page of the Chicago Defender, November 12, 1921. See also “The Big Song Hit That Is Sweeping the Country—‘Arkansas Blues,’” a large block ad placed by Frances Clifford Music Co., Chicago Defender, December 17, 1921.

129. “Colored Singers And Players To Fame And Fortune By Discs.”

130. “The Lincoln Theater, Knoxville, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 26, 1908; Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 110–12.

131. “Lincoln Theater, Knoxville, Tenn.,” Indianapolis Freeman, February 13, 1909.

132. Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 5, 1915.

133. Bradford recalled in his autobiography Born with the Blues (New York: Oak Publications, 1965), 96, 98–100, that Made in Harlem had opened in 1918, with Mamie Smith featuring the song “Harlem Blues.” Detailed contemporaneous documents indicate 1916. Moreover, “Harlem Blues” is not mentioned in any known contemporaneous press report on Made in Harlem, including Billy E. Jones, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 29, 1916; Billy E. Jones, “New York Theatrical Notes,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 12, 1916; and Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen and Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1916.

134. Billy E. Jones, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1916; Mamie Smith, “That Thing Called Love,” OKeh 4113, 1920, reissued on Document DOCD-5357.

135. Bradford and Jeanette were teamed at least as early as 1911 (“John L. White’s Great Alabama Minstrels Under Their Own Canvas—Playing To Crowded Performances In Bessemer, Alabama,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 7, 1911; “Gibson’s New Standard Theater, Philadelphia,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 7, 1918).

136. Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 6, 1918.

137. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 4, 1917; “News Of The Players,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 24, 1917; Bradford, Born with the Blues, 158. “Cry Baby” Godfrey recorded one song: “Sweet Baby, Good-Bye!” OKeh 8064, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5510.

138. Mrs. Baby McGarr, “Booker Washington Theater, Week Of September 9,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 21, 1918.

139. “Death Takes Well Known Dancer Here,” Chicago Defender, November 20, 1926; Tom Lemonier, “Lemonier’s Letter,” Chicago Defender, May 24, 1919.

140. A July 18, 1925, Chicago Defender report elucidated:

At B. F. Keith’s—The writer lamped Seymour and Jeanette, who were on in the deuce spot and absolutely stopped them cold. This is, without doubt, the greatest man and woman turn in vaudeville, and that goes for all competitors. Jeanette is billed in front of the theater as the “Greatest Colored Male Impersonator,” and she is that. My but how neat they are, look like they stepped out of a bandbox. Two clever people and they will open their Orpheum circuit Sept. 13, with three years’ contract to fill over the big time. They are making the small jumps in their special-built Buick.

A February 27, 1926, Pittsburgh Courier report provides a roster of the Synco-Jazzers: Johnnie Williams, saxophone and leader; Mary Lou Burleigh [sic], piano; William H. McCoy; Edward Temple, drums; Joe Williams, banjo; and Sylvester Briscoe, trombone. After marrying band leader Johnnie Williams, the name of the Synco-Jazzers’ pianist changed to Mary Lou Williams, later identified as one of the “first ladies of jazz.”

141. Sylvester Russell, “Seymour James Dead,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 20, 1926.

142. Two of the four selections recorded in 1927 by Jeanette James and Her Synco-Jazzers are reissued on Document DOCD-5470. All four sides are reissued on Frog DGF13.

143. “Mule Quits,” Chicago Defender, February 7, 1920.

144. Billy E. Jones, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 27, 1919.

145. Billy E. Jones, “New York News,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 17, 1920.

146. Bradford, Born with the Blues, 114–15; see also Mark Berresford, That’s Got ’Em! The Life and Music of Wilbur Sweatman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 106–7.

147. The Defender advised: “those who desire to help in any advance of the Race should be sure to buy this record as encouragement to the manufacturers for their liberal policy and to encourage other manufacturers who may not believe that the Race will buy records sung by its own singers” (“Pace & Handy,” Chicago Defender, July 31, 1920).

148. J. A. Jackson wrote in Billboard: “It is reported that over a million dollars worth of her records were sold” (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Mamie Smith And Her Jazz Hounds,” Billboard, May 28, 1921).

149. “Mamie Booked,” Chicago Defender, February 26, 1921.

150. Ibid.

151. “Mamie Smith A Hit,” Chicago Defender, March 5, 1921.

152. Dallas Journal, reproduced in “Mamie Smith Co.,” Chicago Defender, April 2, 1921.

153. OKeh Record Company advertisement, Chicago Defender, December 22, 1923.

154. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Mame [sic] Smith Tops Corking Bill,” Billboard, January 13, 1923. Smith recorded her “Mamie Smith Blues” in June 1922 (OKeh 4658, reissued on Document DOCD-5359), with its reference to “imitators.”

155. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Here And There Among The Folks,” Billboard, December 22, 1923.

156. “Colored Singers And Players To Fame And Fortune By Discs.”

157. “Mamie Smith, Famed ‘Blues’ Queen, Coming To Elmore For Return Engagement,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 9, 1925. Italics added by the authors for emphasis.

158. “Runaway Pen,” Chicago Defender, December 19, 1925.

159. “Headliners Coming Next Week,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 24, 1925.

160. “Mamie Smith, ‘Mother Of The Blues,’ Passes,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 9, 1946 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

161. “Another ‘First,’” “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” Billboard, November 11, 1922.

162. Martin was traveling with Joe Clark, Jr.’s Metropolitan Colored Amusement Company in the sideshow minstrels of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Company as early as February 1903 (Indianapolis Freeman, February 14; May 16, 1903). See Pen Bogert, “Louisville Women in the Blues” (parts 5 and 6), Blues News (newsletter of KYANA Blues Society), April, May 1995.

163. “Gang” (Henry Jines), “Star Theater,” Chicago Defender, May 12, 1923. The “ofay paper” referred to as “The Record Trade” remains elusive.

164. “Sara Martin And Handy’s Band,” Chicago Defender, September 8, 1923.

165. Ibid.

166. Ibid.

167. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Handy Having Great Tour,” Billboard, September 8, 1923.

