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Pioneers of Urban Entertainment - Part 2

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878? November 25, 1949) Born in Richmond, Virginia to Maxwell Robinson, a machine-shop worker , and Maria Robinson, a choir singer, Bill Robinson was brought up by his grandmother after the death of his parents when he was still a baby. He was christened Luther, a name he did not like, so he suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. When Bill objected, Luther applied his fists, and the exchange was made! (The new 'Luther' later adopted the name Percy and became a well-known drummer.) The details of Robinson's early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Bill Robinson himself.

     He gained great success as a nightclub and musical comedy performer, and during the next 25 years became one of the toasts of Broadway. Not until he was fifty did he dance for white audiences, having devoted his early career exclusively to appearances on the black theater circuit.

     To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler." Political figures and celebrities appointed him an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants baseball team.

     After 1930 black revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with white audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances. His most frequent role was that of an antebellum butler opposite Shirley Temple or Will Rogers in such films as "The Littlest Colonel," "The Littlest Rebel" and "In Old Kentucky" (all released in 1935.) Rarely did he depart from the stereotype imposed by Hollywood writers. In a small vignette in"Hooray For Love (1935) he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honors; in "One Mile From Heaven" (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite the singer Lena Horne after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for blacks.

     Robinson died of a chronic heart condition at Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York City in 1949. His body lay in state at an armory in Harlem; schools were closed, thousands lined the streets waiting for a glimpse of his bier, and he was eulogized by politicians, black and white--perhaps more lavishly than any other African American of his time. "To his own people", wrote Marshall and Jean Stearns, "Robinson became a modern John Henry, who instead of driving steel, laid down iron taps." He was buried in the cemetery of the Evergreens in New York City.

International Tap Association ?1997

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music.yahoo.com
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www.peaceloveproductions.com.
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UK

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aarcroyalties.net/new/registration.php (need printer)
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harryfox.com
musicinfosystems.com/faq/index.asp
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http://www.numberonemusic.com

Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 - December 13, 1986) born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised by Georgiana and Blake Baker. When she was eight, her family moved to her mother's hometown of Littleton in rural North Carolina. As a girl, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as class valedictorian in 1927 at the age of 24. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. After graduating, she moved to New York City. During 1929 - 1930 she was an editorial staff member of the American West Indian News, going on to take the position of editorial assistant at the Negro National News. In 1930 George Schuyler, then a black journalist and anarchist (and later an arch-conservative), founded the Young Negroes' Cooperative League (YNCL), which sought to develop black economic power through collective planning. Having befriended Schuyler, Baker joined in 1931 and soon became the group?s national director.
She also worked for the Worker's Education Project of the Works Progress Administration, where she taught courses in consumer education, labor history and African history. Baker immersed herself in the cultural and political milieu of Harlem in the 1930s. She protested Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and supported the campaign to free the Scottsboro defendants in Alabama, a group of young black men falsely accused of raping a white woman. She also founded the Negro History Club at the Harlem Library and regularly attended lectures and meetings at the YWCA. She befriended the future scholar and activist, John Henrik Clark and the future writer and civil rights lawyer, Pauli Murray, and many others who would become lifelong friends.
She was a behind-the-scenes activist whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, including: W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored such then young civil rights stalwarts as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael and Bob Moses.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker

Bert Williams (November 12, 1875 ? March 4, 1922) was the pre-eminent Black entertainer of his era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920. Williams was a key figure in the development of African-American music. In an age when racial inequality and stereotyping were an accepted part of life, he became the first black American to take a lead role on the Broadway stage, and did much to push back racial barriers during his career. Fellow vaudevillian W.C. Fields, who appeared in productions with Williams, described him as "the funniest man I ever saw?and the saddest man I ever knew."   source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Williams

Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen (January 8, 1911)  born in Tampa, Florida, the daughter of a stevedore and a domestic worker. Although she was raised a Christian, she began to question the value of organized religion as a child. She gave up her study of nursing to become an actress and dancer in New York and achieved some measure of success. She won her nickname, "Butterfly," in the Butterfly Ballet sequence of Harlem Theater group's 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream, perhaps as a tribute to her fluttering hands.
McQueen's stage and screen career tracks the way many blacks were treated in Hollywood and elsewhere in America from the 1920s through the 1950s. Few screen roles for black actresses were available and, when they were, the characters were invariably personifications of how racist white society saw Americans of African descent. McQueen's first film role was uncredited: she played Lulu, the cosmetics counter maid in the 1939 film The Women.  source:http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0108almanac.htm

Mantan Moreland (Sep. 4, 1901) He was an African-American actor.
From Monroe, Louisiana, Moreland ran away to join the circus at age 12, had success for many years in vaudeville. Eventually his career came to Hollywood, where he appeared in hundreds of movies. Moreland?s artistry and face are familiar to most fans of classic Hollywood. ?Charlie Chan? TV fans know him as Birmingham Brown, chauffeur to the great detective in a number of pictures for the Monogram studio but those films are but a small portion of his creative output. Moreland?s wide-eyed portrayals of seemingly countless nervous manservant's and train conductors cause mixed reaction in these politically correct days of a new century. But whatever the response to Moreland?s film legacy in the twenty first century, the fact remains that Moreland was a very talented character actor with a great gift of comic timing. He was one of the movies' greatest clowns. Moreland's last appearance in a major film was in 1970's The Watermelon Man. Mantan Moreland died in Hollywood on September 28, 1973, at the age of 72.

Bert Williams (November 12, 1875 ? March 4, 1922) was the pre-eminent Black entertainer of his era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920. Williams was a key figure in the development of African-American music. In an age when racial inequality and stereotyping were an accepted part of life, he became the first black American to take a lead role on the Broadway stage, and did much to push back racial barriers during his career. Fellow vaudevillian W.C. Fields, who appeared in productions with Williams, described him as "the funniest man I ever saw?and the saddest man I ever knew."   source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Williams

Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen (January 8, 1911)  born in Tampa, Florida, the daughter of a stevedore and a domestic worker. Although she was raised a Christian, she began to question the value of organized religion as a child. She gave up her study of nursing to become an actress and dancer in New York and achieved some measure of success. She won her nickname, "Butterfly," in the Butterfly Ballet sequence of Harlem Theater group's 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream, perhaps as a tribute to her fluttering hands.
McQueen's stage and screen career tracks the way many blacks were treated in Hollywood and elsewhere in America from the 1920s through the 1950s. Few screen roles for black actresses were available and, when they were, the characters were invariably personifications of how racist white society saw Americans of African descent. McQueen's first film role was uncredited: she played Lulu, the cosmetics counter maid in the 1939 film The Women.  source:http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0108almanac.htm

Mantan Moreland (Sep. 4, 1901) He was an African-American actor.
From Monroe, Louisiana, Moreland ran away to join the circus at age 12, had success for many years in vaudeville. Eventually his career came to Hollywood, where he appeared in hundreds of movies. Moreland?s artistry and face are familiar to most fans of classic Hollywood. ?Charlie Chan? TV fans know him as Birmingham Brown, chauffeur to the great detective in a number of pictures for the Monogram studio but those films are but a small portion of his creative output. Moreland?s wide-eyed portrayals of seemingly countless nervous manservant's and train conductors cause mixed reaction in these politically correct days of a new century. But whatever the response to Moreland?s film legacy in the twenty first century, the fact remains that Moreland was a very talented character actor with a great gift of comic timing. He was one of the movies' greatest clowns. Moreland's last appearance in a major film was in 1970's The Watermelon Man. Mantan Moreland died in Hollywood on September 28, 1973, at the age of 72.