Twenty-Seventh in a Series
By Matt Chaney, for chaneysblog.com
Posted Saturday, December 29, 2018
Copyright ©2018 for original content and historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney, Four Walls Publishing
The Grand Opera House opened at Cairo, Illinois, in 1881, a spectacular showplace amidst riverine marsh. Fay Templeton headlined on opening night, teen singer and dancer, starring in the comic opera “Les Mascotte.” As the curtain rose “a large chorus of pretty and shapely girls in pink fleshings and short skirts pranced forth (in) a huge sensation” for the audience, a scribe would recount.
Maud Rittenhouse, schoolgirl actress, sat spellbound. “Oh! It was grand!” she recorded in diary. “Seated in that comfortable, spacious, lovely theatre with its blaze of lights, immense stage, artistic scenes, I couldn’t realize I was in Cairo until I looked around me and beheld the familiar faces… all the people in town, and many from abroad. Not a seat in parquet or parquet-circle, only a few in dress-circle, and some in gallery.”
Thirteen hundred spectators packed the auditorium trimmed in Victorian woodwork, ornamental plaster and crimson drapery. Gas-jet chandeliers, globes and foot lamps provided lighting, and acoustics were “perfect as everything else,” touted The Cairo Bulletin. There were 36 exits for fire safety. The brick building stood four stories, occupying most the 600 block bounded by Commercial Avenue and Railroad Street [later renamed Halliday Avenue]. The facility culminated a long drive of local supporters, their shared vision since the likes of Perry Powers and W.H. Morris, deceased showmen.
The Opera House joined theaters, halls, saloons, showboats and excursion steamers among stage venues of Cairo, pronounced Kare-Oh, amusement hotbed at juncture of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The self-proclaimed “little city” counted 9,000 residents with a quarter-million visitors annually. During the 19th century this rural locale developed a brand of entertainment “more influential and more widely distributed than that of Chicago,” according to a modern analysis. American vaudeville flourished, variety shows for families, and burlesque thrived, too, despite opposition of churchmen and others.
Variety was staple entertainment combining song, dance, comedy and drama, or “mirth and pathos and music,” per a review of the Templeton performance. Variety was a series of short acts, related or not, in musical ditties, dance steps, laughs, acrobatic stunts and animal tricks—“A Veritable Mardi Gras,” declared a show advertisement.
A troupe utilized variety for a fast-hitting program or for carrying melodrama from opening scene to climax. Companies touring Cairo included the Alice Oates English Comic Opera, Ada Richmond Comic Opera, Harry Webber in “Nip and Tuck Detectives,” the Milton Nobles Comedy Company, Wallack’s Comedy Company, Felix Vincent with Mollie Anderson, and Alf Burnett with Helen Nash.
Homegrown performers came back as American stars in the 1880s: Katie Putnam, banjo and dance maven, and Sol Smith Russell, singing comedian. Both began locally under the tutelage of Putnam’s mother, Mary McWilliams, actress and theater manager. Popular actress Minnie Maddern Fiske made a return of sorts, having been on stage in the womb at Cairo; her mother was actress Lizzie Maddern, who worked while pregnant at end of the war.
Tony Denier’s pantomime troupe presented his famed clown characters amidst theater spectacles of music, comedy and circus stunts. The company’s signature production, “Humpty Dumpty,” turned profit on multiple runs at Cairo. The Denier production came replete with orchestra, military band, wire walkers, jugglers, gymnasts and chalked-face mimes to accompany the star clown. Denier was Brooklyn-born and roundly skilled, authoring how-to books on theater and circus performance. He’d studied in France as a youth, immersed in circus culture and vaudeville of the Old World.
Female burlesque was considered sacrilege by some in Cairo, plain obscene by more folks. But city councilmen were unanimously in favor. They adjourned council meeting early on Thanksgiving Eve, 1876, rushing off to see Madame Rentz’s burlesque company at Atheneum Theatre. The Rentz women were American celebrities, “voluptuous” and “suggestive” on stage, according to reviews. M.B. Leavitt, later known as Father of Burlesque, managed the troupe on a triumphant tour northward from New Orleans.
Music, stunts, parody and satire comprised early burlesque, interspersing feminine imagery and erotica, when bare ankles and high heels were termed risqué. The Rentz Company cultivated renown as “scantily clad,” led by curvy star Mabel Santley, which meant low-cut blouses, knee skirts, frilly petticoats and bloomers, sheer stockings. Skin exposed below necklines was limited to arms and cleavage. Show-goers did know a madam burlesquer might wear short pants on stage, for a tantalizing prospect that risked her arrest. The theater wasn’t the circus, even at Cairo.
