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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Episode 3 of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artists invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Bert Williams and the Black Artists Who Invented Broadway Part 1.

[0:28] David Armstrong: Black theater artists have played a much larger role in the creation of the Broadway musical than is generally acknowledged, including an entire decade of now-nearly-forgotten hit shows and songs. In this episode, we will rediscover those amazingly multi-talented men and women whose legacy still inspires Broadway today, even if most people are entirely unaware of them. But first, let's look back at the origins of African American musical theater. From colonial times through to the early 19th century, both black performers and black audiences were excluded from all established American theaters. But that doesn't mean that there weren't any black theater practitioners or productions. It just means that the shows made by and for African American audiences had to be staged in whatever makeshift spaces could be found.

Unfortunately, there are very few surviving records or any details about those performances. What we do know is that an African American man named William Alexander Brown first opened a theater in his garden, and not long after, he purchased a house in a section of New York called Little Africa, where he built a 300-seat theater on the second floor. He named it the African Grove Theater, I'm assuming after the garden where they started, and it opened with a production of Shakespeare's Richard III. Like many Shakespeare productions of that era, the text was heavily revised, and songs and dances were included before, after, and in between the scenes. Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties, William Brown had to close his African Grove Theater after only a few seasons of operation.

[2:03] David Armstrong: It's even more unfortunate that we can't talk about the creation of the Broadway musical or really any aspect of American entertainment or popular music without at least some focus on the minstrel show. The roots of the minstrel show can be traced back to the 1830s, when a white performer named Thomas Rice darkened his face with burnt cork and portrayed a character he called Jim Crow. Dressed in tattered clothes, dancing a herky-jerky style, and speaking and singing with an exaggerated Southern African American dialect, he performed a song called Jump Jim Crow. Rice became so popular, and his imitation of a black man became so well known, that Jim Crow became a widely used derogatory name for African American men, and eventually it became an overall nickname for the discriminatory laws that enforce strict racial segregation.

Inspired by Rice's success, other individuals, and soon entire companies of white men in blackface, began performing what came to be called minstrel shows. A typical minstrel show included highly accomplished singing, dancing, and comedy routines, and at least in part, very demeaning and stereotypical characterizations of both rural and urban African Americans, and derogatory stereotypes of black culture. And the songs and dances often expressed an idealized sentimental nostalgia for life on the old plantation.

[3:29] David Armstrong: Way down upon the Suwannee River, far, far away. There's where my heart is turning ever. Critic Margo Jefferson believes that some of this came out of a genuine fascination with the music, the songs, the dances, and the performance styles of black people. And scholar Eric Lotz suggests that blackface performance represented, quote, a strange mix of envy, fascination, desire, and fear. By the 1850s, minstrel shows were the hottest tickets in major cities across the country. In New York alone, there were 12 minstrel theaters. It's important to keep in mind that the majority of white theatergoers in the North had experienced very little actual contact with African Americans. Even as late as 1860, there were only 3,000 African Americans living in New York City, and this was out of a population of more than 800,000 people.

As a result, most white northerners were largely ignorant of the actual harsh realities of slavery and assumed that these shows depicted accurate representations of black people. Or perhaps they just wanted to believe the minstrel shows' sugar-coated depiction of life in the South, where apparently slaves were always singing, dancing, and telling hilarious jokes. This, no doubt, helped them to block out the cruel realities of slavery, as well as the unequal treatment of free blacks closer to home.

[5:29] David Armstrong: Surprisingly, many of those free blacks who lived in the North also started attending the minstrel shows in significant numbers. So much so that theater owners who had never before allowed blacks into their venues swept aside policies that had excluded them. It's not exactly clear why African Americans showed up in such large numbers to see these shows, shows that made fun of the way black people walked, talked, sang, and danced. Some historians think they went to laugh at the ridiculous, over-the-top caricatures that the white people had dreamed up, while others believe they were genuinely attracted to the authentic elements of black culture that had survived the gross exaggeration. However, it's much easier to understand why black performers soon started appearing in these shows.