168. “An Admirer of C. W. Handy” [sic], Chicago Defender, April 24, 1920; “Best Sellers,” Chicago Defender, July 10, 1920; ad for Pace & Handy Music Company, Indianapolis Freeman, August 21, 1920; “Letters,” W. C. Handy, June 17, 1922; and others.

169. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Handy Having Great Tour.” The mainstream New Orleans press bestowed similar honors on Martin as one “whose songs have been immortalized and preserved for all time on the phonograph records of the ‘Okeh’ and whose voice is as well known in the homes of America as any that have been supplied by the great opera organizations of the world” (“Lyric Theater Has Fine Midnight Bill,” New Orleans States, July 18, 1924).

170. “OKeh Notes,” Chicago Defender, January 5, 1924.

171. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Too Much Sameness,” Billboard, December 13, 1924.

172. “At Turpins—Sarah Martin, Record Star, and Other Good Acts at Booker Washington,” Chicago Defender, June 9, 1923; “Sara Shines,” Chicago Defender, January 26, 1924. Sarah Martin with W. C. Handy’s Orchestra recorded “Laughin’ Cryin’ Blues” (OKeh 8064, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5395) in advance of their tour. Martin’s “ha-ha-has” and “boo-hoo-hoos” on the recording may not capture the spirit she demonstrated on stage.

173. L. Baynard Whitney, “Observations,” Chicago Defender, August 28, 1926.

174. Charles O’Neal, “In Old Kay-See,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1925.

175. “At the Play Houses,” “Lincoln,” Kansas City Call, April 17, 1925.

176. “Benbow’s Show Plays For Southern Whites,” Chicago Defender, November 20, 1926.

177. Coy Herndon, “Coy Cogitates,” Chicago Defender, May 31, 1924; “Sarah Martin, OKeh Record Singer Coming Next Week,” Kansas City Call, November 9, 1923; “Sara Martin Singing At Lincoln Theatre,” Kansas City Call, November 16, 1923; Wesley Varnell, “Star Theater, Shreveport, La., December 17,” Billboard, January 5, 1924.

178. “Sara Martin Singing At Lincoln Theatre.”

179. Ad, “OKeh Race Records,” Chicago Defender, January 5, 1924; Sara Martin, “Roamin’ Blues,” OKeh 8104, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5396.

180. Excerpt from a March 1924 letter from Ralph Peer (Director of Record Production, General Phonograph Corporation) to Sarah Martin, variously quoted in Jim O’Neal, “Guitar Blues: Sylvester Weaver,” Living Blues 52: 18–22; Brenda Bogert, “The Story of Sylvester Weaver—the First Blues Guitarist to Record, Part 2,” Blues News (December 1994); and Barry Mazor, Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015).

181. OKeh ad, Chicago Defender, December 22, 1923.

182. Bob Hayes, “The Monogram,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1924.

183. Ibid.

184. “Egg-Nogg ’N Ever’thing,” Chicago Defender, January 24, 1925.

185. Butterbeans and Susie acknowledged Martin’s role in securing their OKeh recording contract (“Gives Sarah Credit,” Chicago Defender, March 7, 1925; Jodie and Susie Edwards interviewed by Herb Abramson and others, 1960).

186. Jodie and Susie Edwards interviewed by Herb Abramson and others.

187. Veteran ragtime pianist Johnny Maddox said that he saw life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Butterbeans and Susie in the lobby of Harlem’s Apollo Theater in the early 1950s (Johnny Maddox conversation with Doug Seroff, October 1, 2014).

188. “Butterbean [sic] and Susie, 81 Theater Headline For Big White Frolic,” Atlanta Constitution, February 22, 1925 (America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank). Bailey staged his first midnight performance for whites on a Friday in September 1924, presenting the Liza Company, which featured Emmett Anthony (J. A. Jackson, “Here and There Among the Folks,” Billboard, October 11, 1924).

189. Jodie and Susie Edwards interviewed by Herb Abramson and others.

190. “Says Jonesy,” Chicago Defender, July 11, 1925.

191. Presumably, “A-B-C Blues” was their razor-cutting monstrosity recorded as “A To Z Blues.” Unfortunately, they never recorded their “famous ‘Hellish Rag,’” perhaps due to squeamishness on the part of OKeh Record Company regarding offensive label copy. See “Friday Midnight Shows Resumed at 81 Theater,” Atlanta Constitution, October 14, 1928; “Butterbean [sic] And Susie Return For 81 Frolic,” Atlanta Constitution, November 25, 1928; “Novel Dance Act Wins Audience At Midnight Show,” Atlanta Constitution, November 16, 1929.

192. Jodie and Susie Edwards interviewed by Herb Abramson and others.

193. Ibid.

194. Butterbeans and Susie, “Brown Skin Gal,” OKeh 8219, 1925, reissued on Document DOCD-5544.

195. Butterbeans and Susie, “Get Yourself A Monkey Man, Make Him Strut His Stuff,” OKeh 8147, reissued on Document DOCD-5544.

196. Butterbeans and Susie, “A To Z Blues,” OKeh 8163, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5544. The same song was recorded by Charlie Jordan as Uncle Skipper, “Cutting My ABC’s,” Decca 7353, 1937, reissued on Document DOCD-5099; and years later by Atlanta street singer and guitar blues legend Blind Willie McTell as Pig ’N’ Whistle Red, “A To Z Blues,” 1950, issued on Savoy LP MG 16000, reissued on Document BDCD-6014). McTell was undoubtedly a Decatur Street theater habitué, having also recorded his interpretations of other black vaudeville standards.

197. “Butterbeans & Susie,” Festival M-7000, 1960, reissued on GHB BCD-135. This song was not actually copyrighted by Butler May. While the liner notes credit “LeMay” as composer, they also indicate that it is “P.D.”

198. Joseph Nesbitt interview. See also Lynn Abbott, liner notes to GHB BCD-135.

199. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 15, 1926.

200. “Music Edition Extra,” “Last Minute News,” Chicago Defender, June 12, 1926.