Cutesy, buxom burlesquers sang, danced, cracked jokes, shed tears on cue. They turned flips on stage, jumped rope, rode swings in titillating fashion, smiling and singing funny songs, making eye contact with men. “The girls” pedaled about on velocipedes—bikes on tall wheels—their butts perched atop tiny seats, swaying provocatively. They joined in leggy line for the “can-can dance,” patent high kicking to blaring brass and crashing cymbals. The audience watched every move, virtually male throughout, whistling and whooping.
The famed Chapman Sisters raised eyebrows for skimpy attire at Cairo, coming out in leotards and silk leggings. A local critic remarked “the costuming might seem objectionable, but there was nothing in the play that could be objected to.” Blanche and Ella Chapman were burlesque queens and showbiz royalty, having been reared in theater, learning to “act well, sing sweetly, and dance splendidly,” a scribe attested.
They also wrote well—at Cairo the sisters created hilarious satire of local life and personalities, assisted by their mother, legendary actress Julia Drake Chapman. As descendants of showboat and theater pioneers, the Chapman women drew on family river lore and contacts to present a zinging parody on Cairo. “It abounded with local hits, nearly all of which were loudly applauded by the audience,” The Bulletin observed. “It is a marvel how the troupe learned so much about Cairo in so short a time.”
The paper endorsed burlesque of the Worrell Sisters accompanied by comedian George S. Knight, but editors took exception with the May Fiske English Blondes. The Bulletin ripped Fiske’s cast of mostly bleached hairdos for selling “nastiness… verbal smut and shapely female ankles.”
Femme fatale Fanny B. Price caused the newspaper to suspend publication for threat of a labor strike. The young actress entranced gobs of boys and men, particularly along the rivers West and South. Males adored Price, penning letters and placing print notices for her at ports like Cairo, where 45 men publicized their names. Price was a tragedian player, “girlish” and “prepossessing” in appearance. She excelled in roles such as Parthenia, Greek maiden of myth, and Lady Macbeth. Bulletin pressmen were riled over missing her at the Atheneum on Thanksgiving, 1873; as they discussed skipping work, the editor canceled the paper’s printing instead, and the boys saw the show. Fans viewed Price as “chaste and pleasing,” and Cairo men fawned for decades, until finally she’d been married, divorced and remarried, living in South Dakota.
Price’s vocals and dancing rated from capable to superior, which was standard of top thespians appearing at Cairo. Mary Anderson, stage phenomenon from Louisville, succeeded Price as a hot ticket locally, accompanied by actor John W. Norton. Kate Claxton was a hit dramatist, hearing calls for encore. Lawrence Barrett and Englishman Frederick Warde were fantastic in Shakespeare portrayals, according to The Bulletin, while Robert McWade personified a classic Rip Van Winkle, truest to Washington Irving’s character.
But the paper also scolded readers over lackluster support for serious drama, a national trend. Critically acclaimed actors could go broke in the hinterland, such as Price’s stranding on occasion with her outfit. “Those were the days of fat parts and good notices, but no salaries,” recalled Roland Reed, former actor. Once, with the troupe stuck in Illinois, Reed turned to comedy, his forte, staging shows that paid train fare home for everyone.
With Old World convention on decline in America, classical drama had a problem for its dearth of fashionable music. In the delta and elsewhere, most Americans wanted popular music and stirring beats. People wanted song and dance—“leg ball, fantastic toes”—whether for watching or participating.
***
Famous persons often passed unrecognized in Cairo, Illinois, before photography’s mass dissemination. Luminaries were many in town during the latter 19th century, recognizable names like Susan B. Anthony, American suffragette; James Milton Turner, civil rights pioneer; James B. Eads, steel bridge master; “weather prophet” John H. Tice; burlesque icon Lydia Thompson; and Ben De Bar, actor and theater mogul. But most celebrities were unfamiliar at first glance around Cairo. Tell-all author Ann Eliza Young, internationally known speaker as the divorced Wife No. 19 of Brigham Young, was just another face off a train until introduced for her eager audience at the Atheneum.
Some celebrities were easily identified, however, for their images engraved en masse on news pages, magazine covers, show-bills and product advertisements. And alerts usually preceded such arrivals at Cairo, information publicized or telegraphed.
Locals gathered atop the Ohio levee in 1882 to await boxer John L. Sullivan, heavyweight champion, the Babe Ruth of Victorian sport. They watched railcars with Sullivan’s entourage cross the river on transfer barges, for re-connection on the Cairo side. The reassembled train chugged up to level tracks for layover and townspeople rushed private cars on beelines.
