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Black Swan Records
Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. (Broome Special Phonograph Records was the first to be owned and operated by African Americans). Black Swan was established to give African Americans a label that would give them more creative liberties. Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of historic jazz and blues recordings. History Black Swan's parent company, Pace Phonograph Corporation, was founded in March 1921 by Harry Pace and was based in Harlem. The new production company was formed after Pace's music publishing partnership with W. C. Handy, Pace & Handy, had dissolved. Black Swan, which sought to specialize in classical recordings, served as an investment opportunity for the Talented Tenth. As recognized by Thomas Brothers, "luminaries like Jack Nail and James Weldon Johnson served on the Black Swan board ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Pace
Harry Herbert Pace (January 6, 1884 – July 19, 1943) was an American music publisher and insurance executive. He was the founder of Black Swan Records, the first record label owned by an African American with wide distribution capabilities. Early life Harry Pace was born in Covington, Georgia. According to a 1917 biography Pace's "Grandfather was brought from Virginia to Georgia during the days of slavery, but was manumitted by his master, to whom he was related." There is little known about his parents. He finished elementary school at the age of twelve. Career Pace enrolled at Atlanta University and found work as a printer's devil to pay his way through school. However, after learning that white employees were earning more than black employees, Pace left the job and began working odd jobs on campus instead. It was at Atlanta University that Pace met W. E. B. Du Bois, who was one of his teachers. Pace graduated valedictorian of his class in 1903. He was 19 years old. Af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Grant Still
William Grant Still Jr. (May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978) was an American composer of nearly two hundred works, including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, over thirty choral works, plus art songs, chamber music and works for solo instruments. Born in Mississippi, he grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and was a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and later, Edgard Varèse. Because of his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, Still is considered to have been part of the Harlem Renaissance. Often referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers," Still was the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera. Still is known primarily for his first symphony, ''Afro-American Symphony'' (1930), which was, until 1950, the most widely performed symphony composed by an American. Also of note, Still was the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revella Hughes
Revella Eudosia Hughes (July 27, 1895 – October 24, 1987) was an American singer, musician and recording artist. She was one of the best known and most successful African-American sopranos of the first half of the 20th century. Early life Hughes was born in Huntington, West Virginia, United States. Her parents were George and Anna B. Page Hughes. Her musical education began at the age of five with piano and singing lessons. She earned a diploma from Hartshorn Memorial College in 1909 and she later learned the violin while attending Douglass High School from where she graduated in 1915. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Howard University in 1917. Career Hughes began her professional career in New York City in 1920, where she appeared several Broadway shows featuring Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. In 1923, she was made choral director for the Broadway revue ''Shuffle Along''. During the 1920s she appeared on radio and on stage, working on the B.F. Ke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucille Hegamin
Lucille Nelson Hegamin (November 29, 1894 – March 1, 1970) was an American singer and entertainer and an early African-American blues recording artist. Life and career Lucille Nelson was born in Macon, Georgia, the daughter of John and Minnie Nelson.Harrison 1990, p. 229. From an early age she sang in local church choirs and theatre programs. By the age of 15 she was touring the US South with the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company. In 1914 she settled in Chicago, Illinois, where, often billed as "The Georgia Peach", she worked with Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton before marrying the pianist-composer Bill Hegamin. She later told a biographer, "I was a cabaret artist in those days, and never had to play theatres, and I sang everything from blues to popular songs, in a jazz style. I think I can say without bragging that I made the 'St. Louis Blues' popular in Chicago; this was one of my feature numbers." The Hegamins moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1918, then to New ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kemper Harreld
William Kemper Harreld (January 31, 1885, Muncie, Indiana – 1971) was an American concert violinist. He was also a pianist and organist. A graduate of Chicago Musical College, Harreld performed until 1911 when he became head of the music department at Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse College). He intended to teach music at Morehouse for only one term, but served for 42 years as professor and chair of the music department. Harreld officially established the Morehouse College Glee Club in 1911, and served as the organization's first director. , MCAA. He also founded the Glee Club in 1925 and served a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katie Crippen
Catherine "Katie" Crippen (November 17, 1895 – November 25, 1929), also billed as Little Katie Crippen or Ella White, was an American entertainer and singer. Career Crippen was born in Philadelphia to an African-American family. She performed at Edmond's Cellar in New York City about 1920.Harris 1994, p. 137. In 1921, she recorded four sides for Black Swan Records in the classic female blues style under her name and one under the pseudonym of Ella White, accompanied by Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra.Allen 1973, pp. 18, 576. She toured in 1922–23 as the star of a revue, "Liza and Her Shuffling Sextet", which included Fats Waller. She subsequently formed a revue, "Katie Crippen and Her Kids", in which she was accompanied by a teenaged Count Basie. She was managed by her husband and musician Lou Henry."Allen" 1973, p. 576 In the later 1920s she appeared in revues at the Lafayette Theater in New York City and toured the RKO theater circuit with Dewey Brown as Crippen & Brown. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Creamer
Henry Sterling Creamer (June 21, 1879 – October 14, 1930) was an African American popular song lyricist and theater producer. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and died in New York. He co-wrote many popular songs in the years from 1900 to 1929, often collaborating with Turner Layton, with whom he also appeared in vaudeville. Career Henry Creamer was a singer, dancer, songwriter and stage producer/director. He first performed on the vaudeville circuit in the U.S. and in Europe as a duo with pianist Turner Layton, with whom he also co-wrote songs. Two of their most enduring songs, for which Creamer wrote the lyrics, are " After You've Gone" (1918), which was popularized by Sophie Tucker, and " Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" (1922), which was included in the soundtrack for one of the dance numbers in the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers 1939 movie ''The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle''. Way Down Yonder in New Orleans became a hit again in 1959 when the rocked up recording by Freddy C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quartet
In music, a quartet or quartette (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices and instruments. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations of four instruments in chamber music is the string quartet. String quartets most often consist of two violins, a viola, and a cello. The particular choice and number of instruments derives from the registers of the human voice: soprano, alto, tenor and bass (SATB). In the string quartet, two violins play the soprano and alto vocal registers, the viola plays the tenor register and the cello plays the bass register. Composers of notable string quartets include Joseph Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ... (List of string qua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A2 to A4) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, ''Kavalierbariton'', Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, ''baryton-noble'' baritone, and the bass-baritone. History The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as ''baritonans'', late in the 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the averag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shuffle Along
''Shuffle Along'' is a musical composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, and a book written by the comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. One of the most notable all-Black hit Broadway shows, it was a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s. The show premiered at the 63rd Street Music Hall in 1921, running for 504 performances, a remarkably successful span for that decade. It launched the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall, Florence Mills, Fredi Washington and Paul Robeson, and was so popular it caused "curtain time traffic jams" on West 63rd Street.Kenrick, John"History of The Musical Stage, 1920s Part III: Black Musicals" musicals101.com. Retrieved August 22, 2009. A 2016 adaptation ''Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed'' focused on the challenges of mounting the original production, as well as its lasting effects on Broadway and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
