Out of Sight Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff University Press of Mississippi / Jackson OutOut ofofOut of Sight Sight Sight The Rise of African American Popular Music – American Made Music Series Advisory Board David Evans, General Editor Barry Jean Ancelet Edward A. Berlin Joyce J. Bolden Rob Bowman Susan C. Cook Curtis Ellison William Ferris Michael Harris John Edward Hasse Kip Lornell Frank McArthur W. K. McNeil Bill Malone Eddie S. Meadows Manuel H. Peña David Sanjek Wayne D. Shirley Robert Walser Charles Wolfe www.upress.state.ms.us Copyright © 2002 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 4 3 2 ϱ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Abbott, Lynn, 1946– Out of Sight: the rise of African American popular music, 1889–1895 / Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff. p. cm. — (American made music series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-57806-499-6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Music—Hisory and criticism. 2. Popular music—United States—To 1901—History and criticism. I. Seroff, Doug. II. Title. III. Series ML3479 .A2 2003 781.64Ј089Ј96073—dc21 2002007819 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Contents Acknowledgments ϳ Introduction ϳ Chapter 1. 1889 • Frederick J. Loudin’s Fisk Jubilee Singers and Their Australasian Auditors, 1886–1889 ϳ 3 • “Same”—The Maori and the Fisk Jubilee Singers ϳ 12 • Australasian Music Appreciation ϳ 13 • Minstrelsy and Loudin’s Fisk Jubilee Singers ϳ 19 • The Slippery Slope of Variety and Comedy ϳ 21 • Mean Judge Williams ϳ 24 • A “Black Patti” for the Ages: The Tennessee Jubilee Singers and Matilda Sissieretta Jones, 1889–1891 ϳ 27 • Other “Colored Pattis” and “Queens of Song,” 1889 ϳ 40 • Other Jubilee Singers, 1889 ϳ 42 • Rev. Marshall W. Taylor ϳ 45 • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music-Related Citations, 1889 ϳ 47 • The Minstrel Profession ϳ 60 • Charles B. Hicks Abroad, 1889–1895 ϳ 60 • McCabe and Young’s Minstrels, 1889–1892 ϳ 65 Contents Chapter 2. 1890 Chapter 4. 1892 • Loudin’s Fisk Jubilee Singers Come Home ϳ 73 • Cake Walks in Context ϳ 205 • Jubilee Singers on the Home Front, 1890 ϳ 86 • Toward a Black National Anthem: “John • “A Woman with a Mission”: Madame Marie Brown’s Body” ϳ 211 Selika, 1890 ϳ 89 • “Colored Pattis” and “Queens of Song,” • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- 1892 ϳ 214 Related Citations, 1890 ϳ 91 • Lizzie Pugh Dugan: “God Never Gave a Human • African American Minstrel Companies in the a More Beautiful Voice” ϳ 218 South ϳ 105 • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- • Richards and Pringle’s Original Georgia Min- Related Citations, 1892 ϳ 220 strels and Billy Kersands, 1889–1895 ϳ 106 • Barber-Musicians ϳ 244 • Cleveland’s Colored Minstrels, Season of • Mandolin Clubs ϳ 247 1890–1891 ϳ 110 • W. P. Dabney ϳ 251 • Mahara’s Minstrels, 1892–1895 ϳ 115 • “Monarchs of the Light Guitar” ϳ 254 • The Legend of Orpheus McAdoo, • “A Model of Community Service”: John W. 1890–1900 ϳ 119 Johnson and the Detroit City Band ϳ 255 • The Excelsior Reed and Brass Band of Chapter 3. 1891 Cleveland, Ohio ϳ 262 • Benjamin L. Shook: A Community-Based New Departures in African American • Musician ϳ 265 Minstrelsy ϳ 145 • William Foote’s Afro-American Specialty Company ϳ 146 Chapter 5. 1893 • Sam T. Jack’s Creole Burlesque Company ϳ 151 • Compromises in Jubilee Singing: Thearle’s • The Dvorák Statement—“As Great as a Nashville Students, Wright’s Nashville Beethoven Theme” ϳ 273 Students, and the Canadian Jubilee • Black Music in the White City: African Ameri- Singers ϳ 170 cans and the 1893 World’s Columbian • The Nashville Students ϳ 170 Exposition ϳ 276 • The Canadian Jubilee Singers ϳ 176 • Colored Folks Day ϳ 279 • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- • The Midway Plaisance and the Dahomean Related Citations, 1891 ϳ 177 Village ϳ 284 • The Texarkana Minstrel Company and the • Conclusion ϳ 294 Jefferson Davis Monument Fund: “The • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- Thing Is Unnatural” ϳ 198 Related Citations, 1893 ϳ 296 • Two Southern Brass Bands in New York City: • “Folk-Lore and Ethnology,”“Coonjine” and Becker’s Brass Band from Kentucky and the “Hully-Gully” ϳ 308 Onward Brass Band from Louisiana ϳ 200 • The “African Prince” Phenomenon, • “Rags” in Tennesseetown, 1891 ϳ 201 1891–1895 ϳ 312 Contents • Prof. Tobe Brown: “Terpsichorean • The Black Patti Troubadours and Madame Soiree” ϳ 315 C. C. Smith, “the Patti of Topeka” ϳ 438 • Blind Boone: “Clear out of Sight” ϳ 318 • The Whitman Sisters ϳ 440 • “A Little ‘Ragging’”: The Emergence of Ragtime in the Land of John Brown ϳ 443 Chapter 6. 