During this period, minstrel shows were pretty much the only opportunity for anyone, white or black, to get paid to be a performer or a musician. Soon, all black minstrel troops performing in blackface began touring the United States, England, and even Australia. By 1890, the U.S. Census would report that almost all of America's 1,490 black actors were employed in touring minstrel shows, and many great African American star performers got their start in these all-black companies.

[6:51] David Armstrong: The 20th and 21st century African American Broadway star Ben Vereen has portrayed fictional characters based on some of those 19th century performers, and he suggests that it all happened something like this, and I quote, African Americans are sitting out there looking at white entertainers, and they go, wait a minute, I can do me better than they're doing me. So they get together and they form a troop. But the white audiences in this country told them, if you want to be on our stage in this country, you better black up. And that's where the black minstrel show came from. And from out of that, from behind the mask, genius was born. Promoters advertised these black companies as being more real and original and more authentic.

And perhaps they were. It may be that larger portions of their music, dance, and comedy routines were more authentically representative of actual black culture, even as they still had to perpetuate some racist stereotypes. This dichotomy is part of what makes this subject so complicated. Both white and black minstrel shows included actual elements of black culture. Minstrel show music featured the banjo, tambourine, and the bones, which were wooden spoons, basically, all of which were African-derived musical instruments. And many of the songs were adaptations of slave spirituals and other early forms of African American music. And dance was also a significant part of these shows, dominated by the cakewalk.

[8:29] David Armstrong: The cakewalk is a dance that had originated when black slaves began making fun of the pretentious, highfalutin dancing of their white masters. They mocked them by using exaggerated bows, curtsies, and high-stepping struts. Ironically, the white slave owners loved the dance and took it up themselves. Soon, cakewalk dance competitions became a part of both white and black plantation life, with the winner receiving a cake as a prize. This dance moved from the plantations to the cities and then became an international sensation. It was also the high point of every minstrel show. Now, I find this to be completely mind-blowing. White and black performers in blackface would parody black people by performing a dance that was created by black slaves who were making fun of their white masters. And the crowd went wild.

[9:28] David Armstrong: The cakewalk would influence almost all of the ballroom dance crazes of the ragtime era, the one-step, the two-step, the grizzly bear, etc., which led to the foxtrot. And it was also the foundation of the dances of the jazz age and the swing era, the Charleston, the Black Bottom, the Big Apple, the Lindy Hop, and the Jitterbug. And its basic movements are still very much alive in the vocabulary of Broadway dance. This season on Broadway, you can see echoes of the cakewalk in the choreography for such disparate shows as Hamilton, Chicago, Disney's Aladdin, the Book of Mormon, Hadestown, and probably a few others. Now, the standard minstrel show had three sections. The first part was called the minstrel line, which was the blackface section and is often misremembered today as being the entire minstrel show.

The second part was called the oleo, which means mixture, and consisted of a variety style program of songs, dances, and specialty acts, usually not performed in blackface. The third section was basically a half-hour musical comedy sketch, often a burlesque of a hit play of the day, and also not usually incorporating blackface. This would be very similar to an extended Saturday Night Live or Carol Burnett show parody of a movie or TV show.

[10:47] David Armstrong: After the Civil War, the three parts of the minstrel show went their separate ways. The oleo expanded into vaudeville. The sketch evolved into early burlesque and eventually musical comedy. But tragically, the first part and its highly negative stereotypes of blacks would persist as an insidious part of American culture and entertainment for decades. However, in addition to its shameful racist legacy, minstrel shows contributed many other elements to pop culture. The concept and format of having a master of ceremonies began with the minstrel show's interlocutor, who would host the evening, introducing each of the acts and supplying jokes and wry comments, as exemplified by award shows and comedy roasts, and even the classic Tonight Show-style late-night talk show format.

The practice of rewriting the lyrics of popular songs for comic effect and to comment on topical events began with the minstrel show as well, and has continued in the song parodies of everyone from Alan Sherman to Weird Al Yankovic to the long-running hit show Forbidden Broadway. Cross-dressing drag acts were featured prominently in minstrel shows, no doubt because the cast were all made up of men, and that tradition would cross over into all forms of popular American culture. And perhaps the most significant legacy is the Double Comedy Act, where two...

