[Dixielandjazz] Horn Parts and Rags

[Don Kirkman]

On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 14:58:37 -0400, Ron L'Herault wrote:

>Blacking up was not shameful in and of itself.  Much of it was theatrical
>and that is all.  Think of clown make up, vivid white, big red lips.  Are
>they racially motivated (anti-Caucasian)?  In theater/movies, parts were
>played.  Masks were donned.  Make-up and disguises applied.  Jolson, Cantor,
>and others were minstrels, actors, comedians, not necessarily racists.  We
>see it in a racist light.   "Darktown Strutters Ball" is about a guy wanting
>to dance with his girl.   It could have been in Germantown or Frenchtown
>too.

True.  Both Blacks and Whites blacked up for the stage and both Blacks
and Whites wrote and performed "Coon" songs.  The motives of the Blacks
and those of the Whites were not necessarily the same, but the language,
the customs, and the music reflected their times, not ours.  IMO it's
one thing to understand and enjoy what they produced and another to work
toward never having anything like it dominate our entertainment or
culture again.
 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com
>[mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of Hal Vickery
>Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2006 1:21 AM
>To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>Subject: RE: [Dixielandjazz] Horn Parts and Rags

>You don't have to look too far back to see some pretty (at least to modern
>eyes) disgusting things.  For example, "Coon songs" (and they weren't
>referring to those furry animals with rings on their tails) were found in
>record catalogs as late as the 1920s.  Some of them were pretty disgusting.
>I found out about the UCSB cylinder restoration project on this list, and
>among the titles I found from the first decade of the 20th Century was a
>"Coon Song" by "Collins and Harlan" on the Edison label called N***** Loves
>His Possum.  

>I watched a 1934 James Cagney movie the other day in which Cagney goes AWOL
>from his ship by blackening his face.  Irving Berlin put on a blackface
>minstrel show in "This Is the Army" during World War II.  Al Jolson put on
>blackface (as did Larry Parks) for "The Jolson Story" in the late '40s.

>"Darktown Strutters Ball" isn't about the lights being out.  The original
>lyrics to the verse of "Old Man River" (1927) began, "N*****s all work on
>the Mississippi."  I remember we had old music of that in chorus that had
>those original lyrics.  (God only knows how long they were in the school's
>music library.)  Oh, and the part of Queenie in Show Boat was played by
>"Aunt Jemima," aka Tess Gardella, who was definitely not an African
>American.

>Oh, the musical my school put on my senior year was Show Boat.  The cast was
>all white, meaning a lot of kids had a lot of make up on, especially the
>stevedores.  (And who can forget that Armstrong record "Dusky Stevedore"?
>Or for that matter "Shine," which wasn't talking about the reflection off
>his shoes.)

>There is a lot of pretty shameful stuff if you look back at the history of
>American entertainment.

[. . .]
-- 
Don Kirkman