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LoSt
Sounds
blacks and the birth of
the recording industry
1890-1919

Tim Brooks
 LoSt
Sounds

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 1 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 Music in American Life

A list of books in the series

appears at the end of this book.

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 2 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 LoSt
Sounds
blacks and the birth of
the recording industry,
1890–1919

Tim Brooks

Appendix of Caribbean and

South American Recordings
by Dick Spottswood

university of illinois press

urbana and chicago

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 3 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 Publication of this book was supported by grants from the
H. Earle Johnson Fund of the Society for American Music
and from the Henry and Edna Binkele Classical Music Fund.

First paperback edition, 2005

© 2004 by Tim Brooks
Appendix © 2004 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 3 4 5 6 c p 5 4 3 2 1

∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.

The Library of Congress cataloged the

cloth edition as follows:
Brooks, Tim.
Lost sounds: blacks and the birth of the recording industry,
1890–1919 / Tim Brooks ; appendix of Caribbean and South
American recordings by Dick Spottswood.
p. cm. — (Music in American life)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ), discography (p. )
and index.
isbn 0-252-02850-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. African Americans—Music—History and criticism.
2. Sound recording industry—History.
3. Music—United States—History and criticism.
I. Spottswood, Dick (Richard Keith)
II. Title.
III. Series.
ml3479.b76 2004
781.64'149'08996073—dc21 2003001102

Paperback isbn 0-252-07307-x

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 4 5/26/05, 11:57 AM

 contents

Preface / vii
Acknowledgments / ix

Introduction: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed? / 1

part one: George W. Johnson, the First Black Recording Artist / 13

1. The Early Years / 15
2. Talking Machines! / 26
3. The Trial of George W. Johnson / 49

part two: Black Recording Artists, 1890–99 / 73

4. The Unique Quartette / 75
5. Louis “Bebe” Vasnier: Recording in Nineteenth-Century
New Orleans / 83
6. The Standard Quartette and South before the War / 92
7. The Kentucky Jubilee Singers / 103
8. Bert Williams and George Walker / 105
9. Cousins and DeMoss / 148
10. Thomas Craig / 151

part three: Black Recording Artists, 1900–1909 / 153

11. The Dinwiddie Quartet / 155
12. Carroll Clark / 159
13. Charley Case: Passing for White? / 172
14. The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Popularization of Negro Spirituals / 192
15. Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette / 215

part four: Black Recording Artists, 1910–15 / 235

16. Jack Johnson / 237
17. Daisy Tapley / 254
18. Apollo Jubilee Quartette / 258

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 5 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 19. Edward Sterling Wright and the Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar / 260
20. James Reese Europe / 267
21. Will Marion Cook and the Afro-American Folk Song Singers / 292
22. Dan Kildare and Joan Sawyer’s Persian Garden Orchestra / 299
23. The Tuskegee Institute Singers / 320
24. The Right Quintette / 327

part five: Black Recording Artists, 1916–19 / 335

25. Wilbur C. Sweatman: Disrespecting Wilbur / 337
26. Opal D. Cooper / 355
27. Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake / 363
28. Ford T. Dabney: Syncopation over Broadway / 395
29. W. C. Handy / 410
30. Roland Hayes / 436
31. The Four Harmony Kings / 452
32. Broome Special Phonograph Records / 464
33. Edward H. Boatner / 470
34. Harry T. Burleigh / 473
35. Florence Cole-Talbert / 486
36. R. Nathaniel Dett / 488
37. Clarence Cameron White / 492

part six: Other Early Recordings / 497

38. Miscellaneous Recordings / 499

Appendix: Caribbean and South American Recordings / 523

Dick Spottswood
Notes / 531
Select CD Discography / 581
Bibliography / 589
Index / 595

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 6 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 preface