201. “Music Edition Extra,” “Butterbeans And Susie To Head Line-Up,” Chicago Defender, June 12, 1926.

202. Mary Stafford, Edith Wilson, Leona Williams (also known as Leonce Lazzo), and perhaps others recorded blues titles for Columbia in 1921 and 1922 (see Dixon, Godrich, and Rye).

203. Earlier in 1923 both Bessie Smith and Clara Smith had records released in Columbia’s “A-prefix” popular series. Their first Columbia Race-series recordings were: Bessie Smith, “Whoa Tillie, Take Your Time”/“My Sweetie Went Away,” Columbia 13000-D and “Cemetery Blues”/“Any Woman’s Blues,” Columbia 13001-D, both recorded in 1923 and reissued on Frog DGF41; and Clara Smith, “Don’t Never Tell Nobody”/“Waitin’ For The Evenin’ Mail,” Columbia 13002-D, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5364.

204. Dan Mahony, Columbia 13/14000-D Series (Numerical Listing) (Stanhope: Walter C. Allen, 1961).

205. Columbia Record Company advertisement, Chicago Defender, May 26, 1923.

206. Atlanta Journal, quoted in “Radio Hit,” Chicago Defender, July 7, 1923.

207. Billy Chambers, “Frolic Theater,” Billboard, July 28, 1923.

208. “Entertain At Midnight Show,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 16, 1924.

209. “Lyric Midnight Show To Be A Hummer,” New Orleans States, April 9, 1925.

210. Further verification can be found in “Bessie Radiates,” Chicago Defender (reproduced from Memphis Commercial Appeal), February 23, 1924; “Bessie Pleases Ofays,” Chicago Defender, April 18, 1925; Chick Beaman letter, Chicago Defender, May 2, 1925.

211. Frank H. Crockett, “Bessie Hits ’Em,” Chicago Defender, August 4, 1923.

212. “Hit On Radio,” Chicago Defender, October 6, 1923.

213. “T.O.B.A. Mentions,” Chicago Defender, May 23, 1925.

214. “Bessie Smith To Sing Over Radio During Trip Here—Goldman and Wolf Arranges For Talented Blues Queen to Appear at Local Station,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 15, 1924.

215. “Clara Smith To Sing At Goldman & Wolf,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 16, 1924.

216. Alan Govenar and Jay Brakefield, Deep Ellum: The Other Side of Dallas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013). Alan Govenar, “Blind Lemon Jefferson: The Myth and the Man,” Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 12.

217. “Ragtime” Billy Tucker, “Coast Dope,” Chicago Defender, May 27, July 8, 1922.

218. For accounts of Winston Holmes and his accomplishments, see John Randolph, “A Pioneer Race Recorder,” Jazz Journal 10, no. 2 (February 1957); Doug Jydstrup, “Winston Holmes: Kansas City Promoter,” 78 Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1968); Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix, Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop—A History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Paul Swinton, “‘A Kansas City Call’ Some Beginnings of K. C. Blues & Jazz: Winston Holmes & His Meritt Record Label,” Frog Blues and Jazz Annual No. 3 (London, 2013): 115–25.

219. “Trixie Smith,” Kansas City Call, February 18, 1922; “Trixie Smith Very Popular,” Kansas City Call, November 17, 1922; “Trixie Smith Packed Downtown House,” Kansas City Call, December 15, 1922.

220. “Kansas City’s Record-Making Orchestra,” Kansas City Call, November 30, 1923. Standard discographical sources, including Brian Rust’s Jazz Records, and Dixon, Godrich, and Rye’s Blues & Gospel Records, state that this session took place in St. Louis. However, this newspaper article, along with at least two others (“Phonograph Records To Be Made Here,” Kansas City Call, October 26, 1923; “Dainty Mary Bradford,” Kansas City Call, November 9, 1923) indicate the session was held in Chicago.

221. “Phonograph Records To Be Made Here.”

222. “Winston Holmes Makes His First Record,” Kansas City Call, December 12, 1924.

223. Sylvester and Lena Kimbrough, accompanied by Paul Banks Kansas City Trio, “Cabbage Head Blues,” Meritt 2201, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5152.

224. “Our Goodman” is “Child ballad” number 274 in Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. V—Part IX (1894; New York: Dover, 1965), 88–95. For more on the legacy of “Our Goodman,” see Luigi Monge and David Evans, “New Songs of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” Journal of Texas Music History 3, no. 2 (2003): 8–11. See also Meade, Spottswood, and Meade, Country Music Sources, 4; “The Library of Congress Music Division Check-list of Recorded Songs in the English Language in the Archive of American Folk Song to July, 1940” (Washington, 1942).

225. Rev. J. C. Burnett, “The Downfall Of Nebuchadnezzar”/“I’ve Even Heard Of Thee,” Meritt 2203, 1926, reissued on Document DOCD-5557).

226. According to Mahony, Columbia 13/14000-D Series, Rev. J. C. Burnett’s “The Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar”/“I’ve Even Heard Of Thee” (Columbia 14166-D, 1926, reissued on Document DOCD-5557) had a remarkable initial order of 88,750 copies. “Says Columbia Co. Stole His Records,” Chicago Defender, April 2, 1927.

227. The designation “Empress of Blues Singers” is noted in print for perhaps the first time in “Bessie Smith & Co.,” Chicago Defender, May 3, 1924.

228. “Bessie Smith Here Next Week,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 15, 1924.

229. S. H. Dudley, “Dud’s Dope,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 1924.

230. Billy McClain letter, Chicago Defender, February 23, 1924.

231. “Runaway Pen,” Chicago Defender, September 19, 1925.

232. Bill Potter, “The Blues Singer,” Chicago Defender, October 24, 1925.

233. Sylvester Russell, “Argumentation,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 26, 1925.

234. S. T. Whitney, “What Hypocrites We Mortals Be,” Chicago Defender, February 14, 1925.

235. “Bessie Smith’s Harlem Frolics Touring South,” Chicago Defender, October 30, 1926.