[12:09] David Armstrong: Comedians feed each other setups and serve as foils for each other's material. This dynamic has been a mainstay of American show business ever since. The music of the minstrel show would also heavily influence American pop music. Songs by both white and black songwriters from this era became standards that are still heard and performed today. Stephen Foster, who was America's first professional songwriter, wrote many songs for minstrel shows, including "Camptown Races," "Oh Susanna," "I Dream of Jeannie," and a dozen other songs that are still very much with us. James Bland was America's first prominent black composer. He wrote more than 700 songs, including "In the Evening by the Moonlight," "Oh Them Golden Slippers," and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia," which would become the state song of Virginia.

Most importantly, the minstrel show opened the door for black performers. In spite of the fact that they had to present stereotypes of their own race and culture, they were able to establish themselves as professional performers, and this, as we will see, positioned them to be ready to move into vaudeville, burlesque, and other forms of show business, and to become important early creators of the Broadway musical.

[14:04] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong, and if you're enjoying this episode, I strongly suspect that you'll want to read my new book, "Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical." Now, the official release date isn't until July 24, but the book is on pre-sale now at Amazon and everywhere books are sold, and if you go to the publisher's website, bloomsbury.com, you can use this discount code GLRBD8—that's capital G-L-R-B-D, the numeral 8—for 20% off of my new book, "Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical." Now, back to the show.

[14:58] David Armstrong: I've talked a bit about burlesque in the original sense of that word on earlier podcasts, and burlesque was similar to the minstrel show, but instead of making fun of Black culture, burlesque made fun of the social habits and the pretensions of the upper classes. Both kinds of entertainment included parodies of high art and culture. The burlesque craze eventually led to something called Sam T. Jack's Creole Show, a show designed for white audiences but performed by an all-Black cast of both men and women, and none of them in Blackface. It featured a line of 16 beautiful girls, singers, comics, and dance teams. Another similar show was called Black Patti's Troubadours. This was a troupe of more than 40 African-American comedians, singers, dancers, acrobats, and other entertainers, and it was the brainchild of a woman named Matilda Ciceretta Joyner-Jones.

She was born in 1869 in Virginia, and she was an immensely talented soprano, and when she had performed at Madison Square Garden in 1892, she had been hailed as the Black Patti. Now, the most famous opera singer of that day was a woman named Adelina Patti, so to be called the Black Patti was great praise indeed. And although Jones apparently didn't care for this nickname, she recognized its publicity value and formed her own troupe called Black Patti's Troubadours, which she led from 1895 to 1967. Her troupe toured all over the United States and Europe, and it became a training ground for literally hundreds of Black performers. The Black Patti show was described as half musical farce and half operatic kaleidoscope.

[16:40] David Armstrong: Black Patti's producers hired a multi-talented young man named Bob Cole to write the show, and in addition to the obligatory opera sequences, Cole began creating what were, in essence, short one-act mini-musicals. One of those would soon be accepted as part of the Black Patti Troubadours, and it was the first of its kind. The Black Patti Troubadours was the first what were, in essence, short one-act mini-musicals. One of those would soon be expanded into the first full-length African-American created musical. Bob Cole had always dreamed of a stage career. After graduating from Atlanta University, he joined the Creole Show for a short time and then joined Worth's Museum All-Star Stock Company, an all-Black repertory theater in New York City.

It was there that he mastered all aspects of the theater. He directed, choreographed, and wrote the comic and dramatic sketches that made this company the most popular Negro attraction in New York, and its two dozen performers would become the stars of almost every Black show over the following decade. A contemporary of Bob Cole was Will Marion Cook. He was born in 1869 to middle-class parents in Washington, D.C. His father was the first dean of Howard University. Will Cook began studying classical music as a teenager, and he was so accomplished that he was soon sent to study composition and violin in Germany, where he was taught by a student of Johannes Brahms. He returned to the U.S. in the 1890s, but as you might imagine, it was nearly impossible for a Black man to find work as a violinist or composer in the very white world of classical music. So instead, he turned his focus to composing ragtime music, perhaps inspired by the success of Scott Joplin, who was another classically trained Black composer.