George W. Johnson has always seemed to me an intriguing character. The first black
recording “star,” he is almost completely forgotten today. Colorful stories swirled
around his life. Had he been born a slave? Was he really discovered panhandling on
the streets of Washington, D.C.? When did he begin recording, and how popular
were his records? Was he really hanged for murdering his wife?
In the late 1980s I began doing research to try to learn more about this elusive
character. There were no books about him, and the only serious articles, written by
pioneering researcher Jim Walsh in 1944 and 1971, left many questions unanswered.
What followed was a long odyssey through census records, slave registers, dusty legal
archives, early newspapers and catalogs, as well as trips to the beautiful old towns
of Virginia’s Loudoun County (where he was born), New York’s Hell’s Kitchen
(whose streets he walked), and a New York area cemetery (where he came to rest).
Finding copies of his records was a challenge, since most had been out of print for
more than eighty years.
As the story of America’s first black recording artist slowly came into focus, it
became apparent that there were other black artists at the time, equally unrecog-
nized, whose stories needed to be preserved. I kept running into their names in my
research. So I decided to expand the study to cover all African Americans who re-
corded commercially in the United States prior to the explosion of interest in black
music in 1920. This time period has received little attention, with some writers even
denying that there were any recordings by blacks in the earliest days. Eventually I
identified nearly forty black artists and groups who had recorded during this period.
Remarkably, they represented nearly every type of black artistic expression, from a
street performance like that of Johnson, to minstrelsy, vaudeville, theater, spiritu-
als, jazz, poetry, speech, even the concert hall—a veritable cross-section of black art
and culture.
My original intent was to add brief biographical sketches of these other artists,
drawn from previously published work. How naive I was! There was nothing pub-
lished about most of them, and their biographies had to be painstakingly recon-
structed from original sources, just like that of Johnson. Back to the archives and
microfilms, and the search for original cylinders and 78s. Many of these people were
minor names in the entertainment world, so little had been written about them

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 7 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 when they were alive. Of course their race was another reason they were ignored in
“official” records and the media. Even when biographies existed (like those for box-
ing champ Jack Johnson), they disagreed on so many details that original research
was required, especially regarding the recordings.
I hope that the reader will excuse the preliminary nature of much that appears
in these pages and that others will take up the crusade and uncover more about the
pioneers who introduced America to a wide range of African American culture be-
fore it became economically rewarding to do so. This book merely opens the door
on a world we need to celebrate and learn more about.
These biographies are as complete as the author could make them, but there are
doubtless errors as well as additional recordings and artists yet to be discovered.
Additions and corrections from readers are enthusiastically welcomed; send these
to me at P.O. Box 31041, Glenville Station, Greenwich CT 06831.

Tim Brooks

viii preface

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 8 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 acknowledgments

Nobody does it alone. Like the artists profiled here, I have been helped by many
hands along the way. Whether it was checking their local libraries, raiding their own
files (or, in one case, giving me their files), making copies of articles or tapes of oth-
erwise unobtainable recordings, taking pictures of important sites, or simply pro-
viding leads, researchers in the United States and around the world have responded
to my inquiries during the long years this book was being researched. Some of them
probably wondered if “the book” would ever actually be published. My debt, and
yours, to them is immense.
Among those contributing information and advice were Lynn Abbott, George
Adams (a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1950s), Barry Ashpole, Dr.
Lawrence Auspos, Arthur Badrock, Mark Berresford, Carol Blais, William Bryant,
Sam Brylawski, Peter Burgis, Brigitte Burkett, Paul Charosh, Norm Cohen, Frederick
Crane, John S. Dales, Prof. Allen Debus, John Devine, Sherwin Dunner, Bevis Faver-
sham, Patrick Feaster, Harold Flakser, Ray Funk, David Giovannoni, David Golden-
berg, Tim Gracyk, John Graziano, Dr. Lawrence Gushee, Lawrence Holdridge, Rick
Huff, Eliott Hurwitt, Asa M. Janney, David Jasen, Bill Klinger, Allen Koenigsberg, Len
Kunstadt, Gary Le Gallant, Dr. Rainer E. Lotz, Richard I. Markow, Michael Mont-
gomery, William Moran, Kurtz Myers, Dr. Charles Poland, Steven Ramm, Quentin
Riggs, Prof. Thomas Riis, Brian Rust, Howard Rye, Doug Seroff, William Shaman,
Peter Shambarger, Steve Smolian, Jean Snyder, Bronwen C. Sounders, Dick Spotts-
wood, Linda Stevens, Paul W. Stewart, Patricia Turner, Steve Walker, and Prof.
Raymond Wile.
Institutions from which I drew information included the Center for Black Mu-
sic Research at Columbia College, Chicago (Suzanne Flandreau, Dr. Sam Floyd);
Detroit Public Library (Agatha Kalkanis); Edison National Historic Site (Jerry Fabris,
George Tselos, Doug Tarr); Emerson College Archives (Robert Fleming); Greenwich
Public Library; Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University (Dr. Bruce Boyd Raeburn);
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (Eileen Rowland);
Library of Congress (Sam Brylawski); New York City Municipal Archives (Kenneth
R. Cobb); New York Public Library Theater Collection and Rodgers and Hammer-
stein Archive of Recorded Sound (Don McCormick); Ohio Historical Society (Thom-
as J. Rieder); Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Sony/Columbia