236. “Bessie Smith’s Revue,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 1926; “Bessie Smith’s Harlem Frolics Touring South.”

237. “Bessie Smith’s Harlem Frolics Touring South.”

238. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1926.

239. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 8, 1926.

240. “Bessie Smith’s Revue”; “Bessie Smith Comes To The Grand On Monday, Jan. 24,” Chicago Defender, January 22, 1927.

241. E. K. Hamilton, “A Theatrical Letter,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 24, 1927.

242. “Happenings In Local Theatres,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 28, 1925. Mamie Smith had appeared at the same theater the previous month (“Happenings In Local Theatres,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 24, 1925).

243. Charles O’Neal, “In Old Kay-See,” Chicago Defender, June 27, 1925.

244. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “‘Broadway Strutters,’” Billboard, January 6, 1923.

245. “Age Exaggerated,” Chicago Defender, January 31, 1925. Rainey was a Columbus, Georgia, native born in 1886.

246. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 15, 1925.

247. Bob Hayes, “Ma Rainey’s Review,” Chicago Defender, February 13, 1926. The personnel of Rainey’s Georgia Jazz Band for this Louisville, Kentucky, engagement was given as: “Piano, Mrs. Lil Henderson; cornet, Kid [Fuller] Henderson; sax and clarinet, Lucien Brown; banjo, George Williams; and drums, Happy Bolton, formerly Lyric theater drummer, New Orleans.”

Ma Rainey was using her “big Paramount talking machine” prop as early as September 1924 (“Galla [sic] Program Headed By Madame Rainey,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 4, 1924). The gimmick of stepping out of a branded “talking machine” (phonograph prop) may have originated with the team of George Williams and Bessie Brown. At the Strand Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, in May 1924, they were said to be “a riot from the beginning, as [the] set itself drew a hand. Singing their first number from inside a large Columbia cabinet graphophone, the imitation was really great and brought the house down” (Jack L. Cooper, “Coop’s Chatter,” Chicago Defender, May 10, 1924).

248. Between 1923 and 1927, Paramount, OKeh, Columbia, Victor, Vocalion, Ajax, Meritt, Black Swan, Rialto, Emerson, Chappelle + Stinnette, and Black Patti record companies ran block ads in the Chicago Defender that included either photographs of artists or cartoon caricatures.

249. Any assessment of post-1920 editions of the Freeman is currently limited to surviving editions from January 19 through November 2, 1924. During this period, the “Stage” columns were still in place, but the rich open forum that characterized the earlier decades of the Freeman had given way to relatively benign reportage from a few select theaters. Coverage of blues recording stars was thin, and there was not a single race record ad.

250. The Freeman was still publishing in 1925, but by the spring of 1926 it was defunct (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” Billboard, January 24, 1925; Tim Owsley, “Now,” Chicago Defender, May 22, 1926).

251. “Bessie Smith & Co.,” Chicago Defender, May 3, 1924.

252. “Bessie Calls,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1924 (italics added by the authors for emphasis).

253. “T.O.B.A. News,” Chicago Defender, February 28, 1925. As recently as December 1918 the same newspaper reported that Bessie Smith was playing the Liberty Theater along with Clara Smith. The placement of this disinformation in a “T.O.B.A. News” column suggests the booking agency was implicated in its dissemination.

254. “Gang” Jines, “What Do They Want?” Chicago Defender, April 5, 1924.

255. Charles O’Neal, “In Old Kaysee,” Chicago Defender, October 15, 1927.

256. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Traveling The Colored Circuits,” Billboard, May 27, 1922.

257. These figures were taken from Theater Owners Booking Association contracts for Butterbeans and Susie, dated January 15, 1925; George Williams and Bessie Brown, June 25, 1925; Ma Rainey, August 14, 1925; Bessie Smith Revue, March 16, 1925; also, letters from Sam E. Reevin to C. H. Douglass (re. Williams and Brown), December 3, 1925; Sam E. Reevin to C. H. Douglass (re. Maggie Jones), October 29, 1925; Louise Mason to C. H. Douglass (re. Ida Cox), June 21, 1926; and Western Union Telegram from Sam E. Reevin to C. H. Douglass (re. Clara Smith), April 19, 1925 (All of these documents are in the C. H. Douglass Business Records Collection, Middle Georgia Regional Library, Macon, Georgia).

258. Wyatt D. James, “Texas Tattles,” Chicago Defender, November 20, 1926.

259. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Blues Singers And Bluecoats,” Billboard, November 24, 1923.

260. For commentary supporting the assertion that there were not enough blues queens to satisfy the circuit, see Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 15, 1926.

261. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Opening Of New Roosevelt,” Billboard, September 15, 1923.

262. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Paul Carter Discusses Reasons Leading to Closing His Show,” Billboard, December 27, 1924.

263. Babe Townsend, “Does T.O.B.A. Give Tabs Preference?” Chicago Defender, August 1, 1925.

264. S. H. Dudley, “Tab Shows,” Chicago Defender, June 5, 1926. The same article appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier, of the same date, under the title “Vaudeville Acts No Longer Pay—‘Tab’ Shows Drawing Crowds.”

265. “Honored,” Chicago Defender, May 7, 1921.

266. “Turpin In Washington,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 9, 1924.

267. Uncle Dud, “The Union,” Indianapolis Freeman, May 10, 1924. Ultimately, the Colored Actors Union failed to gain traction. During the summer of 1926 it fell from the purview of the African American press.

268. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1926.

269. A listing of artists appearing in eighteen different T.O.B.A. theaters at the end of 1930 reveals that all or nearly all were playing tab companies, not vaudeville acts (“T.O.B.A. Doin’s—Where They Play—Week of December 30,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 4, 1930 [Black Studies Center, Pro-Quest]).

270. Undated letter from Annie Mae Cox and Baby Cox to C. H. Douglass, Douglass Business Records, Middle Georgia Regional Library.

271. Other African American members of the T.O.B.A. included W. J. Styles, Pekin Theater, Savannah, Georgia; John T. Gibson, Standard and Dunbar Theaters, Philadelphia; and W. S. Scales, Lafayette Theater, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

272. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 22, 1905; June 2, 1906.

