An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre

1900 - 1950

Sean Mayes, Sarah K. Whitfield

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350119659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Théâtre

A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK. Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London's Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in British musicals - often to be found at Noël Coward's apartment for late-night rehearsals, such was Bradley's importance. Meet Jack Johnson, the first African American Heavyweight Boxing Champion, who toured Britain's theatres during World War 1 and brought the sounds of Chicago to places like war-weary Dundee. Discover the most prolific Black theatre practitioner you've never heard of, William Garland, who worked for 40 years across multiple continents and championed Black British performers. Marvel at performers like cabaret star Mabel Mercer, born in Stafford in 1900, who sang and conducted theatre orchestras across the UK, as well as Black Birmingham comedian Eddie Emerson, who was Garland's partner for decades. Many of their names and works have never been included in histories of the British musical - until now.

PART ONE

Black practitioners and international performance networks

The 1900s in context

During the 1900s, pioneers of Black performance practice were consistently among the first to engage with new forms of technology, in particular the early music recording and film industries. The further development of international travel and communication networks, and the affordability of such travel, served to support international theatrical touring in ways which, more than 100 years later, are startling in their geographical scope. In 1907, the Mauretania broke the speed record for a transatlantic crossing in four and a half days, though five to six days was more usual.

When making Atlantic crossings for performances and productions, African American performers were not unaware of its history; their crossings assert resistance to the continuing impact of slavery in US life. Saidiya Hartman positions the Atlantic as an essential part of Black history: ‘The sea is history … the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.’¹ During the Middle Passage alone, chattel slavery led to the deaths of more than 2 million enslaved Black people; slave traders threw the bodies of enslaved people into the Atlantic Ocean.² To speak of transatlantic performance travel requires noting which ocean is being crossed.

Black practitioners were able to move across the world, performing in front of all social classes through extensive performance opportunities. In the UK, Black performers worked across regional theatres of all sizes and locations, and even in front of the Royal Family in the case of In Dahomey. Though there was already an existing presence in the UK of Black performers, the arrival of Will Marion Cook’s In Dahomey in May 1903, fresh from its success on Broadway, helped establish a network of Black British and African American as well as Caribbean and African performers (see Key Figure 1).

Black practitioners seem to seamlessly move between small British theatres to major London variety houses, into Europe and beyond, even on to Australia. Some performers move freely between centres of performance like London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. Performance practice in this first decade clearly emerged from the minstrel traditions of the nineteenth century: minstrel companies and amateur minstrel performances form a great deal of British theatre.

The breadth and legacy of their work in this decade may be surprising to our modern eyes, purely in geography alone. Three key Black performers during this period point to the extent of this work. Four African American members of the second company of In Dahomey established the Darktown Entertainers: Pete (George) Hampton (b. 1871, Kentucky; d. 1916, New York City), a baritone singer, banjo player and actor; Hampton’s wife Laura Bowman (alt. Bauman) (b. 1881, Quincy, IL; d. 1957), a singer and performer; Fred Douglas (dates unknown); and William ‘Will’ Garland (b. 1875, Iowa; d. 1938, London; for more, see Chapter 4). Will Garland, like many practitioners, drew on his professional experience of transcontinental touring in the United States. There, he had worked alongside W. C. (William Christopher) Handy, now regarded as the father of the blues, in a minstrel show, where he worked as a musician, performer and vocal director. Will Garland, along with other cast members of the production, brought his knowledge of touring theatre to establishing companies that toured the UK and beyond for the following thirty years (see Chapter 4).

Extensive professional versatility frequently occurs during this period. It is possible that performers may appear as a performer and comedian, singer or dancer, and instrumental musicians, as well as operating as a producer, agent and even as choreographers and teachers. This versatility demonstrates practitioners’ savvy business sense, for example in cashing in on named recognition of hit shows. Until the middle of the 1910s, Garland’s early revues namechecked In Dahomey in their advertising to assure audiences they would like his new work.

Social and political context

Britain’s quest to colonize African regions continued throughout this decade (and throughout the next). Britain had already seized control of many African regions, including what is now Kenya (1888); Ghana (1821, known as the Gold Coast for what Britain was able to export out of it); Malawi (1907); the Republic of The Gambia (1821, then the Gambia), Somaliland (c.1884), areas of Sierra Leone (1896), and regions of southern Africa, including parts of Zambia (1900). Driven by competition with other European nations, Britain continued to push to colonize more of Africa.