Kids and adults raced to see Sullivan, man and myth. “He was finally discovered near one of the windows of the Chicago sleeper, and after much solicitation and begging on the part of the crowd to show himself on the platform, he walked to the rear end of the car and descended to terra firma,” The Bulletin reported. “He was kept busy shaking hands with the crowd until the train moved out to Chicago.” Before departure the champ wired a St. Louis paper, rebuking the report he was “drunk and on a carousel for two days” in New Orleans. “Absolutely false,” decried John L. Sullivan.
The showman renowned as “Tom Thumb,” Charles S. Stratton, needed no introduction in Cairo, attracting crowds everywhere. Three hundred children attended a theater matinee starring Tom Thumb, Commodore Nutt and their wives, “The Lilliputian Quartette,” in song, dance and comedy. Rare few Americans were recognizable like Tom Thumb, for his mentions and likenesses pervading pop culture. William “Buffalo Bill” was another, the western scout turned entertainer.
Locals had heard plenty, read plenty of Buffalo Bill by the time his Wild West troupe arrived via railroad for a theater production. Cody was unmistakable stepping from the car, a dead ringer for his portraits plastered about on fences and buildings. An admiring mob trailed Buffalo Bill from train depot to ground floor of the Halliday Hotel. “It was really amusing to see men of all ages stand with hands in their pockets and open mouths, staring in mute wonder at the tall, finely formed, neatly dressed, long-haired, pleasantly faced hero of novels and of the plains… the exact counterpart of the fine engravings of him on the fancy bills.” Black and white kids filled the walk affront the hotel, boys aplenty. They jostled each other, peering inside for Buffalo Bill, “their eager faces against the large windows, expressing awe.”
Cody drew the biggest attendance yet at the new Opera House, upwards of 2,000 jammed in seats and standing space, children everywhere. Blacks filled segregated seating in the dress circle. Buffalo Bill’s western extravaganza featured musicians, dancers, American Indians and cowboys. Cody took spotlight for his marksmanship, shooting tiny objects around the stage while “holding the gun in many different positions,” recounted The Bulletin. Apparently no ricochet bullet reached the audience.
Future analysts would lambast such entertainment for racial and gender stereotyping, and firearms, endangerment, among issues. But all shades of people loved the content in real time, 1880s America, and many strove to perform on stage. Buffalo Bill’s western show electrified the Cairo Opera House in delta frontier. “When the curtain went down upon the last act, the house shook with wild shouts, clapping of hands and stamping of feet, and there was a general expression of the wish that the company would remain another day.”
“Yesterday morning about 11 o’clock, headed by a cornet band, [Cody] led his band of Indians picturesquely uniformed and on horseback through the principal streets. The sidewalks along the line of march were crowded almost densely with people, and the streets were alive with noisy boys. From here the company went to Evansville, leaving on the Wabash train.”
A western show relied on cowboy singers, fiddle scratchers and banjo pickers. “Western music” was sprouting in America with siblings variously labeled as cowboy songs, frontier melodies, rural music, farmer’s music, quadrille songs, folk ballads, plantation melodies—and country music, someday the umbrella classification.
“Country music” was characterized in winter 1887 by a newspaper correspondent in Illinois, reporting details of a sleighing party east of Decatur. Bobsleds and snow cutters fetched guests from town for evening rides overland, to the estate of farmer Bering Burrows. “There was [square] dancing in country style to country calling, and country music, and at 11 o’clock an old-fashioned country supper was served. After supper, dancing was resumed and continued until 12:30, when the ride home was commenced.” Horse-drawn sleighs zipped over the landscape, moonlit snow cover, returning folks home until 2 a.m.
The Cairo region was thick with country fiddlers and banjo pickers, white and black. Southern songs resounded, such as Dixie and Turkey In The Straw.
Henry Hart’s string band showcased his fiddling at square dances from Indiana to Missouri. Tom Lewis, multi-tasking musician, published a newspaper, played fiddle and poured drinks in his Gem Saloon at Cairo. Local bandleader Charles Wittig had sons and daughter in string ensembles, forming a fiddling family for dances and stage shows. Other top musicians heading string groups included Harry O’Brien, George Eisenberg, Lee Boicourt, Edward Dezonia, George Storer, A.L. Goss and Edward Lemon.
Transients proved good fiddlers in Cairo, like the stranger who grabbed up violin and bow at Carle’s Livery, “striking suddenly into the tune of The Arkansas Traveler, which he played in an astonishing manner.” Men paused in front the stable and danced jigs, including cops, attorneys, the mayor, a judge, doctor, editor, even preachers. They competed at toe twirls and Reuben Yocum won, court clerk, “going it alone and making four” on the dirt avenue. One morning a boy fiddler strolled Cairo, a “musical prodigy” about age 5, The Bulletin reported, accompanied by an unkempt man on second violin. Children gravitated to the wee musician, following him along streets in “admiration and envy.”