273. “Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 6, 1906; “Dandy Dixie Minstrels,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 4, 1908; “Rufus Rastus In Dixie Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 21, 1907; “To Open Easter Sunday,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 4, 1908.

274. “The Airdome Theater, Jacksonville, Fla.,” “Joal [sic] and Watts, Proprietors and Managers,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 26, 1910: “Theodore Reading’s orchestra of five pieces [includes] E. B. Dudley, violin … E. B. Dudley closes this week to take charge of the band and orchestra for Kersands’ Big Minstrels, under canvas”; “Billy Kersands Minstrels,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 11, 1910: “Mr. Willie Lewis, successor to E. B. Dudley, our band leader.”

275. “Holly Springs, Miss.,” “Notes of Eph. Williams’ Silas Green Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 4, 1911.

276. Ad, “Palace Theater, Chattanooga,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 3, 1912: “E. B. Dudley, Mgr. and Agt.”; ad, “The Colored Consolidated Vaudeville Exchange,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 20, 1913: “Mr. E. B. Dudley, Manager and owner of the Dudley’s Dunbar theater, Columbus, O.” In between these two positions, Dudley led the orchestra at the Ruby Theater in Louisville (Salem Tutt Whitney, “Seen And Heard While Passing,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 13, 1913: “The orchestra is first class. E. B. Dudley is director; Mrs. Dudley, pianist”).

277. “Popular Manager,” Chicago Defender, July 9, 1927.

278. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 2, 1910.

279. “The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, April 7; June 2, 1906; “A Rabbitt’s [sic] Foot Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 15, 1907; “Funny Folks Comedy Company,” Indianapolis Freeman, March 28, 1908.

280. Col. J. G. Griffin, “Dallas Texas,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 11, 1915; ad, “Wanted, Park Theatre, Dallas, Tex.,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 2, 1915.

281. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 290–91.

282. 1880 U.S. Census (AncestryLibrary.com). However, according to R. C. Fisher, “Bite Fatal To Judge Turpin,” “Charles Turpin, First Race Justice In St. Louis, Buried,” Chicago Defender, January 4, 1936 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest), Turpin “was nearing his 70th birth date” when he died from complications of an insect bite on Christmas Eve 1935. The 1930 U.S. Census (AncestryLibrary.com) gives his birth year as “about 1878.”

283. Ad, “The Rosebud Bar,” St. Louis Palladium, August 29, 1903 (America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank).

284. “Booker Washington Airdome,” Indianapolis Freeman, July 30, 1910; “Gossip Of The Stage,” Indianapolis Freeman, January 4, 1913; Marsh, “New St. Louis Theater To Open Doors In July,” Indianapolis Freeman, June 28, 1913.

285. The 81 Decatur Street site of Bailey’s historic Arcade Theater is now occupied by buildings and parking lots on the campus of Georgia State University. Thanks to Aimee Schmidt, Georgia Council for the Arts.

286. Tim E. Owsley, “The Plain Truth,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 24, 1918.

287. The encounter remains undated, but factors suggest it may have taken place in the spring of 1923.

288. Waters with Samuels, 165–71.

289. Frank Montgomery, “Frank In South,” Chicago Defender, October 16, 1920; S. T. Whitney, “Producers,” Chicago Defender, March 3, 1928.

290. “M’Donald and Leggett,” Chicago Defender, June 20, 1925.

291. Garnett Warbington, “Big Protest,” Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921.

292. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Complains Of Florida,” Billboard, October 7, 1922. The complaint came from Collington Hayes, owner of the “High Steppers” company.

293. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” ad for the Managers’ and Performers’ Co-Operative Circuit, Incorporated, Billboard, March 4, 1922; Sam E. Reevin, “Circuits Join,” “T.O.B.A. Takes in the M. and P. Circuit,” Chicago Defender, November 11, 1922.

294. “Bennett Optimistic,” Chicago Defender, January 28, 1922.

295. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “The T.O.B.A. Election,” Billboard, February 4, 1922.

296. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “Reactions Of The Group On the Clarence Bennett Letter,” Billboard, February 25, 1922.

297. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “T.O.B.A. Adds Another House,” October 14, 1922. This article identifies Starr as the president of the T.O.B.A.

298. In the 1940 U.S. Census (AncestryLibrary.com); his birth year is given as 1896. Milton Starr’s parents came to America from “a little village in Russia,” several years prior to his birth. “I believe [the] family name in Russia was ‘Nossek,’ or something like that. It was common in those days for foreigners to change their names when they arrived in the United States, but I’m not sure how the name ‘Starr’ was arrived at” (Carrie Lightman Starr, “For Marco and Suzanne From Their Grandmother,” June 1, 1971, Starr Family Vertical File, Tennessee State Library, Nashville). Carrie Lightman Starr was the wife of Milton’s older brother Jacob Starr.

299. A September 6, 1918, article in the Nashville Globe said the Bijou Theater had been in operation as “a Negro moving picture house … for over 2 years”; and a September 19, 1925, article (“New T.O.B.A. House For Nashville, Tenn.,” Chicago Defender) also claimed the Bijou was established in 1916. However, there is a listing in the Nashville City Directory for the “Starr Theater (c)” (i.e., “colored”) at 412 Cedar Street, as early as 1913.

300. “New T.O.B.A. House For Nashville, Tenn.,” Chicago Defender, September 19, 1925. By 1930 Starr owned a reported eleven race theaters, including two in Nashville; two in Columbia, South Carolina; one each in Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia; New Bern and Raleigh, North Carolina; and Charleston, Greenville, and Spartanburg, South Carolina (“T.O.B.A. Man Now Owns of 11 Theatres [sic]—Milton Starr’s Latest Acquisition Is Capital Theatre in Columbia, S.C.,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 11, 1930 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]).

301. “Nashville Theater Pulls Off Jim Crow Performance,” Chicago Defender, May 8, 1926.

