{"id":2441,"date":"2017-12-01T17:54:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T17:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2017-12-10T01:01:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T01:01:50","slug":"blacks-electrified-early-american-music-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/?p=2441","title":{"rendered":"Blacks Electrified Early American Music and Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sixteenth in a Series<\/em><\/p>\n

By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com<\/p>\n

Posted Friday, December 1, 2017<\/p>\n

Copyright\u00a0\u00a92017 for historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney<\/p>\n

In pop music of antebellum America, \u201cnegro\u201d style was vogue, particularly among the younger set North and South, multi-ethic.<\/p>\n

At a white debutante ball in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., females swung alluringly for young males, \u201clike the negro dances of Virginia,\u201d reported an attendee, \u201cand the whole effect is pleasing.\u201d At New Orleans, 1859, the striking dance of a black couple\u2014a slave duo \u201cwholly inimitable\u201d in their movement together, gushed a witness\u2014rendered white \u201cminstrels and caricaturists hopelessly in the shade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black artists jazzed high-society types at a wedding in New Orleans. A writer raved in The Weekly Mississippian<\/em>, reporting: \u201cThe band was composed of sable musicians who poured forth a strain of melody such as I have never heard at a private party, and which would have charmed Calypso and her nymphs. The dancers performed to the admiration of all\u2014in fact nothing could have been more perfect. During the festivities of the evening a negro played on the piano in the most faultless manner to relieve the band of fatigue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slaves and free blacks dominated music jobs of the rural South, well before the Civil War. \u201cIn all of the southern [communities] there are music bands, composed of negroes, often of great excellence,\u201d Frederick Law Olmstead reported from Alabama in 1853. \u201cThe military parades are usually accompanied by a negro brass band.\u201d Olmstead was on assignment for The New York Times<\/em>, logging accounts that led to books such as his The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller\u2019s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At Claiborne town on a bluff, nighttime overlooking the Alabama River, Olmstead met slaves at leisure along the streets. A young black male \u201ccommenced to sing, and in a few moments all the others joined in, taking different parts, singing with great skill and taste, much better than I ever heard a group of young men in a northern village sing without previous arrangement,\u201d Olmstead noted. The lyrics were current, \u201ca fashionable song of a sentimental character [that] probably had been learned at a concert or theatre in the village.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe love of music which characterizes the negro, the readiness with which he acquires skill in the art, his power of memorizing and of improvising music, is most marked and constant,\u201d Olmstead wrote, adding rebuke of a Louisiana theorist making contemporary headlines. \u201cDr. [Samuel] Cartwright, arguing that the negro is a race of inferior capabilities, says that the negro does not understand harmony; [that] his songs are mere sounds without sense or meaning. My observations are of but little value upon such a point, but they lead me very strongly to the contrary opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slave musicians produced revenue for owners while some drew pay for themselves. At Florence, Ala., slave performer Christopher Brewer pocketed all income from his music, according to future grandson William C. Handy, the iconic blues composer. \u201cGrandpa Brewer\u2026 told me that before he got religion he used to play the fiddle for dances,\u201d Handy wrote in autobiography, 1941. \u201cThat had been his way of making extra money back in slavery days. His master\u2026 allowed him to keep what he earned from playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn his day, Grandpa Brewer explained, folks knew as well as we do when it was time for the music to get hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young Brewer was granted freedom by his owner prior to the Civil War, but other slaves purchased emancipation with music earnings, reportedly. \u201cSINGING FOR FREEDOM,\u201d a Maine newspaper headlined of a southern troupe in 1857. \u201cThose deservedly popular performers, the Slave Singers, will give one of their rich and entertaining concerts at Norumbega Hall this evening. They are singing in one hundred cities in the North for the purpose of purchasing their freedom. Wherever they have performed they have been spoken of by the press in the highest terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank Johnson, a black elderly freeman, fiddler virtuoso and dancer extraordinaire, reigned over the music of North Carolina in the antebellum era, with his recognition extending nationwide through newspapers. Born a slave around 1774, Johnson used music earnings to purchase his freedom and that of numerous family members by about 1830, according to news evidence and reminisces of friends and acquaintances.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrank Johnson has grown into an institution,\u201d saluted The New Bern Times<\/em> in 1866. \u201cHe has brought the science of brass band music to such a high state of perfection that few dare to compete with him, and as to the violin, it\u2019s no use talking. If there is to be a fancy ball anywhere in the length and breadth of the land, Frank is telegraphed immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Johnson Band of \u201cOld Frank\u201d appeared regularly for state and private events, ranging from the Roanoke River Valley south to Wilmington. An 1855 report was typically glowing, following a parade in Tarboro, N.C.: \u201cFrank Johnson\u2019s brass band, seated in an Olympian car, headed the column, and as may be reasonably anticipated attracted an innumerable crowd of all ages, sexes, and colors, who gave frequent and indisputable evidences of great enjoyment.\u201d<\/p>\n

