Black Entertainment History, Part III

Why Black entertainment history?

It is my favorite writing time of the year. I get to write about African and African American history for Black History Month. I hope that this teaches and encourages readers to seek out more information than just my few twenty-eight highlights. Black history is everyone’s history. In the Western Hemisphere, our footprint is on the cornerstone of nearly all aspects of entertainment, for better or worse.

All genres of modern American music were directly influenced, if not completely invented, by Black folks. Black folks have been in mainstream theater and cinema for over a century, whether begrudgingly taking on roles that perpetuate negative stereotypes or taking a risk and carving out space to depict themselves truthfully. For this reason, I plan to highlight Black people’s contributions to entertainment.

 

THE CHITLIN’ CIRCUIT

A group of performance venues throughout the Mid-Atlantic, southern, and Midwest regions. The Circuit hosted specifically Black musicians, actors, and comedians during the time of de facto and de jure racial segregation in the US. It originated in the early 1930s and continued all the way into the 1970s. Its name comes from chitterlings, which are boiled and fried pig intestines, a soul food staple that is equally adored and reviled in the Black community…I do most of the reviling. The Circuit’s purpose correlates with the Borscht Belt, which provided stages for Jewish performers throughout the 1940s to the 1960s.

The Chitlin’ Circuit was an important series of outlets for Black performers, as many white stages would not book Black acts even if they claimed to not discriminate. At its height, musical genres were born and flourished on the Circuit before hitting the mainstream. We have it to thank for newer styles of jazz and the birth of Rock & Roll and Rhythm & Blues. Jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne kicked off their careers working the Circuit, as well as later acts Tina Turner, Marvin Gaye, and the Jackson 5. Even Richard Pryor developed his routines on the Chitlin’ Circuit before being recognized nationally for his comedic talent. Though the Circuit died in the wake of theaters and venues integrating and booking Black acts, some of the original venues still live on today, including Harlem’s Apollo Theater and Jacksonville’s Ritz Theatre.

 

BILLIE HOLIDAY (1915-1959) (Born ELEANORA FAGAN)

Billie Holiday was an American swing and jazz singer. She rose from a rough upbringing to become a household name, though many of her accolades were awarded posthumously. Holiday was born in Philadelphia to teen parents Sadie Fagan and Clarence Halliday. Her mother was kicked out of her Baltimore home for getting pregnant. They moved back to Baltimore shortly after Holiday’s birth, but then Halliday abandoned the family all together to pursue his own musician career. Fagan herself was often absent in Holiday’s youth as she took on transportation jobs that took her out of town often. Holiday would often skip school, so much that she was arrested for truancy in January 1925.

Later that year, Fagan opened a restaurant, and Holiday dropped out of school at age 11. The following year, a neighbor attempted to sexually assault Holiday in her home. From this, she was placed in protective custody. When she was released, she took a job as a custodian to a brothel. It was at this job that she first heard albums from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. This sparked her desire to sing. In 1929, she moved to Harlem. There, she adopted the stage name “Billie Holiday,” mix of actor Billi Dove’s name and a play on her father’s surname. She started singing in Uptown clubs as a teenager. She was discovered by a producer and started recording songs at age 17. Eventually, she worked with other big name acts like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lester Young, the latter of whom gave her the nickname “Lady Day.”

In 1939, she started to sing the song “Strange Fruit”. The song was about the extrajudicial lynching of Black people that plagues the United States, based on a poem of the same name by Abel Meeropol. She worried about retaliation due to the song’s subject matter, and her worries were confirmed. The FBI repeatedly harassed her to stop singing the song but she was defiant and kept singing it despite their abuses, even jailing her for drug offenses 1947. When she was released in 1948, she performed to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall. The FBI persisted in their harassment, throughout her career, though, which may have led to more of Holiday’s alcohol and drug use. In 1959, Holiday was hospitalized for treatment of heart and liver disease. While there, police arrested her and handcuffed her to her bed. Finally, her methadone treatment was discontinued per narc Harry Anslinger’s policy. She died on July 17, 1959, at the age of forty-four.

 

CHARLES JOSEPH “BUDDY” BOLDEN (1877-1931)

Buddy Bolden was a New Orleans musician often credited with inventing jazz music. This claim is debatable, as the genre can trace roots to many of his contemporaries. However, there is no debate that Bolden and his band were key in the formation of Jazz. Bolden was born 1877 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He took up the coronet as a teenager when he learned the technical skills of playing the instrument from Charlie Galloway and joined his band. By the age 20, Bolden left the band to begin his own group. Buddy Bolden’s Band boasted himself as coronet player, two clarinet players, one guitarist, one bass player and a drummer. None of them could read sheet music, so all their compositions were executed by copying other bands, or they were created on the spot. This on-the-spot invention was the spark that generated the spontaneous improvisation that would become a hallmark of jazz.

