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Virginia Minstrels
The Virginia Minstrels or Virginia Serenaders was a group of 19th-century American entertainers who helped invent the entertainment form known as the minstrel show. Led by Dan Emmett, the original lineup consisted of Emmett, Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham, and Frank Brower. After a successful try-out in the billiard parlor of the Branch Hotel on New York City's Bowery, the group is said to have premiered to a paying audience nearby at the Chatham Theatre, probably on January 31, 1843. They followed with a brief run at the Bowery Amphitheater in early February before an expanded schedule of venues. Early beginnings Dan Emmett and Frank Brower both toured with The Cincinnati Circus Company during the spring of 1841. It was there that their friendship first began. Dan learned to play the banjo, and Frank accompanied him in the new song "Old Tar River." In early November 1841, the playbills announced Dan Emmett as a performer. Dan and Frank then turned to New York City. As they we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Minstrels, 1843
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States, Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond, Virginia, Richmond; Virginia Beach, Virginia, Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County, Virginia, Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with Native American tribes in Virginia, several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bowery Amphitheater
The Bowery Amphitheatre was a building in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City. It was located at 37 and 39 Bowery, across the street from the Bowery Theatre. Under a number of different names and managers, the structure served as a circus, menagerie, theatre, a roller rink, and a branch of the Peniel Mission. The site is now part of Confucius Plaza. Formation through the minstrel craze A group of New York businessmen known as the Zoological Institute or the Flatfoots built the structure in 1833 as the site for a menagerie and circus performances. In 1835, the site was converted into an amphitheatre with a stage and a circus ring, and the name changed to the Bowery Amphitheatre. June, Titus, Angevine & Co. took up residence with their equestrian show. The owners changed the name again in November 1842 to the Amphitheatre of the Republic. John Tryon leased the building the following year, remaining its operator until 1848. Following a performance by the Virginia Minstrels on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1843 Establishments In The United States
Events January–March * January ** Serial publication of Charles Dickens's novel ''Martin Chuzzlewit'' begins in London; in the July chapters, he lands his hero in the United States. ** Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is published in a Boston magazine. ** The Quaker magazine '' The Friend'' is first published in London. * January 3 – The ''Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms'' (海國圖志, ''Hǎiguó Túzhì'') compiled by Wei Yuan and others, the first significant Chinese work on the West, is published in China. * January 6 – Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross discovers Snow Hill Island. * January 20 – Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, becomes ''de facto'' first prime minister of the Empire of Brazil. * February – Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al-Khalifa captures the fort and town of Riffa after the rival branch of the family fails to gain control of the Riffa Fort and flees to Manama. Shaikh Mohamed bin Ahmed is killed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folk Music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk rev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Dan Tucker
"Old Dan Tucker," also known as "Ole Dan Tucker," "Dan Tucker," and other variants, is an American popular song. Its origins remain obscure; the tune may have come from oral tradition, and the words may have been written by songwriter and performer Dan Emmett. The blackface troupe the Virginia Minstrels popularized "Old Dan Tucker" in 1843, and it quickly became a minstrel hit, behind only " Miss Lucy Long" and "Mary Blane" in popularity during the antebellum period. "Old Dan Tucker" entered the folk vernacular around the same time. Today it is a bluegrass and country music standard. It is no. 390 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The first sheet music edition of "Old Dan Tucker," published in 1843, is a song of boasts and nonsense in the vein of previous minstrel hits such as "Jump Jim Crow" and "Gumbo Chaff." In exaggerated Black Vernacular English, the lyrics tell of Dan Tucker's exploits in a strange town, where he fights, gets drunk, overeats, and breaks other social taboos. M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Crack Corn (folk Song)
"Jimmy Crack Corn" or "Blue-Tail Fly" is an American song which first became popular during the rise of blackface minstrelsy in the 1840s through performances by the Virginia Minstrels. It regained currency as a folk song in the 1940s at the beginning of the American folk music revival and has since become a popular children's song. Over the years, several variants have appeared. Most versions include some idiomatic African American English, although General American versions now predominate. The basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave's lament over his white master's death in a horse-riding accident. The song, however, is also interpreted as having a subtext of celebration about that deathMahar, William J''Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture'', pp. 234 ff University of Illinois Press (Champaign), 1999.Harris, Middleton & al''The Black Book'', 35th ann. ed., p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hutchinson Family Singers