This was justified through the promise of Africa’s rich material resources as well as what David Olusoga calls ‘rapidly evolving forms of racism’,³ which placed white people in a position of moral, intellectual and, above all, evolutionary superiority to people of African descent. Olusoga argues that the contemporaneous idea that Africans were ‘overgrown infants with the same predilections, weaknesses and irrationality’ had first emerged through the slave trade,⁴ and now Britain once again employed the concept to justify its actions in ‘the civilising mission in Africa’.⁵

In 1900, Britain took control of the ‘Northern Nigerian Protectorate’ (a region of northern Nigeria); in 1903, Eswatini became a ‘British protectorate’ (then known as Swaziland); in 1910, the Union of South Africa became a self-governing country within the British Empire with policies that would later serve to formalize racial segregation. Britain’s actions in committing human rights atrocities in pursuit of these goals remain rarely discussed or acknowledged 120 years later. During the Second Boer War (1899–1902) – a British campaign for control for what is now part of South Africa – Lord Kitchener placed women and children in concentration camps, an action which led to ‘perhaps up to 45,000 deaths, approximately 25,000 Boers [largely white Dutch settlers] and 14,000 to 20,000 Africans’ due to the despicable conditions.⁶

As a response to aggressive and destructive European colonialism, Black activists and intellectuals such as Henry Sylvester Williams (c.1867–1911), a Trinidadian lawyer, developed the Pan-African movement through the 1890s, building on W. E. B. Du Bois’ earlier concept of Pan-Negroism. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was a key African American writer and activist; he published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903 and was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

London became a meeting point for Pan-Africanism, a movement which was formalized after the first Pan-African conference in the city in 1900, when the Pan African Association (PAA) was formed. The PAA’s aims included ‘to secure to Africans throughout the world true civil and political rights’ and ‘to ameliorate the condition of our brothers on the continent of Africa, America and other parts of the world’.⁷

On stage

Many of the artists of African descent who toured the UK during this decade played across different sorts of British theatre, including variety theatres and music halls. Vocalists like Morcashani (Laura Steer), Cassie Walmer (for details on both, see Chapter 2) and the currently unknown, possibly African American performer Bessie Lee.

A broad range of practices are represented in touring Black performers’ work and output during this period. Choirs included Abbie Mitchell’s Tennessee Students who toured the UK. Abriea ‘Abbie’ Mitchell Cook (1884–1960) was Will Marion Cook’s wife and an important performer in her own right. The Jamaican Choir also toured, with their members Louis Drysdale, Carlton Bryan and Frank Weaver (the choir also featured dancing)⁸ and the pianist Henry ‘Harry’ Nation.⁹ Drysdale (b. 1883, Jamaica; d. 1933, London) became a music teacher from his home in Forest Hill, London, and became an important part of the Black community in London. Frank Weaver later performed with Will Garland, but very little is currently known about him.

Dance groups included Belle Davis and her company of children (see Chapter 2), as well as all-round entertainers like Jasper White (no further details emerge) and the prolific Garland himself. Dance styles during this period focused on early tap styles, sand dancing and buck and wing dancing, though it is very difficult to identify dancers in this period as individuals are unnamed or hard to trace.

Music styles reflect the ongoing popularity of banjo music, with the continued touring of the African Canadian George Bohee (1857–?) and the African American Silas Seth Weeks (1868–1953), a composer and banjo player who performed a banjo concert at St James’s Hall, Piccadilly before touring extensively across the UK.¹⁰ There was a declining presence of minstrel troupes in this decade, though they had a lasting presence in British theatre. The white cast of the Moore and Burgess Minstrel troupe (which ran for more than forty years at the St James’s Hall venue) closed in 1904. Many white artists continued to perform in blackface during this decade as a particular ‘black’ character, reinforcing racist tropes and ideas that were common at the time.

In 1909, the African American double act Harry Scott and Eddie [Peter] Whaley arrived in the UK from the United States for a nine-week tour and stayed for the rest of their lives. Scott (1879–1947) and Whaley (1877–1960) were a comedian and singer who played across West End revues and variety theatres across the UK.¹¹ Scott married Belle Davis in 1929.¹²

Many of the Black performers in the UK in this period must have faced extremely challenging circumstances in operating in a theatre industry which had such pervasive expectations of minstrel performance. Key African American composers and activists J. (John) Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) and Bob (Robert Allen) Cole (1868–1911) performed in British variety theatre; coverage at the time reflected on their musical accomplishments in the United States.¹³

1

Will Marion Cook and In Dahomey (1903)

Will (William) Marion Cook (b. 1869, Washington, DC; d. 1944, New York City) was an American composer of theatre and other musical works. He was a leading Black composer of early American music in the 1890s and 1900s. In this early period, Marion Cook worked with a range of key figures in Black history, not least the writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (b. 1872, Ohio; d. 1906, Ohio) who wrote the lyrics for In Dahomey (1903). The book was written by Jesse A. (Allison) Shipp (1864–1934), an important Black actor and director. His influence is not only in establishing Black musical theatre on Broadway but also in his production of professional networks of Black creative producers. He later established the Southern Syncopated Orchestra and became a key figure in the dissemination of jazz music.

Cook and hi...