[18:39] David Armstrong: Both Will Cook and Bob Cole began to dream of presenting an all-Black musical comedy on Broadway, but they had very different ideas of what kind of show that should be. Cole believed that Blacks should compete directly with white authors and strive to achieve what were considered to be the highest artistic standards of the time. Cook, however, felt that Black artists should create work that reflected the soul of Black people and should not try to mimic the works of white artists. Whenever the two songwriters were in the same room, they would violently disagree, and their mutual friends tried to keep them apart as much as possible. Remarkably, in 1896, they would both debut in New York the first two shows written by African Americans that we might at least loosely call a musical.

Bob Cole's show opened at the Third Avenue Theater and was called "A Trip to Coontown." It is the first full-length musical show written, directed, performed, and produced by African Americans, and it was 25 years before the musical "Shuffle Along," which is often credited with that distinction. The show's title was clearly intended to echo the 1891 hit show "A Trip to Chinatown," and like that show, it offered a visit to one of New York's ethnic neighborhoods, including a loosely structured story about a con artist named Jim Flimflammer who tries to bilk an old man out of his $5,000 pension. The hero, named Willie Wayside, was played by Bob Cole himself, and he eventually saves the day. The plot, however, was frequently interrupted by specialty acts like the contortionist the Freeman Sisters, the singer Uvia Roan, known as the Cuban Nightingale, and Lloyd G. Gibbs, who was billed as the greatest living black tenor. Overall, the show was a lot like those earlier black variety shows, except with the addition of a thin storyline.

[20:29] David Armstrong: Will Marion Cook's musical was called "Clarindi, or The Origin of the Cakewalk," and it opened at the Rooftop Casino Theater in 1898. It featured a cast of 26, including the team of Burt Williams and George Walker, who we will hear much more about in a few minutes. But some reports tell us that although the show originally had a story, the book was cut and the actual performance consisted of only the songs. It's not entirely clear what happened. The lyrics were by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who would later become well known as an American poet, novelist, and playwright. He was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His parents had been slaves in Kentucky before the Civil War. Dunbar wrote his first poem at the age of six and gave his first public recital at the age of nine.

He was the only African-American student at Central High School in Dayton, where he seems to have been very popular. He was elected as president of the school's literary society and became the editor of the school newspaper and a member of its debate club. Two of his classmates would become lifelong friends, Orville and Wilbur Wright, the Wright brothers. Many years later, Will Marion Cook would recall that thrilling first night of "Clarindi." I was so delirious that I drank a glass of water thinking it was wine and got glorious drunk. Negroes were at last on Broadway and here to stay.

[22:51] David Armstrong: Cook would go on to compose the scores for a number of other Broadway shows, including "In Dahomey," which I will discuss further in a few moments. And his success went beyond the theater. In 1912, he led a 150-voice chorus in a concert called "Swing Along" at Carnegie Hall. And he toured Europe with his All-Black Southern Syncopated Orchestra, in which his wife, Abby Mitchell, was the lead singer. He was a teacher and mentor to many young African-American musicians, most significantly Duke Ellington, to whom he gave this advice. Let your inner self break through and guide you. Don't try to be anybody but yourself.

[23:51] David Armstrong: What historians call the Great Migration doesn't technically begin until 1916, but as you can see, a significant stream of Southern Blacks poured into New York City between 1890 and 1914, looking for greater social and economic opportunity. They met with similar, and in many cases worse, discrimination than the Irish, Jewish, and other immigrants were facing. But they also found that the show business offered opportunities for advancement that they were closed out of in almost every other field. Even during this time of great racial prejudice, many African-Americans found success in vaudeville, and major acts like Williamson, Walker, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith were in great demand. Vaudeville lineups actually would often feature white, black, Asian, Latin American, and Jewish performers all on the same bill.