At one of the band’s first public performances in 1898, Bolden’s band played the song “Home Sweet Home” at a send-off for American troops bound for Cuba during the Spanish American War. The song nearly sparked a mutiny, as troops who were reminded that some of them would never return to the United States alive. From that point Home Sweet Home was banned as a performance at any military war zone send-off. Because of the incident, though, Buddy Bolden’s Band’s popularity exploded across the South by the turn of the century. They were known for their improvised performances, and fame and wealth followed.

The fame also came with pitfalls, as Bolden became an alcoholic. In addition, Bolden started to exhibit erratic, often violent behavior, alienating both the band and his fans. In 1907, Bolden suffered an acute alcoholic psychosis. His full diagnosis was “dementia praecox” (what is now called schizophrenia). He was confined to the East Louisiana State Hospital mental institution, where he would spend his remaining 24 years of life. Researchers posit that Bolden may have suffered from pellagra, a vitamin deficiency that was common among poor and Black communities, especially in the South. Bolden passed away at age fifty-four. Though he never recorded any music, his legacy is honored by jazz greats worldwide.

 

MARION ANDERSON (1897-1993)

Marion Anderson was a contralto opera singer and one of the overall greatest singers of the 20^th century. She was born on February 27^th, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a small business owner and a schoolteacher. She began performing at the age of ten, when she joined singer Emma Azalia Hackley’s People’s Chorus. Upon graduating high school in 1921, Anderson attempted to enroll in the Philadelphia Music Academy but was rejected because of her race. Undeterred, she took private studies with prominent music instructors, Giuseppe Boghetti and Agnes Reifsnyder. In 1925, Anderson won first prize in a singing competition sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and afterwards remained in New York to pursue private studies. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. She made her European debut at Wigmore Hall in London, England in 1930. Anderson spent 5 years touring Europe before returning to New York City, making her premiere recital appearance at Town Hall in New York City.

By the end of the decade, she was performing about seventy recitals a year. However, her fame did not shield her from racism, as she was not allowed to eat at certain restaurants or stay in certain hotels while touring the country. One time, Albert Einstein hosted her at his home each time she visited the Princeton University area. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission to Anderson to sing to a racially integrated audience in its Constitution Hall. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her membership in the DAR and along with Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a campaign to have Anderson perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On April 9^th, 1939, Anderson sang at the Memorial to a crowd of more than 75,000 people attended her concert. Anderson entertained American troops during both World War II and the Korean War.

In 1943, she finally sang before an integrated audience at Constitution Hall at the invitation of the DAR. The DAR is still racist as hell, though. In January 1955 she became the first African American to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The next year, she published an autobiography, My Lord What a Morning. Anderson also sang at the inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 and at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. The former made her a goodwill ambassador, and she became an official US delegate to the United Nations. During the Civil Rights Movement, Anderson would give benefit concerts for the Congress of Racial Equality and NAACP, and she sang at the 1963 March on Washington. 1963 was also the r=year she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The following year, Anderson began a farewell tour that ended at Carnegie Hall in 1965, and she retired. Her career boasted 1,500 songs in her repertoire, ability to sing in nine languages, and performances on four continents. In April 1993, at age 96, Marian Anderson passed away at the home of her nephew, conductor James DePriest.

 

EMMA AZALIA SMITH HACKLEY (1867-1922)

Emma was a singer and political activist. She was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, but her parents and she moved to Detroit when she was young. Smith learned to play the piano at three and took private voice, violin, and French lessons while still young. Smith spent 18 years as a schoolteacher, during which time she moved to Denver and married attorney Edwin Henry Hackley, editor of the city’s black newspaper The Denver Statesman, and took his last name. In 1900 Hackley received her music degree from Denver University. Smith Hackley founded the Colored Women’s League and served as the local branch’s executive director. She and her husband founded the Imperial Order of Libyans, a fraternal order that fought racial discrimination. Smith Hackley separated from her husband in 1905 and moved to Philadelphia where she became director of music at the Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion.

She helped organize and lead the People’s Chorus, which later became the Hackley Choral Society. The people’s chorus was a young Marion Anderson’s introduction to public vocal performance. The group proved popular in the Philadelphia area and gave her the opportunity to study voice in Paris in 1905-1906. Smith Hackley was not interested in a professional singing career, but she did train a generation of great singers, including Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, and R. Nathaniel Dett. Smith Hackley began giving classical music lectures throughout the United States.

