An Embarrassing History

Americans with a moderate knowledge of musical history know about the minstrel shows that originated in the 19th century—how could they not? Some of them might even be aware that the Black musical reentered and transformed the Broadway stage during the 1920s. But there is this gap from the last decade of the 19th century to the 1920s where only fragments of Black musicality (ragtime, the cakewalk) flicker through the imposed amnesia of the time. Why? Take a deep breath and read the following historical facts.

The first popular song to chart a million sheet music sales was "All Coon Look Alike To Me," written by Ernest Hogan and published, to his permanent economic benefit (he was smart enough to put a royalty clause in his contract) in 1895. In spite of the Irish-sounding stage name he adopted, Ernest Crowdens (b. 1865) was unequivocally Black. As an early adaptation of the syncopation that became the hallmark of ragtime, Hogan's song sparked a "coon song" craze that produced a tidal wave of demeaning stereotypes phrased in an artificial "darky" dialect written by Blacks and whites alike—600 songs between 1895 and 1900.

An embarrassing history, indeed. But who deserved the shame—the white producers and audiences that skewed Black representations on stage—no matter who was under the burnt cork—into prefigured stereotypes of shiftless layabouts, dimwits, pompous blowhards, transparent con artists, razor-toting bad men, watermelon eating, chicken-stealing... the list goes on and on. Was it the white folks who published the songs, produced the shows, sold the tickets, bought the sheet music, and reaped the profits who felt embarrassed? Or was it the stage-struck boy, the musically inclined singer, the talented dancer who had to force himself into these clown costumes in order to make any kind of living and possibly—who knows?—strike the flickering bullseye of a hit song or comedic role and rise, however temporarily, above the circumscribed fate of his race? 

The tortuous truth of the coon song was that while it was certainly a cultural straight jacket—as had been the minstrel show and Uncle Tom roles of the nineteenth century—it could also be an escape route. Coon songs and ragtime (the instrumental version, if you will) brought syncopation into American music, a wildly popular innovation whose Black origin could not be belittled or erased. Appropriated by white performers and composers for sure, but the music's popularity built the careers of the first generation of Black stage professionals whose achievements, in the first decade of the 20th century, were astonishing.

With the exception of Bert Williams, the names of these extraordinary men (unfortunately few women were allowed in that vanguard) have been fogged over by the humiliating miasma of the coon song craze that launched their careers. "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome," wrote Booker T. Washington, who well knew the ground on which he and his post-Reconstruction generation, abandoned now to the not-so-tender mercies of a recrudescent white nationalism, had to stand. One need only look at the sheet music covers to see what they were up against. 

And yet, Bob Cole turned the craze to his advantage when he wrote and produced A Trip to Coontown in 1898, the first musical entirely created and owned by Black showmen. (He also handily skewered Jim Crow injustice in the show's song "No Coons Allowed," reprinted in a special end section of the newsletter.) That same year, Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cakewalk," a one-act musical by composer Will Marion Cook with an all-Black cast premiered on the rooftop of a Broadway theater and was a hit. Three years later Cook's music graced In Dahomey, the first full-length African American musical to be staged at an indoor venue on Broadway. During its four-year tour, In Dahomey proved one of the most successful musical comedies of its era.The show helped make its composer and leading performers, George Walker and Bert Williams, household names. A command performance at Buckingham Palace capped its 1903 residency in the United Kingdom

Dizzying heights had been scaled, at least in England. More triumphs awaited in New York. Ernest Hogan fulfilled his pet ambition to be the only colored star in a full-scale Broadway musical, Rufus Rastas, in 1905. Bob Cole, after having teamed up with composer J. Rosamund Johnson (of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" fame), created several Cole & Johnson Broadway shows that strenuously transcended the coon tropes still dominant on Tin Pan Alley. The leading man of The Shoo-Fly Regiment (1906-07) was a military hero and a college man. The Red Moon (1908-1910) not only depicted a misceginated world of Black and Indian alliance but its plot turned upon a romantic relationship between its Black protagonist and his half-Indian love interest. (A serious depiction of romance imparted too much gravitas to Black characters and was thus avoided, it was mistakenly thought, until the return of the Black musical in 1921 with Shuffle Along.) 

The Williams and Walker Company, quite large now and able to access financial resources unknown heretofore, continued its Broadway successes. Ernest Hogan wrote and starred in a second Broadway musical, The Oyster Man (1907). And then, it all came crashing down. Hogan had to leave The Oyster Man, closing the show, due to illness. George Walker retired early in the middle of the 1908-09 season also for health reasons. In 1911 Bob Cole collapsed on stage while performing with J. Rosamund Johnson.

Syphilis carried off this first generation of giants, though the explanations offered to the public cited other causes. They were mourned by their contemporaries, but their memories did not survive. Bert Williams was absorbed and enshrined in the world of white entertainment as a headliner for the Ziegfield Follies from 1910 to 1919. Bereft of its stars, African American musicals entered a Wilderness Period from 1908 to 1921, during which Shuffle Along opened. Between the "embarrassing" beginning (coon songs) and the stigmatized end, there was much to celebrate—but much that was easier to forget. If you're African American, can you look at the sheet music cover of "All Coons Look Alike To Me" with equanimity? Discretion was the better part of pallor. 

N.B. The family of M. Witmark and Sons, a founding force of Tin Pan Alley and major publisher of coon songs, was of Jewish origin. 

— Dr. Robert Philipson

Read more about Dr. Robert Philipson's personal connection to this foray in The Arab Slave Trade Finally Breaks Through.

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