302. Tim Owsley, “Now,” Chicago Defender, May 15, 1926.

303. 1905 New York State Census; Naturalization Records, Tennessee, 1907–1991 (AncestryLibrary.com).

304. S. T. Whitney, “Salem Sez,” Chicago Defender, November 14, 1925; William G. Nunn, “‘Hard Times Cause of Scarcity Of Good Road Shows’—Reevin,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 1, 1930 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). On a different occasion, Whitney claimed that the regular performances at Reevin’s Liberty Theater in Chattanooga were not strictly segregated: “white patrons attend the Liberty … regularly” (Salem Tutt Whitney, “Observations,” “Jim Crow Frolics,” Chicago Defender, May 29, 1926).

305. “Biography” of Charles Henry Douglass, in-house documentation prepared by Muriel McDowell Jackson, Middle Georgia Regional Library; C. H. Douglass, “Managing A Negro Theatre,” “Report of the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the Negro Business League,” 1915. The Douglass Hotel was for blacks only, and included a restaurant, billiard parlor, and liquor store.

306. “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “They Like Our Actors,” Billboard, September 8, 1923, reproduced from Macon Telegraph, date unknown; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “This From Macon,” Billboard, September 15, 1923; “Douglass O.K.” (letter from Marie Gossett Harlow to Tony Langston), Chicago Defender, January 10, 1925; Salem Tutt Whitney, “Observations,” “Jim Crow Frolics.”

307. “They Like Our Actors”; “Douglass O.K.”; “Bessie Pleases Ofays.”

308. “This From Macon.”

309. Ibid.

310. Andrew M. Manis, Macon Black and White (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2004), 63–64.

311. Ibid., 56–70.

312. Ibid., 64.

313. “Douglass O.K.”

314. “Bessie Pleases Ofays”; “This From Macon.”

315. “Amazing Career Is Ended For Charles H. Douglass,” Macon Telegraph, May 2, 1940.

316. “Charles Henry Douglass, 1870–1940,” Macon Courier, December 6, 1978.

317. Observer, “Shots From The Lake Shore,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 12, 1926. In case further explication is required, the two unnamed managers referred to were C. P. Bailey and C. H. Douglass.

318. After the Douglass Theater closed in 1973 the building sat empty for more than six years. The property was purchased by the city of Macon in 1978. In April 1980, during a “cleanup project” preliminary to beginning “stabilization procedures … a large group of papers and other records relating to the Douglass Theater was removed from the theater offices for historical assessment and preservation.” These papers became the Douglass Business Records Collection, now housed at Middle Georgia Regional Library in Macon.

The collection encompasses the broad range of C. H. Douglass’s business activities, but the greater portion concerns the operation of the Douglass Theater, including records of the motion pictures exhibited and extensive “Performing Artist Records,” including T.O.B.A. contracts; correspondence with artists and T.O.B.A. officials; T.O.B.A. “Booking” forms and “Publicity Sheets”; handbills, printed programs, etc. A few documents date back as far as 1912, but the vast majority is from the 1925 to 1928 period. So far as has been determined, the Douglass Business Records Collection is the sole surviving archive of T.O.B.A.-related paperwork (“The New Douglas [sic] Theatre—Opened to the Public on January 11, 1997,” Historic Preservation Services, 1996; “Preservation Study of the Douglass Theater, Macon, Georgia,” Draft Form 4.3, July 1, 1980).

319. Reevin’s territories included Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and parts of Alabama. The other regional booking managers were eastern representative S. H. Dudley, who booked acts from Pittsburgh eastward and as far south as the northern border of North Carolina; midwestern representative Martin Klein, who routed acts through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana; and E. L. Cummings, who retained responsibility for booking theaters in Florida and along the Gulf Coast (“J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “The Year With the Colored Performer,” Billboard, December 16, 1922).

320. Douglass’s letters to Reevin are presumably lost.

321. Sam E. Reevin letter to C. H. Douglass, May 27, 1925. On another occasion Reevin wrote: “It seems the Managers expect me to do the impossible—A cheap show cannot draw the crowd, and bring the business, and a high-class Attraction cannot afford to play for nothing, and no Booking Agent in the world can remedy this condition” (Sam E. Reevin letter to C. H. Douglass, April 8, 1925).

322. Sam E. Reevin letter to C. H. Douglass, February 18, 1926. Additional references to artists being offered to the Douglass Theater at reduced salaries can be found in Reevin’s letters to Douglass of April 15; June 25; November 3, 1925; and Louise Mason (Reevin’s secretary) to Douglass, May 25, 1926.

323. Sam E. Reevin letter to C. H. Douglass, June 22, 1925.

324. An unsigned letter dated September 7, 1927, indicates Douglass surrendered his “3 shares of stock” in the T.O.B.A. at that time. From 1927 to 1929 Douglass turned his attention to the founding of the Middle Georgia Savings and Investment Company (“Biography” of C. H. Douglass).

325. “Douglass Theater Leased For $185,000; New Firm Takes Charge On Monday,” Macon News, June 3, 1927. Thanks to Muriel McDowell Jackson. According to this news article, Stein Enterprises leased the Douglass Theater for a period of fifteen years; however, C. H. Douglass reclaimed ownership just two years later.

326. An accounting ledger indicates: “Douglass Theatre—owned and operated by Stein Enterprises—Weekly Report from Date of Opening June 6th to August 6th 1927: … total receipts: $5,169.18 … total expenses: $5,933.07 … Total loss of $763.89.”

327. Sam E. Reevin letter to Ben Stein, September 19, 1927; Milton Starr letter to Ben Stein, November 9, 1927; Tom Bailey letters to Ben Stein of October 26, November 9 and 10, 1927.

328. The “Crash” resulted in the failure of Douglass’s Middle Georgia Savings and Investment Company (“Biography”). According to a document prepared in 1996: “The Douglass remained the only movie house in Macon which served black residents until the 1940s … use of the theatre remained fairly consistent until 1958.” In that year, the theater hosted a weekly radio talent show, and was subsequently revived as a stage for popular rhythm and blues and soul music shows. The Douglass Theater finally closed in 1973 (“The New Douglas Theatre”).