Offstage, however, it was a different story. Racism was rampant, performers of color could not stay in the same hotels or boarding houses as the white performers, and many theaters did not allow black audience members or segregated them to the balcony only. To serve the black audience, a network of all-black vaudeville theaters eventually emerged across the country, sarcastically named the Chitlin Circuit. Among the biggest stars of both white and black vaudeville was the team of Williams and Walker. George Walker was born in Kansas in 1873, and he began his career in a black minstrel troupe. Burt Williams was born in the Bahamas.

[24:20] David Armstrong: And eventually he migrated to California, where he also began working in various minstrel shows.

[24:25] David Armstrong: The two men met in 1893 in San Francisco and decided to team up.

[24:30] David Armstrong: They formed an act where Walker played the role of a fast-talking con man, and Williams the dim-witted oaf who was the victim of Walker's schemes.

[24:40] David Armstrong: Much like Harrigan and Hart and Webber and Fields, Williams and Walker's production started out as little more than variety shows, but eventually they incorporated plot threads along with characters and songs that at least in some ways related to them. In 1903, they joined with other talented African Americans to produce a show called In Dahomey.

[25:04] David Armstrong: This show told the story of a group of African Americans who, after finding a pot of gold, moved to Africa and became the rulers of Dahomey. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Dahomey was an actual African kingdom located in the area where the country of Benin is today. The score was very eclectic. The music ran the gamut from Viennese operetta-style waltzes to syncopated ragtime tunes.

[25:29] David Armstrong: Some song lyrics used black dialect and others very high-toned English. The show's New York premiere was not without controversy, however. The New York Times warned that there might be trouble ahead.

[25:42] David Armstrong: A thundercloud has been gathering of late in the faces of the established Broadway managers since it was announced that Williams and Walker, with their all-Negro musical comedy In Dahomey, were booked to appear at the New York Theatre. There have been times when trouble breeders foreboded a race war. Apparently, the so-called trouble breeders were wrong since the show became a significant hit in New York as well as on a subsequent tour of England where the entire production was summoned to give a command performance at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales.

[26:16] David Armstrong: Financially, the show was an enormous success. In the end, the show's backers earned a 400% return on their investment, and this made it clear that an all-black show could make money. Three years later, Williams and Walker produced and starred in another hit show set in Africa called Abyssinia, and it featured a score by the African-American team of Jesse A. Shipp and Alex Rogers. And with this show, Jesse Shipp became the first black director of a Broadway musical.

[26:46] David Armstrong: Williams and Walker's 1908 show was set in the United States and called Bandana Land. This time, the show was critically acclaimed in every aspect and generally acknowledged to be Williams and Walker's finest show yet. Unfortunately, it would also be their last.

[27:05] David Armstrong: During the national tour of the show in 1909, George Walker became seriously ill and had to drop out. He died in 1911, most likely of syphilis. As important as Williams and Walker were, they were not the only black pioneers of the musical working during this period. Another important team were the brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. The two college-educated brothers from Jacksonville, Florida, came to New York in 1899 with a dream of presenting their original operetta, called Telosa, on Broadway.

[27:36] David Armstrong: James later acknowledged that going to New York was an absurd and improbable venture made only possible by their invincible faith in themselves. However, that faith seems to have paid off. Shortly after arriving in New York City, they were taken under the wing of Oscar Hammerstein I, who was very impressed with their songs, and his recommendation opened many doors to the songwriting team. Soon, they were meeting the leaders of both white and black theater in New York.

[28:08] David Armstrong: They became friends with Bob Cole and decided to become partners with him as well. His copious experience and their youthful raw talent proved to be a vibrant combination. Cole and the Johnson brothers wanted to do away with minstrel show stereotypes. Cole wrote a manifesto that he called a Colored Actors Declaration of Independence. We are going to have our own shows. We are going to write them ourselves. We are going to have our own stage manager and our own orchestra leader and our own manager out front to count up. And no divided houses. Our race must be seated from the front row back.