1894 • Preserving the Spiritual Legacy: The Last Days ϳ • “Black and White” Minstrelsy ϳ 325 of Frederick J. Loudin 455 • “Darkest America”: Al G. Field’s Real Negro Minstrels ϳ 331 Appendix 1: Repertoire of the Tennessee Jubilee ϳ • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- Singers, 1888–1889 463 Related Citations, 1894 ϳ 335 Appendix 2: Personnel Listings of Orpheus M. A Tour of Conquest and Melody: Prof. W. H. McAdoo’s and M. B. Curtis’s Troupes in • ϳ Councill and the Alabama State Normal Australia, 1899–1900 463 School Quartette ϳ 351 Appendix 3: Repertoire of McAdoo’s Virginia That Barbershop Chord ϳ 357 Concert Company and Jubilee Singers, • ϳ • Quartets to the Fore: The South Before the War 1892–1893 464 Company and Its Plantation Pretenders, Appendix 4: Roster of the Detroit City Band, ϳ 1892–1895 ϳ 360 1891–1892 465 ϳ A Low and Narrow Pathway of Opportunity in Notes 467 • ϳ the Circus Sideshow “Colored Annex,” Index 485 1891–1895 ϳ 373 • Dime Museums ϳ 380 Chapter 7. 1895 • “Black America” ϳ 391 • Brass Bands in Kansas ϳ 395 • “Kid Bands” in Kansas: The John Brown Juve- nile Band and N. Clark Smith’s Pickaninny Band ϳ 403 • “In Old Kentucky” ϳ 406 • “The Fake and His Orphans”: Sherwood’s Youth Missionary Band, 1889–1895 ϳ 409 • Selected, Annotated Chronology of Music- Related Citations, 1895 ϳ 419 • From the Criterion Quartet to “In Old Ten- nessee”: The Rise of Ernest Hogan, 1889–1895 ϳ 433 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments In the early 1980s, when we began our survey Fisk Jubilee Singers. Thanks particularly to Spe- of African American newspapers on microfilm, cial Collections Librarian Beth Madison Howse we were motivated by a common interest in the for many years of assistance and kindness. early evolution of black vocal harmony singing. The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University We gradually began to appreciate the broader in New Orleans also threw open its doors to us. context. In 1989 we inaugurated a series of five We are grateful for our long-term working rela- essays which appeared in 78 Quarterly under tionship with curator Dr. Bruce Boyd Raeburn the title “100 Years from Today.” Our intent was and his staff, especially Mrs. Alma Freeman, to bring to light and comment on the music- who negotiated an endless river of requests on related citations we were discovering in 1890s our behalf. Thanks as well to the staff of Tulane’s newspapers. Those essays represent the rough Howard Tilton Memorial Library, especially in beginnings of the book at hand. the Music, Microforms, and Interlibrary Loan Special thanks to 78 Quarterly editor Pete divisions; and to the Amistad Research Center, Whelan for his early support and continued which is also located on the Tulane campus. cooperation; and to Ray Funk, who was in on We thank the staff of the Center for Popular our early black newspaper research and who Music at Middle Tennessee State University in remains a valued friend and colleague. Murfreesboro, especially Bruce Nemerov, for Thanks to Dr. David Evans for friendship, assistance and encouragement. The staff of the advice, and a critical reading of the manuscript Country Music Foundation Library in Nashville, which inspired many significant improvements. specifically Bob Pinson, Ronnie Pugh, and Thanks to Wayne D. Shirley for an equally Alan Stoker, were also helpful over many years. illuminating review of the manuscript and for Thanks as well to the Nashville Public Library; responding to our many requests for copies of the New Orleans Public Library, especially the sheet music and copyright deposits held by the staff of the Louisiana Division; the Earl K. Long Library of Congress. Library of the University of New Orleans, especi- Thanks to Chris Ware for the book jacket art ally Interlibrary Loan librarian Evelyn Chandler; and for his enthusiastic support of our work. and the Virginia State Library in Richmond, We are grateful to the Fisk University Library Virginia. in Nashville for the use of resources and facilities, Thanks are due to the Portage County His- most notably their extraordinary collection of torical Society Museum in Ohio, which houses African American newspapers on microfilm and many personal effects of Frederick and Harriet their incredible body of materials relating to the Loudin; the Detroit Public Library, which Acknowledgments houses the E. Azalia Hackley Collection, which Settlers Museum in Dunedin; the National contains the invaluable Leota Henson Turner Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT; the Mitchell scrapbooks; Deborah W. Walk at the John & Library (State Library of NSW), Sydney; and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, the Latrobe Library (State Library of Victoria). Florida; the Alabama A&M University Library, Thanks also to Tony Backhouse in Sydney for and the Scarritt-Bennett Library in Nashville. friendship and facilitation; also to Chris Bourke Thanks to Rob Bird for sharing the results in New Zealand and Rick Milne in Melbourne. of his research on the 1870s New York Clipper; Dr.