For stage Johnson donned formal wear in stovetop hat, spike-tail jacket, and brass buttons. \u201cI readily recall some of the pieces he played\u2014Money-Muss<\/em>, Mississippi Sawyer<\/em>, Arkansas Traveler<\/em>, Bill Evans<\/em>, Forked-Ease<\/em>, Bill in the Low Grounds<\/em>, and Old Mollie Hare<\/em>,\u201d H.C. Herring recalled for The Charlotte Observer<\/em> in 1906, of erstwhile parties with the black fiddler, half-century previous. \u201cOne of the most popular pieces in that section today, he composed\u2026 Picnic<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe steps of the men were past describing. The ladies would even slightly draw up their skirts and the most elegantly executed back steps, pigeon wings and broad shuffles could be seen\u2026 Waltzes? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band often played until sunup for mirthful fans but Johnson had detractors, particularly local preachers and congregations; never mind, Herring affirmed, Old Frank\u2019s popularity didn\u2019t wane. \u201cTo any listener there was a something in his music which defeated all efforts of the Methodist and Baptist churches to suppress dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson catered to Southern Democrat aristocracy in his business, and the black freeman supported states\u2019 succession and the Confederacy, even providing battle music for Carolina troupes early in the war. Approaching age 90, however, Johnson left the whirring bullets and exploding shells for calmer surroundings. Johnson rued surrender and fall of the Old South in 1865, white friends recalled, events such as Sherman\u2019s march of conqueror Union forces through the Carolinas. The Goldsboro Patriot<\/em> reported Johnson\u2019s band irked Navy brass years after the war, for playing Rebel rally songs aboard a steamer in Norfolk Harbor, broadcasting Dixie<\/em> and Farewell To The Star-Spangled Banner<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Old Frank Johnson died in 1872, possibly a centenarian in age, and 2,000 admirers attended his funeral in Wilmington. Ex-slaves had surged ahead in American music, meanwhile, revolutionizing entertainment in society without human bondage.<\/p>\n

Many Afro-Americans aspired to make a living in music; many dreamt of stardom and affluence, a few realizing it already. Black talents were eclipsing whites in minstrel entertainment and leading in the upstart variety formats of \u201cvaudeville\u201d and American burlesque. Job opportunities flourished along major river valleys and lakes,\u00a0 New York to Missouri, with riverboats, saloons, urban theaters and rural halls among the music venues.<\/p>\n

Gospel music took national spotlight, on the rising fame of Afro-American singers from Fisk University and Hampton Institute. Most of the college students had been enslaved as children. Sheet music sold by the thousands, prompting Hampton\u2019s release of a volume, Cabin and Plantation Songs<\/em>. \u201cThe slave music of the South presents a field for research and study very extensive and rich,\u201d wrote Thomas P. Fenner, Hampton music director, in the songbook\u2019s preface.<\/p>\n

Fenner, a white music composer and arranger, believed free Afro-Americans could elevate the art form in a renewed nation. \u201cIt may be that this people which has developed such a wonderful musical sense in its degradation will, in its maturity, produce a composer who could bring a music of the future out of this music of the past,\u201d he wrote from Nashville.<\/p>\n

Fenner envisioned a black pioneer of American music, and thus was the prodigy in-waiting, an infant son of former slaves at Handy\u2019s Hill community in northern Alabama. The child was William Christopher Handy, named after his slave grandfathers, William Wise Handy and Christopher Brewer, and destined to be known as Father of The Blues.<\/p>\n

W.C. Handy was born in 1873, or Eight Years After Emancipation in the manner his religious parents, Charles and Elizabeth, marked the time.<\/p>\n

Select References<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Familiar Legend. (1874, June 27). Hickman Courier<\/em> KY, p. 1.<\/p>\n

A Good \u2019Un. (1839, Feb. 12). New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em>, p. 2.<\/p>\n

A Scrap of Minstrel History. (1885, Jan. 19). Atlanta Constitution<\/em>, p. 162.<\/p>\n

Amusements. (1889, June 2). Louisville Courier-Journal<\/em>, p. 13.<\/p>\n

Cartwright, S.A. (1851, May). Report on the Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race. New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal<\/em>, 7 (6), pp. 331-336.<\/p>\n

Correspondence of the Evening Post, Barnwell District, South Carolina. (1843, April 12). New York Post<\/em>, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Demopolis. [LTE signature.] (1859, Aug. 24). Weekly Mississippian<\/em>, Jackson MS, p. 1.<\/p>\n

Dietz, Mary Martha. (1921, May). A History of The Theatre In Louisville<\/em>. University of Louisville, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: Louisville KY.<\/p>\n

D.Q.I.\u2019s. (1855, Nov. 3). Tarborough Southerner<\/em>, Tarboro NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Excursion to Waccamaw. (1867, May 12). Wilmington Daily Journal<\/em> NC, p. 3.<\/p>\n

Fenner, E.P. [Arr.] (1874). Cabin and Plantation Songs, As Sung by the Hampton Students<\/em>. Musical Department, Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School: Hampton VA.<\/p>\n