The Hutchinson Family Singers were an American family singing group who became the most popular American entertainers of the 1840s. The group sang in four-part harmony a repertoire of political, social, comic, sentimental and dramatic works, and are considered by many to be the first uniquely American popular music performers. The group formed in the wake of a string of successful tours by Austrian singing groups such as the Tyrolese Minstrels and when American newspapers were demanding the cultivation of native talent. John Hutchinson orchestrated the group's formation with his brothers Asa, Jesse, and Judson Hutchinson in 1840; the Hutchinsons (11 sons, two daughters) gave their first performance on November 6 of that same year. The popularization of group singing in America arguably began with them. Jesse Hutchinson quit the main group to write songs and manage their affairs; he was replaced by sister Abby Hutchinson. The Hutchinsons were a hit with both audiences and cri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dixie (song)
"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S. Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition, although other people have claimed credit, even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing and his tardiness in registering its copyright. "Dixie" originated in the minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly became popular throughout the United States. During the American Civil War, it was adopted as a de facto national anthem of the Confederacy, along with "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "God Save the South". New versions app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bones (instrument)
The bones, also known as rhythm bones, are a folk instrument that, in their original form, consists of a pair of animal bones, but may also be played on pieces of wood or similar material. Sections of large rib bones and lower leg bones are the most commonly used bones, although wooden sticks shaped like true bones are now more often used. Metal spoons may be used instead, as is common in the United States, known as " playing the spoons". The technique probably arrived in the U.S. via Irish and other European immigrants, and has a history stretching back to ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. They have contributed to many music genres, including 19th century minstrel shows, traditional Irish and Scottish music, the blues, bluegrass, zydeco, French-Canadian music, and music from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The clacking of the loose rib bones produces a much sharper sound than the zydeco washboard or frottoir, which mimics rattling a bone up and down a fixed ribcage. D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dan Emmett
Daniel Decatur Emmett (October 29, 1815June 28, 1904) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie". Early and family life Dan Emmett was born in Mount Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, then a frontier region. His grandfather, Rev. John Emmett (1759–1847) had been born in Cecil County, Maryland, and after serving as a private in the American Revolutionary War and fighting at the Battle of White Plains in New York and later in Delaware, became a Methodist minister in the then-vast frontier Augusta County, Virginia, and then moved across the Appalachian Mountains to Licking County, Ohio and also served in the Ohio legislature representing Pickaway County, Ohio in the Scioto River valley. His father, Abraham Emmett (1791–1846) served as a private in the War of 1812 while his father served in the Ohio legislature. Notwithstanding his g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chatham Theatre
The Chatham Theatre or Chatham Street Theatre was a playhouse on the southeast side of Chatham Street (now Park Row) in New York City. It was located at numbers 143-9, between Roosevelt and James streets, a few blocks south of the Bowery. At its opening in 1839, the Chatham was a neighborhood establishment, which featured big-name actors and drama. By the mid-1840s, it had become primarily a venue for blackface minstrel shows. Frank S. Chanfrau restored some of its grandeur in 1848. The playhouse's most successful period was under the management of A. H. Purdy. He staged productions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' beginning in 1852, the success of which prompted him to advertise heavily and to create a special section where African American patrons could sit. Following Purdy's departure in 1857, the theatre entered its final decline. It flip-flopped many times between a standard melodrama house and a concert saloon before finally being demolished in 1862. Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dan Emmett Minstrel
Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia * Dan (son of Jacob), one of the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel in the Bible **Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 tribes of Israel descended from Dan * Crown Prince Dan, prince of Yan in ancient China Places * Dan (ancient city), the biblical location also called Dan, and identified with Tel Dan * Dan, Israel, a kibbutz * Dan, subdistrict of Kap Choeng District, Thailand * Dan, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States * Dan River (other) * Danzhou, formerly Dan County, China * Gush Dan, the metropolitan area of Tel Aviv in Israel Organizations *Dan-Air, a defunct airline in the United Kingdom *Dan Bus Company, a public transport company in Israel *Dan Hotels, a hotel chain in Israel *Dan the Tire Man, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