She created the Vocal Normal Institute in Chicago in 1911, hoping to provide a space where artists could develop their professional abilities. Sadly, it folded in 1916. Smith Hackley also published her own collection of music entitled Colored Girl Beautiful around the same time. The institute’s closing led Smith Hackley to study to African American folk music and organized the Folk Songs Festivals movement in black schools and churches across the South. In 1920, she traveled to Tokyo, Japan where she introduced black folk music to an international audience at the World Sunday School Convention. Emma Azalia Smith Hackley died in Detroit from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 13, 1922, in Detroit.

 

GERTRUDE “MA” RAINEY (1886-1939)

Gertrude was a singer and songwriter in the 1920s, the most popular blues singer of the time. Her popularity led to the title Mother of Blues by her peers. She is considered the first woman to introduce blues into her performances. She established her own entertainment company in 1917, and she managed theaters in her home state of Georgia. Rainey was born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus, Georgia in 1886. She began singing and performing at an early age, first performing publicly at a talent show at age 14. Four years later, she would meet and marry fellow performer William “Pa” Rainey and begin travelling minstrel and vaudeville shows. Their shows would include drama and comedy routines as well. The Rainey’s would perform together for 13 years, until their marriage ended. After her divorce, Ma Rainey established her own company called Madame Gertrude Rainey and her Georgia Smart Sets.

Rainey was a frank woman who did not hide the aspects of her personal life of which other women of her time would be made to feel ashamed. She was married twice, was open about her interest in many men, and was also romantically inclined toward women. There were even rumors of her having a relationship with fellow Blues singer Bessie Smith. All of this and her larger-than-life onstage persona increased her popularity with her audiences. After twenty years of live performances, Rainey signed a contract with Paramount records in 1923 and recorded nearly one hundred records between 1923 and 1928 with a some of the best contemporary musicians, including Louis Armstrong. She continued to travel and perform across the South and Midwest. As other music genres gained popularity and the Great Depression gripped the nation, Rainey decided to retire to her hometown of Columbus, Georgia in 1935, where she would manage venues until her death from heart failure in 1939.

 

GIL SCOTT-HERON (1948-2011)

Scott-Heron was a poet, novelist, and musician, known primarily for his spoken word performances influenced by his life, the Black Power movement, and the volatile political atmosphere of the time. Scott-Heron was born in Chicago. Illinois on April 1^st, 1948. He grew up in Lincoln, Tennessee and the Bronx, New York, and attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and received an M.A. in creative writing from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University. His writing career started at age 13, though, when he wrote his first anthology of poems. In 1968 at age 20, he published his first novel, a murder mystery called The Vulture whose central theme was devastating effects of drugs on urban Black life. Scott-Heron wrote The Nigger Factory in 1972, a novel set an HBCU campus that explored the conflicting ideologies between the traditional, Eurocentric-trained administrators, a group of Black nationalistic students, and more moderate students.

In addition to his novels, Scott-Heron released more than fifteen albums throughout his career. Under the label Flying Dutchman, he released his first three albums between 1970 and 1972: Small Talk at 125th and Lennox, Pieces of Man, and Free Will. Small Talk included the classic songs “Whitey on the Moon” and the first iteration of “The Revolution Will Not be Televised.” Pieces of a Man hosted the eponymous track, “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” and “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” a song about his struggle with heroin addiction. Scott-Heron’s international popularity was in the middle of a Black Arts Movement that would see his star rise along with other poets and spoken word artists, like Amiri Baraka, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.

He and his contemporaries viewed art as a functional tool, a political voice to be used to liberate Black people. Scott-Heron’s voice resonated as well with that of activist Malcolm X, who inspired a generation to address the needs and condition of the urban black masses. His voice and song content laid over jazz and soul rhythms were a precursor to the next generation’s development of socially conscious hip-hop from artists Rakim, Common, Bahamadia, and the like. Gil Scott-Heron released his last album, We’re Still Here, in 2011. He died at age 62 in a Manhattan hospital on May 27, 2011, after falling ill from a trip to Europe. In May 2021, Scott-Heron was selected as an inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

 

About Chris Thompson

About Little Known Facts About (Black) American History

Little Known Facts About (Black) American History is an annual blog campaign curated by 540WMain that has a mission to promote and share little known facts about Black Americans everyday throughout the month of February. Now in its 5th year the campaign highlights the life and work of past and present day Black Americans that are overlooked or underrepresented in our conversations about American history.