329. “Small Audiences; Folks Broke, Says T.O.B.A. Manager,” Chicago Defender, January 25, 1930.

330. “Lichtman Holds Key To Stage Situation … S. H. Dudley Tells of Spirit of Chain Owner,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 10, 1931 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

331. S. T. Whitney, “Timely Topics,” Chicago Defender, December 17, 1932.

332. William G. Nunn, “T.O.B.A. Circuit Responsible For Poor Calibre of Road Shows—Actors and Actresses Facing Starvation as Public Refuses To Attend Rotten Shows Booked Into Various Houses,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 21, 1929 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

333. “Coop,” “T.O.B.A. Officials Discuss Crisis In Show Game,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 15, 1930; “Charles Turpin and S. H. Dudley Head T.O.B.A.,” Chicago Defender, February 15, 1930 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). Turpin was first elected president of the T.O.B.A. in January 1928 (“Chicago Theatrical News,” Chicago Defender, February 4, 1928).

334. William G. Nunn, “‘T.O.B.A. Facing Biggest Crisis Of Its Career This Year,’ Belief Of ‘Bill’ Nunn,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 23, 1930 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

335. “Mid-City Theatre, Dudley House, Sold,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 19, 1930 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). This article explains that Dudley would retain his position as vice president and eastern booking agent for the T.O.B.A.; but “will devote his time to real estate and the book business. He also owns a racing stable.”

336. William G. Nunn, “‘T.O.B.A. Facing Biggest Crisis Of Its Career This Year,’ Belief of ‘Bill’ Nunn.”

337. Ibid.

338. “Letter Box,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 22, 1928 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

339. Dave Peyton, “The Musical Bunch,” Chicago Defender, May 25, 1929. Several months later, another article claimed: “At present, there are said to be more than 7,000 musicians out of work in the United States. These musicians are said to have been replaced by ‘canned music’” (“Movie Moguls to Meet Musicians’ Union in Gotham,” Chicago Defender, November 16, 1929).

340. Nunn, “‘Hard Times Cause Of Scarcity Of Good Road Shows—Reevin.’”

341. Nunn, “‘T.O.B.A. Facing Biggest Crisis Of Its Career This Year,’ Belief of ‘Bill’ Nunn.”

342. Billy Jones, “Stars That Shine,” Chicago Defender, August 22, 1931 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

343. S. T. Whitney, “Timely Topics,” Chicago Defender, December 17, 1932 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

344. Numerous cover versions of country blues hits by white recording artists in the 1920s and 1930s attest to the fact that some whites maintained an active interest in blues records, especially in the rural South.

345. For a discussion of African American parlor guitar playing, see Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 251–55. Articles addressing the influence of Hawaiian guitarists in the States include Seva Venet, “The Hawaiian Tinge,” Jazz Archivist 25 (2012); and John Troutman, “‘Steelin’ the Slide’: Hawai’i and the Birth of the Blues Guitar,” Southern Cultures 19, no. 1 (Spring 2013). See also Sylvester Russell, “Chicago Weekly Review,” Indianapolis Freeman, November 21, 1914; May 6, 1916; November 10, 17, 1917; “J. A. Jackson’s Page,” “‘Cotton Tops’ In Quarters,” “Taylor’s Alabama Cotton Tops,’” Billboard, January 7, 1922.

346. Coy Herndon, “Coy Cogitates,” Chicago Defender, March 21, 1925.

347. “Culligan’s Nashville Students,” Indianapolis Freeman, December 30, 1916. A similar report from the Washington Theater in Indianapolis declared: “Harry Larkins, better known as the ‘Singing Fool,’ is a real tasty manipulator of the guitar in true southern form” (“The Washington Theatre Indianapolis,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 6, 1919).

348. Odum, “Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry,” 260–61. In “Afro-American One-Stringed Instruments,” Western Folklore 29, no. 4 (October 1970): 229–45, David Evans traces one origin of slide guitar technique in the blues to one-string African instruments.

349. Kate McTell Seabrooks, the former wife of Blind Willie McTell, told David Evans and his mother Anne Evans that Blind Willie McTell, Buddy Moss, Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton), and other noted blues guitarists appeared at the 81 Theater in Atlanta in the mid- or late 1930s (Kate McTell Seabrooks interviewed by Anne M. Evans and David Evans, September 10, 1975, January 19, 1976); David Evans, “Kate McTell, Part 2,” Blues Unlimited 126 (September–October 1977): 9–10; “Part 3,” Blues Unlimited 127 (November–December 1977), 20. The nature or context of these performances is not entirely explained.

350. OKeh Record Company’s initial lack of familiarity with stringed instruments and vernacular guitar music is apparent in newspaper advertisements that tout Sylvester Weaver’s “guitar-banjo accompaniment” (“Sara Sings,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1924; “Sara Sings ’Em,” Chicago Defender, June 14, 1924), and describe guitarist Ed Andrews as “Some singin’ banjoist” (OKeh ad, Chicago Defender, July 19, 1924).

351. David Evans, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 85. For more about Sylvester Weaver and his recordings, see Pen Bogert, liner notes to “Sara Martin In Chronological Order,” Document DOCD-5395, 5396, 5397, 5398. See also Paul Garon, “On the Trail of Sylvester Weaver,” Living Blues 52 (Spring 1982): 16–17; Jim O’Neal, “Guitar Blues: Sylvester Weaver”; Brenda Bogert, “The Story of Sylvester Weaver—the First Blues Guitarist to Record”; Guido van Rijn and Hans Vergeer liner notes to Agram LP AB-2010. Sixteen of Weaver’s 1923–27 OKeh recordings are reissued on the Agram LP; others appear on Document DOCD-5112 and 5113.

352. For a more thorough chronology of early blues recordings with guitar accompaniment, 1923–26, see Evans, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson.”

353. “About A Hen That Sang Her Way Into The Movies,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, January 2, 1932 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). The 1900 U.S. Census places Dupree in Georgia; the 1910 U.S. Census places him in New York (AncestryLibrary. com).