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 9 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 Records Archives (Martine McCarthy, Nathaniel Brewster); Thomas Balch Library,
Leesburg, Virginia (Jane Sullivan); U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Hartford,
Connecticut, office; and the Historical Sound Recordings Archive at Yale University
(Richard Warren).
Special thanks to the most supportive editor an obsessed author could wish for,
Judith McCulloh, and to Therese Boyd for her painstaking work compiling the index.
Some of the recordings discussed here are finally being reissued on CD (see dis-
cography), but for this study I have relied primarily on original 78s and cylinders due
to their superior sonic quality and the clues they reveal regarding original issue and
marketing practices. For example, the form of artist credit, characterization of the
musical genre, and approximate year of manufacture can all be gleaned from inspec-
tion of the original discs but not from modern reissues. Manufacturing codes in the
shellac can also be revealing, at least to experts. Biographical details are in many
cases drawn from original sources, due to the lack of reliable modern sources.
Early versions of some chapters appeared in American Music, ARSC Journal, The
New Amberola Graphic, and Storyville. Dick Spottswood, a preeminent authority on
early ethnic recording, contributed the appendix on black recording in Latin
America prior to 1920 and graciously helped proof the entire manuscript.
To all those who have helped make this work possible, my sincere appreciation.
Errors and omissions—and there must be many—are my responsibility.

x acknowledgments

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 10 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

 LoSt
Sounds

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 11 12/17/03, 1:43 PM

00.FM.i-xii_Broo 12 12/17/03, 1:43 PM
 introduction:
lost, stolen, or strayed?

One of the most honored television documentaries of the late 1960s was a CBS News
Hour written by Andy Rooney and Perry Wolff called “Black History: Lost, Stolen,
or Strayed?” That title kept coming back to me during the years in which this book
was being researched. African Americans made significant contributions to the re-
cording industry in its formative years, from 1890 to 1919, and their recordings re-
veal much about evolving African American culture during that period. Yet little of
that aural history is now available, and less has been written about it. Is this another
piece of black history that is lost, stolen, or strayed?
The stories of the first black recording artists turned out to be fascinating on
several levels. It would be easy to write a book about the injustices done to African
Americans over the course of the nation’s history. From the cold shackles of slav-
ery to the more subtle discrimination of modern times, America’s attitude toward
its black citizens has always been a stain on the national character and a source of
embarrassment. The examples are many and obvious. As tempting as it might be to
focus solely on the racial injustices of early twentieth-century America, it is argu-
ably more productive—and helpful to our own time—to examine the ways in which
those injustices were gradually ameliorated. How did change come about?
The stories of the first black recording artists are stories not only of barriers, but
of how some of those barriers were reduced. Progress—slow and halting, to be sure—
was won not so much by changes in the law, or by dramatic confrontations between
“good” and “evil,” as by the actions of ordinary people who when faced with in-
stances of unfairness quietly and without fanfare “did the right thing.” Through
their actions they acknowledged that the “color line” was fundamentally wrong. We
still have a considerable distance to travel in ensuring equal rights for all. The les-
sons of those times can help guide us today.
One agent of change that has been little recognized was the early recording in-
dustry.