Fisk Singers\u2019 Music Given to World Years Ago. (1946, Jan. 10). Kingsport News<\/em> TN, p. 12.<\/p>\n

For The Journal. (1859, Dec. 8). Wilmington Journal<\/em> NC, p. 4.<\/p>\n

Fourth of July. (1851, July 12). Tarboro Press<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

General Local Items. (1872, March 23). Cairo Bulletin<\/em> IL, p. 4.<\/p>\n

Genuine Negro Minstrels. (1894, Jan. 7). New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em>, p. 16.<\/p>\n

Handy, W.C. (1941). Father of the Blues<\/em>. The Macmillan Company: New York NY.<\/p>\n

Herring, H.C. (1906, Feb. 4). Music To-Day and Then. Charlotte Observer<\/em>, p.2<\/p>\n

Malone, B.C. (1979). Southern Music\/American Music<\/em>. The University Press of Kentucky: Lexington KY.<\/p>\n

Masur, L.P. (2011, July 9). Olmstead\u2019s Southern Landscapes. NYTimes.com [online].<\/p>\n

Musical Prodigies. (1857, Oct. 29). Richmond Dispatch<\/em> VA, p. 1.<\/p>\n

Norfolk Excursion. (1869, June 24). Greensboro Patriot<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Notice. (1838, March 21). [Advertisement.] Raleigh Weekly Standard<\/em> NC, p. 3.<\/p>\n

Olmstead, F.L. [\u201cYeoman\u201d pseudonym.] (1853, Sept. 1). The South: Letters on the Production, Industry, and Resource of the Slave States: Number Thirty-Six. New York Times<\/em>, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Parramore, T. (1989, April). Old Frank Johnson\u2014And The Day the Music Died. State Magazine<\/em>, 56 (11), pp. 8-9.<\/p>\n

Sanjek, R. (1988). American Popular Music and Its Business: The First Four Hundred Years: II, From 1790 to 1909<\/em>. Oxford University Press: New York NY.<\/p>\n

Shocco Springs. (1847, July 31). [Advertisement.] Raleigh Register<\/em> NC, p. 4.<\/p>\n

Singing for Freedom. (1857, June 26). Bangor Daily Whig and Courier<\/em> ME, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Slave Songs and Slave Music. (1874, March 15). Des Moines Register<\/em>, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Smith, S. (1859, Nov. 12). In a Tight Place, Pecuniary. Weekly Arkansas Gazette<\/em>, Little Rock AR, p. 1.<\/p>\n

Sorsby, N.T. (1854, Jan. 4). Agriculture in North Carolina. Raleigh Register<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

State News. (1866, Sept. 27). Wilmington Journal<\/em> NC, p. 4.<\/p>\n

Statelings. (1872, Jan. 25). Dust to Dust. New Bern Times<\/em> NC, p. 1.<\/p>\n

The Editor Writes Again. (1911, Jan. 26). Henderson Gold Leaf<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

The Georgia Minstrels. (1865, Oct. 10). Detroit Free Press<\/em>, p. 1.<\/p>\n

The Georgia Minstrels for Europe. (1866, May 26). Buffalo Daily Courier<\/em> NY, p. 8.<\/p>\n

The Georgia Minstrels in England. (1866, July 24). Buffalo Daily Courier<\/em> NY, p .8.<\/p>\n

The Magnolia Ball. (1860, Jan. 31). Wilmington Daily Herald<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

The Pic Nic. (1860, June 14). Wilmington Journal<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

The Polka. (1844, Aug. 23). Washington Whig<\/em> DC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

The Story of a Song. (1889, April 27). Asheville Citizen Times<\/em> NC, p. 1.<\/p>\n

Veteran of Song, Dance, Stage Dies. (1939, May 2). Mason City Globe-Gazette<\/em> IA, p.5.<\/p>\n

Why is it That Our Streets are Thronged? (1844, Aug. 16). Louisville Daily Courier<\/em> KY, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Windle, Mrs. C.F. (1860, Jan. 1). A Christmas Day in the South. New Orleans Sunday Delta<\/em> LA, p. 7.<\/p>\n

Woodson, F.S. (1901, Feb. 14). Recollections of the Band That Excelled Sousa. Henderson Gold Leaf<\/em> NC, p. 2.<\/p>\n

Matt Chaney is a writer and consultant in Missouri, USA. For more information visit\u00a0<\/em>www.fourwallspublishing.com.\u00a0Email:\u00a0<\/em>mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixteenth in a Series By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com Posted Friday, December 1, 2017 Copyright\u00a0\u00a92017 for historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney In pop music of antebellum America, \u201cnegro\u201d style was vogue, particularly among the younger set North and South, multi-ethic. At a white debutante ball in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., females swung alluringly for young … Continue reading Blacks Electrified Early American Music and Dance<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[283,374],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ywFp-Dn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourwallspublishing.com\/BlogMChaney\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}