354. Jack Trotter, “New York Notes of Stage And Sport,” Indianapolis Freeman, October 14, 1916.

355. Ad, Chicago Defender, December 22, 1923; Reese Du Pree, “Long Ago Blues”/“O Saroo, Saroo,” OKeh 8113, 1923, reissued on Document DOCD-5482. More correctly, the first black male voices heard on an OKeh blues recording were those of the Norfolk Jazz Quartet, who recorded in 1921.

356. “New Jersey,” Chicago Defender, January 5, 1924.

357. “Dupree Goes Back To Sing For OKeh Records,” Chicago Defender, March 15, 1924; Reese Dupree, “Norfolk Blues”/“One More Rounder Gone,” OKeh 8127, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5482. One retrospective account names Dupree as the composer of these titles (“Band Booker Writes Tune,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 13, 1943). Composer credit on the record label copy of “One More Rounder Gone” goes to “N. E. Perkins–Reese Du Pree.” It is the first of many commercial recordings of the folk ballad known as “Delia,” or “Delia’s Gone,” about a murder committed in Savannah, Georgia, on Christmas Eve 1900. For historical context see John Garst, “Delia” (Northfield: Loomis House Press, 2012). For a chronological survey of folk variants and commercial recordings, see Sean Wilentz, “Delia,” in Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, eds., The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 367–70. Another song Dupree claimed to have authored is “Shortnin’ Bread” (“Reese Du Pree Encircles His Name And Strand With Renown,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 1, 1938; “On The Air,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 2, 1938; “‘Short’nin’ Bread’ Controversy Is Entered Into By Clarence Robinson,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 4, 1938 [Black Studies Center, ProQuest]. The controversy was actually entered into by Clarence Williams).

358. Dupree moved from Asbury Park to Philadelphia in 1933 (“Reese Du Pree Encircles His Name And Strand With Renown”).

359. “Band Booker Writes Tune.” For a long list of bands booked by Dupree during the 1930s, see “Reese Dupree Plans to Climax Career With NAACP Dance,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 18, 1940 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). For an account of his ninth annual southern tour with Jimmie Lunceford, see “Reese Dupree to Tour with Lunceford,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 24, 1945 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

360. Nat Middleton, Jr., “Showman Reese Dupree Succumbs at 83 in Ga.,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 11, 1963 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest).

361. Ed Andrews, “Barrel House Blues”/“Time Ain’t Gonna Make Me Stay,” OKeh 8137, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5169.

362. Evans, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 85.

363. “Zeb Manigault, Veteran Actor, Passes Away,” New York Amsterdam News, May 31, 1941 (Black Studies Center, ProQuest). His World War I draft registration card gives his birth date as March 4, 1888, but the 1940 U.S. Census (where he was mistakenly identified as Jeb Manigault), says “abt 1894” (AncestryLibrary.com).

364. Abbott and Seroff, Ragged but Right, 239–43.

365. Billy Lewis, “Another Big Week Of Vaudeville At The Washington Theater,” Indianapolis Freeman, September 8, 1917.

366. “Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, March 24, 1923.

367. They were both on the roster of Billy Ewing’s Vamping Along Company at the beginning of 1922 (“Star,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 27, 1922). Dorothy Jenkins’s maiden name was revealed in “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1923. Dorothy Owens may have been touring under canvas as early as 1916 (W. L. Rector, “Reyno Comedians In North Carolina,” Indianapolis Freeman, August 19, 1916).

368. “Lincoln (Vaudeville),” Baltimore Afro-American, June 9, 1922.

369. “Lincoln Vaudeville and Pictures,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 12, 1923. A few weeks later, at another Baltimore theater, the Argonne, they closed “with some clever mouth organ playing by the male member of the duo while his partner accompanied nicely on the guitar” (“Argonne,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 2, 1923).

370. Jenkins and Jenkins, “Henpecked Man”/“Mouth Organ Blues,” Columbia 14040-D, 1924, reissued on Document DOCD-5481. Presumably, Dorothy Jenkins played guitar on their records, just as she did in their stage act. Her playing consists of rudimentary strumming of open chords.

371. “Sunshine Sammy At The Grand; Jimmy Cox Revue At Monogram,” Chicago Defender, January 9, 1926.

372. “Stage Reviews,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 1, 1928.

373. “Stage Review,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 2, 1929.

374. Paramount ad, “Well Sir! Here He Is at Last! Papa Charlie Jackson,” Chicago Defender, August 23, 1924.

375. “A Note Or Two,” Chicago Defender, August 22, 1925. The other members of the group were Jasper Taylor and Arnold and Irene Wiley. A piece in the March 6, 1926, edition of the Louisiana Weekly refers to him as “(Papa) Charlie Jackson of Chicago, the banjo wizard.”

376. Lyric Theater ad, Louisiana Weekly, February 13, 1926. The ad has him billed as “‘Sweet Papa’ Charlie Jackson.” After his stint at the Lyric, Jackson was “entertained by his sisters, Mrs. Monite Burrell and Lena Bell Jackson, of 1920 Seventh Street, at a beautiful pajama party” (“‘Papa’ Charlie Jackson Entertained By Sisters,” Louisiana Weekly, March 6, 1926).

377. Illinois Deaths and Stillborn Index, 1916–1947 (AncestryLibrary.com).

378. For a biography of Lonnie Johnson, see Dean Alger, The Original Guitar Hero and the Power of Music: The Legendary Lonnie Johnson, Music, and Civil Rights (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2014).

379. Evans, “Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 87.

380. David Evans, “Editor’s Introduction,” Black Music Research Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 1.

381. Glen Alyn, I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 191.

382. Evans, “Musical Innovation In The Blues Of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 87.

383. Alyn, 199.

384. According to Evans, “Some of Jefferson’s guitar figures seem quite clearly to be drawn from piano ragtime and boogie-woogie figures” (“Musical Innovation In The Blues Of Blind Lemon Jefferson,” 92).