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The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.
Published in 1980, Blacks in Blackface was the first and most extensive book up to that time to deal exclusively with every aspect of all-African American musical comedies performed on the stage between 1900 and 1940. An invaluable resource for scholars and historians focused on African American culture, this new edition features significantly revised, expanded, and new material. In Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, Henry T. Sampson provides an unprecedented wealth of information on legitimate musical comedies, including show synopses, casts, songs, and production credits. Sampson also recounts the struggles of African American performers and producers to overco...
Beginning in the 1830s and continuing for more than a century, blackface minstrelsy--stage performances that claimed to represent the culture of black Americans--remained arguably the most popular entertainment in North America. A renewed scholarly interest in this contentious form of entertainment has produced studies treating a range of issues: its contradictory depictions of class, race, and gender; its role in the development of racial stereotyping; and its legacy in humor, dance, and music, and in live performance, film, and television. The style and substance of minstrelsy persist in popular music, tap and hip-hop dance, the language of the standup comic, and everyday rituals of contem...
In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface superco
Includes the seminal "Early History of Negro Minstrelsy," by Col. T. Allston Brown, together with pen-and-ink portraits of the major minstrels, and a comprehensive index.
Ranging from the laudatory to the openly hostile, 15 essays by prominent African American scholars and critics examine the novel's racist elements and assess the degree to which Twain's ironies succeed or fail to turn those elements into a satirical attack on racism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.
This stunning book charts the rich history of the blues, through the dazzling array of posters, album covers, and advertisements that have shaped its identity over the past hundred years. The blues have been one of the most ubiquitous but diverse elements of American popular music at large, and the visual art associated with this unique sound has been just as varied and dynamic. There is no better guide to this fascinating graphical world than Bill Dahl—a longtime music journalist and historian who has written liner notes for countless reissues of classic blues, soul, R&B, and rock albums. With his deep knowledge and incisive commentary—complementing more than three hundred and fifty lav...
When the actor Ted Danson appeared in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast, he ignited a firestorm of protest that landed him on the front pages of the newspapers, rebuked by everyone from talk show host Montel Williams to New York City's then mayor, David Dinkins. Danson's use of blackface was shocking, but was the furious pitch of the response a triumphant indication of how far society has progressed since the days when blackface performers were the toast of vaudeville, or was it also an uncomfortable reminder of how deep the chasm still is separating black and white America? In Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, Susan Gubar, who fundamentally changed the way we thin...
Stealing the Show is a study of African American actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, a decade that saw the consolidation of stardom as a potent cultural and industrial force. Petty focuses on five performers whose Hollywood film careers flourished during this periodÑLouise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Lincoln ÒStepin FetchitÓ Perry, Bill ÒBojanglesÓ Robinson, and Hattie McDanielÑto reveal the Òproblematic stardomÓ and the enduring, interdependent patterns of performance and spectatorship for performers and audiences of color. She maps howÊthese actorsÑthough regularly cast in stereotyped and marginalized rolesÑemployed various strategies of cinematic and extracinematic performance to negotiate their complex positions in Hollywood and to ultimately Òsteal the show.Ó Drawing on a variety of source materials, Petty explores these starsÕ reception among Black audiences and theorizes African American viewership in the early twentieth century. Her book is an important and welcome contribution to the literature on the movies.