Banjo music was trademark of Cairo and Missouri landings since the instrument was established by African slaves and freemen. White minstrel Emory M. Hall performed a history lesson on stage, playing artifact banjos and songs in period progression since the 1700s. Hall began with a gourd banjo and its three strings on a stick, from the instrument class of cornstalk fiddle and sassafras bow. He concluded on his customized 13-inch Clarke banjo, “The Thunderer,” picking five strings on a fretted fingerboard. Hall had rigged together his first banjo during the Civil War, a cheese box with horse-hair strings, as Union drummer boy in Louisiana. “I made music out of the thing,” the Maine native said in 1898.
Hall played masterfully and knew music history better than professors, garnering repute as Paganini of Banjo, America’s “best twanger of strings.” A solo by Hall sounded “simply wonderful,” saluted an Alabama paper, “playing as he does the most difficult variations on favorite themes [like] Home Sweet Home.” In Memphis a critic raved: “He is to the banjo what Ole Bull is to the violin, eliciting… sweetest and most touching melody.”
E.M. Hall was among Chicago minstrels closely associated with southern Illinois, a group that included dancer Andy McKee and singing stepper Cal Wagner. Hall played Cairo under various managements, including J.H. Haverly, until his death of the disastrous theater fire at Chicago in 1903.
Minstrel Dick McGowan was also a superior banjo talent in Cairo, along with George Powers and Edwin French, a pair on par excellence with Hall. Actress Kate Partington picked banjo for encores at the Opera House, starring in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as “Topsy” in blackface.
Afro-American banjoists picked ragtime and country melodies at Cairo before the Civil War, according to numerous sources of 1800s news coverage. Charles E. Trevathan was a white songwriter and journalist, native of west Tennessee bottoms along the Mississippi. In 1896 he surmised that ragtime originated “as a simple beat, but practice brought it to the dignity of a rhythm, weird, in no degree like any other musical expression, and intensely characteristic of the people who gave it birth. Now you may go anywhere along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans, at Cairo, Memphis, Natchez… and you will hear the rag.”
Black troupes brought extraordinary banjoists, notably the Georgia Minstrels in various combinations. The Georgias put a “banjo orchestra” on stage, upwards of a dozen artists coming together before a steamboat backdrop, and strings were “made to talk.” The Bohee brothers, James D. and George B., were star pickers along with Dick Little, John H. Taylor, J. Locke Warwick, James Layton, C.F. Stanbury and Horace Weston. “The Georgias have no superiors and are favorites with the Cairo public,” The Bulletin emphasized, repeatedly.
American music pioneer James A. Bland headlined for the company at Cairo while introducing his popular songs from 1874 to 1881. Bland had grown up a free black in Washington, D.C., becoming a professional entertainer at 14 and later graduating from Howard University. Bland was multi-skilled as a composer, banjoist, singer, dancer and comedian. His classics Carry Me Back to Old Virginny and O! Dem Golden Slippers were among tunes he debuted with The Georgias, pleasing audiences across ethic lines. In Decatur, Illinois, the newspaper gushed over a “monster band concert led by the inimitable Bland.” Ford’s Theater in Washington proudly billed “The Great James Bland” in spring 1881, prior to his departure for Europe and international acclaim.
The Georgias stocked name performers like Tom McIntosh, Bob Height, William Allen and many more. Bar none the biggest star was Billy Kersands, hysterical song-and-dance man who ranked among highest paid during his prime, of any race. Kersands was tall, athletic and handsome, commanding spotlight anywhere, London and Windsor Castle notwithstanding.
“It is as much the ‘propensity’ of Mr. William Kersands to be funny as it is the propensity of men generally to eat and drink,” an English critic remarked. “The singing of… whimsical effusion and the comic expression of face caused roars of laughter. Mr. Kersands has equal talent as a dancer. There never was a more nimble fellow on ‘the light fantastic toe,’ and his imitations of an opera dancer were droll in the extreme.”
Billy Kersands played dates in the northern delta spanning five decades, with perhaps his last appearance in 1910, the Cairo Airdome. Kersands died in New Mexico, 1915, on a summer tour through desert towns by automobile.
Writer and consultant Matt Chaney is compiling a book on historical song and dance, tentatively titled From River Music to Rock in the Missouri Delta. For more information see the ChaneysBlog page “Music History and Legend of the Missouri Delta.” For information on Chaney’s previous books, visit www.fourwallspublishing.com. Email: mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com.
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