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Plantation Days
''Plantation Days'' (1922) was a touring musical revue with Sam Wooding and James P. Johnson as musical directors at different stages of the tour. Produced by Morris "Maury" Greenwald,"Blondie Robinson collection of African-American Minstrel and Vaudeville photographs (MS.2015.018), Biographical/Historical note." Brown University Library. ''Riamco.org''. Retrieved 16 December 2022. the touring show was conceived to capitalize on '''' (1922-23), the successful show staged by |
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932. Though most famous for their visual spectacle, revues frequently satirized contemporary figures, news or literature. Similar to the related subforms of operetta and musical theatre, the revue art form brings together music, dance and sketches to create a compelling show. In contrast to these, however, revue does not have an overarching storyline. Rather, a general theme serves as the motto for a loosely-related series of acts that alternate between solo performances and dance ensembles. Owing to high ticket prices, ribald publicity campaigns and the occasional use of prurient material, the revue was typically patronized by audience members who earned more and felt even less restricted by middle-class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eubie Blake
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote ''Shuffle Along'', one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical ''Eubie!'' showcased his works. Early years Blake was born at 319 Forrest Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks. Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003— U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blanche Calloway
Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway (February 9, 1902 – December 16, 1978) was an American jazz singer, composer, and bandleader. She was the older sister of Cab Calloway and was a successful singer before her brother. With a music career that spanned over fifty years, Calloway was the first woman to lead an all-male orchestra and performed alongside musicians such as Cozy Cole, Chick Webb, and her brother. Her performing style was described as flamboyant and a major influence on her brother's performance style. Early life Calloway was born in Rochester, New York. When she was a teenager, the family, including her four siblings - Bernice, Henry, Cabell III (later Cab Calloway), and Elmer who was born in 1912 before the move to Baltimore - moved to Baltimore, Maryland around 1912 or 1913. The family had originally lived in Baltimore prior to Rochester but had left due to tough times with the crash of the real estate market where Cabell II worked. Her father, Cabell, was a lawyer an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Theatre (Baltimore)
The Royal Theatre, located at 1329 Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, first opened in 1922 as the black-owned Douglass Theatre. It was the most famous theater along West Baltimore City's Pennsylvania Avenue, one of a circuit of five such theaters for black entertainment in big cities. Its sister theaters were the Apollo in Harlem, the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theatre in Chicago, and the Earl Theater in Philadelphia. All of the biggest stars in black entertainment, including those in jazz and blues such as Cab Calloway, performed at the Royal. Ethel Waters debuted there, as did Pearl Bailey, who sang in a chorus line. Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller worked as accompanists. Singer Louis Jordan, Duke Ellington, The Tympany Five, Etta James, Nat King Cole, The Platters, The Temptations, and The Supremes, as well as a 40-piece, all-female band touring with Count Basie called ''the Sweethearts of Rhythm'', were all performers at the Royal. Baltimo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts. She began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her notable recordings include "Dinah", " Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", " Am I Blue?", " Cabin in the Sky", "I'm Coming Virginia", and her version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African American to star on her own television show, and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. Early life Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896 (some sources incorrectly state her birth year as 1900) as a result of the rape of her teenaged African-American mother, Louise Anderson (1881–1962), by 17 year old John Wesley (or Wesley John) Waters (1878–1901), a pianist and family acq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert De Courville