The First Modern Mass Medium

Before television, before radio, before even motion pictures, an earlier mass medium
began paving the way for the shared social experience that has so profoundly

00.INTRO.1-12_Broo 1 12/17/03, 1:44 PM

 changed modern society. It startled and amazed the citizens of the late nineteenth
century. Who could ever have imagined an entertainer, orator, or famous person
being “bottled up,” only to spring to life, as if by magic, simultaneously in hundreds
of remote locations? Nothing in five thousand years of human history anticipated
such a possibility. And yet here it was—recorded sound.
The public was first teased with the possibility of “bottling sound” in 1878 when
thirty-one-year-old inventor Thomas A. Edison demonstrated his new tinfoil pho-
nograph. At first it was only a laboratory curiosity. Not until a decade or so later did
more or less permanent wax cylinder recordings of singers, orators, and jokesmiths
begin to be heard in hamlets across America. Eventually even presidential candi-
dates sent out prerecorded speeches on cylinders and discs in which they person-
ally explained the issues and exhorted voters. The idea that a singer or speaker could
be heard across the land, and that a person could be heard after death, was nothing
short of a miracle, even to citizens in the Age of Wonders.
Generally overlooked has been the effect this revolution had on the integration
of minorities into the social mainstream. Jews, Italians, and others who would
hardly have been welcomed into the neighborhood in person carried their cultural
values into many a genteel Victorian parlor through the medium of recordings.
Once there, it can be argued, they gradually became less threatening. Blacks faced
the most difficult challenge of all. Considered no more than animal chattel in the
days of slavery, barely thirty years earlier, they lived in a rigidly segregated, inferior
world. Entertainment was one of the few fields in which they could achieve some
prominence, but until the advent of mass media this was largely a localized phe-
nomenon. It was one thing for a black man named Bert Williams to become a stage
star in liberal New York, but once his recordings began to be bought and played in
homes and neighborhood entertainment establishments everywhere, at least a
small step had been taken toward the acceptance of his race.
Blacks’ entry into the recording studio was not easily accomplished, but it took
place much earlier than most historians acknowledge. Our focus will be on the first
thirty years of the industry, from 1890 to 1919, prior to the explosion in black record-
ing in the 1920s. These are the stories of the very first black recording artists.

Mass Media and the Integration of Minorities into the Mainstream

Several overarching themes emerge from these performers’ biographies. The first
is the way in which a new technology provided opportunities for a minority that
was excluded from other fields of endeavor. Then, as now, technology tended to
gradually break down social barriers. The white, and mostly young, entrepreneurs
who were struggling to build the new recording industry did not set out to change
the social order. They simply did not have the luxury of enforcing irrational social
conventions like “the color line.” Looked down upon themselves by more estab-
lished interests, such as banking and commerce, the “talking machine men” re-
cruited any performer who could induce people to buy their records and drop nick-
els into their automatic music machines. If that was a black man singing “The
Whistling Coon” or a black quartet singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” so be it.

