Thomas Fletcher (May 16, 1873 – October 13, 1954) was an African-American vaudeville entertainer, actor, and writer. 51jGGlho-tL

Career

Fletcher was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and started a career on the stage after performing in '' Uncle Tom's Cabin'' in his teens. He sang in local talent contests before touring with minstrel shows, and by 1900 was performing regularly in vaudeville with Al Bailey as "Bailey and Fletcher, the Minstrel Boys". With Bailey, he appeared in films made in New York in the early 1900s by Edwin S. Porter. In 1908, he replaced the group's founder Ernest Hogan as a member of the Memphis Students, an ensemble of singers and dancers who were neither students nor from Memphis. The group, comprising about twenty musicians and dancers, performed regularly on Broadway, and were "the first to perform syncopated music on a public concert stage." In 1919, Fletcher joined the New York Syncopated Orchestra led by Will Marion Cook, and performed in Chicago, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. Throughout his career he also worked as an entertainer for "the who's who of white America". His

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, ''100 Years of the Negro in Show Business: the Tom Fletcher Story'', was published in 1954. It "gives the only eyewitness account from a black insider of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theatrical players, personalities and pioneers," including Hogan and

Scott Joplin Scott Joplin ( 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, he was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his career, he wrote over 40 original ragtime pieces, one ra ...

, Nancy R. Ping Robbins, Guy Marco, ''Scott Joplin: A Guide to Research'', Routledge, 2014, p.114
/ref> and has been used as a source by many historians of

musical theatre Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movemen ...

. "Tom Fletcher remembers", ''The Bioscope'', April 27, 2007
Retrieved 25 September 2016 Fletcher died in New York in 1954, aged 81.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fletcher, Tom 1873 births 1954 deaths Vaudeville performers American autobiographers People from Portsmouth, Ohio