Albert Pierre de Courville (26 March 1887 – 15 March 1960) (born in Croydon, England) was a writer and director of theatrical revues, many of which featured the actress and singer Shirley Kellogg, whom he married in June 1913. Career In about 1907 he began work in London as a journalist with the ''Evening News''. A good reporter, he was soon earning as much as £20 a week, but thought there were more possibilities, and money, in the theatre. He joined forces with London impresario Sir Edward Moss and staged revues at the London Hippodrome. In the 1930s he turned to making films. His two most famous films, both featuring Jessie Matthews were ''There Goes the Bride (1932 film), There Goes the Bride'' (1932) and ''The Midshipmaid'' (1932). He also directed ''The Wrecker (1929 film), The Wrecker'', an adaptation of Arnold Ridley’s play of the same name, and ''Seven Sinners (1936 film), Seven Sinners'' (1936). Personal life In June 1913, he married actress and singer Shirle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hackney Empire
Hackney Empire is a theatre on Mare Street, in the London Borough of Hackney. Originally designed by Frank Matcham it was built in 1901 as a music hall, and expanded in 2001. Described by ''The Guardian'' as ‘the most beautiful theatre in London’ it is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. History Hackney Empire is a grade II* listed building. The theatre was built as a music hall in 1901, designed by the architect Frank Matcham. Architecture scholar Nicholas Pevsner described the "splendid Hackney Empire, with its ornate terracotta exterior and sumptuous seventy-seven galleried auditorium" as a key example of Victorian and Edwardian architecture. There is a statue of Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy, on the roof of the theatre: this was removed in 1979, but later reinstalled. Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Stanley Holloway, Stan Laurel, Marie Lloyd and Julie Andrews all performed there, when the Hackney Empire was a music hall. ATV bought the theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ''Rhapsody in Blue'' (1924) and ''An American in Paris'' (1928), the songs " Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera ''Porgy and Bess'' (1935), which included the hit " Summertime". Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inq ... [...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] |
Noble Sissle
Noble Lee Sissle (July 10, 1889 – December 17, 1975) was an American jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer, and playwright, best known for the Broadway musical ''Shuffle Along'' (1921), and its hit song "I'm Just Wild About Harry". Early life Sissle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, around the time his father Rev. George A. Sissle was pastor of the city's Simpson M. E. Chapel.Reef (2010) His mother, Martha Angeline (née Scott) Sissle, was a school teacher and juvenile probation officer. As a youth, Sissle sang in church choirs and as a soloist with his high school's glee club in Cleveland, Ohio. Sissle attended De Pauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on scholarship and later transferred to Butler University in Indianapolis before turning to music full-time. Career In early 1916, Sissle joined one of the society orchestras organized by James Reese Europe in New York. He persuaded Europe to also hire his friend, pianist and composer Eubie Blake, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Wooding
Samuel David Wooding (17 June 1895 – 1 August 1985) was an American jazz pianist, arranger and bandleader living and performing in Europe and the United States. Career Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, between 1921 and 1923 Wooding was a member of Johnny Dunn's Original Jazz Hounds, one of several Dunn-led line-ups that recorded in New York around that time for the Columbia label. Wooding led several big bands in the United States and abroad. 1925 European tour Wooding and his band had developed a floor show for the 1923 opening of the Nest Club, and in 1925, while performing at Smalls Paradise, a Russian-American impresario booked Wooding and his band – as "the Chocolate Kiddies" – as well as his revue performers for a European tour, performing in Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. The cast of ''Chocolate Kiddies'' included singer Adelaide Hall, The Three Eddies, singer Lottie Gee, Rufus Greenlee and Thaddeus Drayton, Bobbie and Babe G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lafayette Theatre (Harlem)
The Lafayette Theatre (1912–1951), known locally as "the House Beautiful", was one of the most famous theaters in Harlem. It was an entertainment venue located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue in Harlem, New York. The structure was demolished in 2013. Early years The Lafayette Theatre was a 1,500-seat two-story theater built by banker Meyer Jarmulowsky that opened on November, 1912. Located at 132nd Street and 7th Avenue, it was designed in the Renaissance style by architect Victor Hugo Koehler, who also designed the two three-story buildings flanking the theater on the corners of 131st and 132nd Streets."Lafayette Theatre. 2227 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, New York, NY 10027." ''www.cinematreasures.org.'' Retrieved June 19, 2019. In 1913 the Lafayette became the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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