2 introduction

00.INTRO.1-12_Broo 2 12/17/03, 1:44 PM

 In the same way that media such as movies, radio, and television would later open
doors to previously excluded minorities, the new medium of recording offered
blacks an opportunity to be heard across America precisely because it was not run
by the old-line, white establishment.1
Despite the relative openness of the recording industry, any path was rarely easy
for blacks during this era. Considering what these pioneers had to overcome, their
stories resemble a kind of “profiles in black courage.” George W. Johnson, an ex-
slave, could gain employment only by singing songs mocking his own race; likewise,
Williams and Walker had to begin as “Two Real Coons” before stardom allowed
them to soften their material. Even then they were boycotted by bigoted white per-
formers like Walter C. Kelly, who would not appear on the same stage with them.
In 1910 Williams was almost prevented from joining the Ziegfeld Follies due to the
protests of white cast members. To placate them, Florenz Ziegfeld promised that
Williams would not appear on stage with any white females.
Conservatory-trained baritone Carroll Clark chafed at being allowed to sing only
sentimental songs about the Old South, while his picture was never published and
his label concealed his race. Charley Case, a very popular stage humorist, lived with
an even greater frustration, the persistent rumor that he was “passing for white.” He
eventually shot himself. On the other side of the racial divide, Polk Miller, a wealthy
white Southerner and apologist for slavery, toured American with a black quartet
illustrating the black music he had grown up with on his father’s Virginia planta-
tion. His 1909 Edison recordings are perhaps the most direct musical link we have
to black music in the pre–Civil War South. Ironically, he was forced to quit touring
by the same prejudice he had encouraged when audiences refused to accept a white
man on stage with blacks.
Others tackled barriers no less formidable. Jim Europe fought successfully to
establish high musical standards and improved working conditions for black mu-
sicians in New York, despite opposition from white unions. He pioneered in bring-
ing syncopated black music to a white audience through his records. He faced down
racists in the South during his Army days and became a war hero in France before
being stabbed to death by one of his own musicians in 1919. His protege, Dan
Kildare, was on the path to a brilliant career as a bandleader and composer when he
apparently fell under the influence of drugs and died in a triple homicide in Lon-
don in 1920.
Crusty composer Will Marion Cook fought other types of battles. After paying
his dues in early black theater, he began to insist on artistic integrity and music that
reflected his black heritage in the face of commercial pressures to do otherwise. The
team of Sissle and Blake, on the other hand, largely “sold out” and gave the white
folks what they wanted.2 They nevertheless achieved unparalleled success, and re-
opened the Broadway stage to black musicals in the early 1920s.
Roland Hayes overcame incredible odds to make the first records of black con-
cert music. W. C. Handy showed that a black man could extract himself from the
clutches of white publishers and successfully own and publish his own music. It
wasn’t easy, and he almost lost everything in the early 1920s. Almost every story told
here contains examples of the struggle to bring black musical culture to America.

3 introduction

00.INTRO.1-12_Broo 3 12/17/03, 1:44 PM

 A second major theme that emerges from these stories concerns how whites
interacted with these early black artists. Race relations in the United States were not
a simple matter of black versus white. To be sure there were extremists, dyed-in-the-
wool racists who fought fiercely to maintain the status quo, and reformers who
fought just as strongly for equality. Most whites were somewhere in the middle.
Many accepted the prevailing assumption that blacks were an inferior class (e.g.,
ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis Burlin’s patronizing characterization of them as
“a child-race”) but nevertheless provided a helping hand. Sometimes they even
defied the law, as in the case of the Moore family of pre–Civil War Virginia when
they took George W. Johnson into their home and taught him to read and write.
Later the son of Johnson’s one-time owner came to his defense in a questionable
murder trial, as did numerous other whites who knew him. White boxing authori-
ties and some politicians intervened on behalf of Jack Johnson when racists were
trying to run him out of the sport, and even biased newspapers had to admit that
he had won his title fairly. Vernon and Irene Castle enthusiastically promoted the
career of black bandleader Jim Europe, as did Joan Sawyer that of Dan Kildare (Saw-
yer was a suffragist, which may have given her some perspective on what it meant
to be denied one’s rights). Showman Flo Ziegfeld was color-blind in promoting Bert
Williams and bandleader Ford Dabney, and many white hands helped Sissle and
Blake, W. C. Handy, Roland Hayes, and Harry T. Burleigh further their careers.
On a human level segregation and “the color line” collided with a basic Ameri-
can value—that of fairness. This was perhaps most blindingly clear in the case of Jack
Johnson. Eventually, something had to give.