[28:42] David Armstrong: Their first collaboration, a show called The Shoofly Regiment, demonstrated exactly what they had in mind. It told the story of a graduate of a black college, much like the Tuskegee Institute, the historically black university founded in 1881 in Alabama. This young man, against the wishes of his girlfriend, gives up his dream of becoming a teacher in order to enlist in the army and fight in the Spanish-American War. Eventually, after a successful combat mission and other plot complications, he returns and marries his sweetheart.

[29:27] David Armstrong: Prior to this, it was assumed that white audiences would not accept a serious romance if the lovers were black. The Shoofly Regiment had a run of almost two years, including a long tour and several months on Broadway. It received mostly favorable reviews, but at least one critic was of the opinion that blacks should, quote, continue to write shows of a minstrel nature and leave modern musicals to white authors, end quote. Cole and the Johnsons did not take that critic's advice.

[30:19] David Armstrong: Their next hit show in 1909 was called The Red Moon, and it was written in collaboration with black composer Joe Jordan. It tells the story of a young, college-educated woman whose mother is black and whose father is Native American, and the plot deals with conflict and reconciliation between these two cultures. Unfortunately, this was the team's final show. After a period of illness and depression, Bob Cole committed suicide in 1911. However, over the course of their collaboration, Cole and the Johnson brothers would write over 200 songs, the most famous of which is Under the Bamboo Tree.

[31:16] David Armstrong: In addition to the men, many African-American women became significant Broadway stars during this period. Most famous were Abby Mitchell and Ada Overton Walker. Abby Mitchell was born on the Lower East Side of New York, and by all accounts had a glorious, pure soprano. Her first major role was in Clarindi in 1898, and later that year she married the show's composer, Will Marion Cook. She would enjoy a long career that included leading roles in Indahomie, The Red Moon, and 30 years later in Porgy and Bess.

[32:00] David Armstrong: Ada Overton Walker was also born in New York. While still a teenager, she joined Black Paddy's Troubadours, where she met her soon-to-be husband, George Walker. She played leading roles in Indahomie, Abyssinia, and Bandanaland, and when her husband, George Walker, became ill and had to leave the national tour of Bandanaland, it was Ada who replaced him. But she was not just an acclaimed actress, singer, and dancer, she was also a gifted choreographer.

[32:36] David Armstrong: The year after George Walker died, Ziegfeld hired Bert Williams to star in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910. Legend has it that some of the show's white stars and performers did not want to share the stage with Williams. Ziegfeld, by all reports, responded, "Go if you want to. I can replace every one of you except for Bert Williams." Don't get me wrong, overall the Follies were extremely white. There was never an African-American Ziegfeld girl, and black theatergoers were not even allowed in the audience. But Ziegfeld always wanted the best talent for his shows, so he employed black performers, songwriters, and choreographers.

[33:08] David Armstrong: Bert Williams would star in nearly every edition of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 through 1919. Although he became one of the most famous and acclaimed performers of the era, black or white, and played to packed houses in theaters across the nation, he faced racial discrimination almost every day and everywhere that he traveled. In most cities, he was not allowed to ride in elevators with white passengers, or stay at the same hotels, or eat in the same restaurants as his white counterparts.

[34:30] David Armstrong: He once told a friend that it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't hear the applause still ringing in my ears. He died in 1922, and at his funeral, more than 5,000 people filed by his casket. Booker T. Washington stated that, "Bert Williams has done more for the race than I have. He smiled his way into people's hearts. I have been obliged to fight my way."

[35:04] David Armstrong: Unfortunately, the sudden and untimely deaths of George Walker and Bob Cole, combined with a sharp increase in racial discrimination in those years just before the First World War, led to nearly ten years in which black musicals were entirely absent from Broadway. However, during that decade, the Great Migration, combined with the dynamic changes in society that emerged after the war, would transform Harlem into a vibrant breeding ground for modern black culture. And eventually, this would lead to a new and even more significant series of black musicals on Broadway.

[35:40] David Armstrong: On the next episode of Broadway Nation, we will explore the black musicals of the 1920s. This episode was produced and written by me, David Armstrong, with producing assistance from James Rocco, and voice acting contributions from Kyle Carter. I would especially like to thank everyone at KVSH 101.9 on beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and at the Broadway Podcast Network.