How It All Began: The Birth of the Recording Industry

The phonograph was invented, as most schoolchildren know, by Thomas A. Edison
in 1877. It was first demonstrated to the public the following year. Edison’s original
invention was a clumsy affair that recorded indentations on a strip of tinfoil
wrapped around a revolving drum. It was barely audible, and a few playings of a
newly recorded piece of tinfoil quickly obliterated it. Moreover, the tinfoil could not
be removed from the drum without destroying it—hence, there were no permanent
recordings. The fact that sound had been reproduced at all was a miracle, but clearly
the equipment needed a lot of work. Unfortunately, after several months of dem-
onstrating the device to an easily-awed public, Edison was compelled to put it aside
in order to concentrate on his rapidly developing (and more lucrative) electric light.
For nearly ten years the phonograph lay fallow, a laboratory curiosity. Other
inventors puttered with it and gradually improved it enough to arouse Edison’s jeal-
ousy and anger. It had been, after all, his invention. In 1886, with characteristic
energy, he plunged back into the field and within a year produced an improved
machine, recording on more or less “permanent,” removable, wax cylinders. At first
both Edison and his competitors believed the phonograph’s principal use would be
for business dictation and for household appliances such as talking clocks. What
may be the oldest playable recording now in existence (from c. 1878) is in fact the
voice of a man slowly reciting “one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock . . . .”3

4 introduction

00.INTRO.1-12_Broo 4 12/17/03, 1:44 PM

 The production of entertainment records began on a small scale in 1888 by
Edison and a few local companies, but it remained for a group of entrepreneurs in
Washington, D.C., to become the principal promoters of recordings as an entertain-
ment medium. Their enterprise was incorporated in 1889 as the Columbia Phono-
graph Company and is the lineal ancestor of today’s Sony/CBS Records.4 At first their
products were sold not to individuals but to exhibitors who demonstrated them at
fairs and in other public places. Automatic music machines (much later dubbed
“jukeboxes”) were set up where curious patrons could drop a coin in the slot and
hear the latest popular song. The first commercial phonographs were large, expen-
sive, battery-driven units. By the late 1890s smaller and less expensive spring-driven
models had been developed and were being sold to the public at large. Records, both
cylinders and the newer discs, began to find their way into the home.
During the 1890s few established performers deigned to record for the fledgling
phonograph companies, which probably could not have afforded them anyway. For
an established star, stage work was far more lucrative, and the primitive, squawk-
ing phonograph was a novelty item some felt was “beneath” them. In addition,
recording required a special kind of voice, one that penetrated through the still-
severe limitations of the technology and could at least be understood. Clarity and
articulation were greatly valued (how times have changed!). Women generally did
not record well, nor did softer instruments such as the piano or ensemble strings.
As a result, most recordings were made by the same small group of performers, little
known in the larger world of entertainment and located mostly in the recording
centers of the Northeast. Virtually all of them were white, as were the businessmen
who ran the industry. The phonograph was a white middle-class toy, and in the rig-
idly segregated America of the 1890s the idea that this “mass” medium might reach
into other strata of society scarcely occurred to most people. Anyone, that is, except
the hard-pressed recording companies struggling to survive. A dollar is a dollar, and
several of the early entrepreneurs recognized that their white customers would pay
to hear blacks entertain them on those coin-in-the-slot juke boxes, and at least some
blacks would pay to hear “their own.” And so the stage was set.

Who Was First?

The first black to make records for commercial sale appears to have been a middle-
aged panhandler from the streets of New York City. Jovial street musician George
W. Johnson became one of the best-known and most successful recording artists of
his time, producing two of the biggest selling records of the entire decade of the
1890s. While many aspects of this era are shrouded in obscurity, Johnson’s first re-
cordings can be dated with some precision. Entries in the ledgers of the Metropoli-
tan Phonograph Company of New York document that his cylinders were being sold
by them in May 1890. They do not appear in a c. January 1890 catalog issued by the
company, so he presumably began recording between January and May. By the
summer of 1890 his cylinders were already quite popular, leading to a long and suc-
cessful career in front of the recording horn. It is possible that someone obscure and
unknown preceded him, but for now we will assume he was the first.

5 introduction

00.INTRO.1-12_Broo 5 12/17/03, 1:44 PM

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