Minstrel Shows

Minstrel Shows. Although blackface performers, often billed as “Ethiopian” entertainers, had been growing in popularity for a decade, it was the 1843 appearance at the Bowery Amphitheatre of Dan Emmett, Billy Whitlock, Frank Pelham, and Frank Brower as the Virginia Minstrels that is generally allowed to have ushered in the era of American minstrelsy. The popularity of this new form of entertainment was so quick to sweep the nation that within a year a band called the Ethiopian Serenaders was performing at the White House, and other groups followed them there through succeeding administrations until shortly before the Civil War. These early groups were small, usually four to eight men, and their entertainment essentially musical. They were also in marked contrast to the formal, often imported attractions at regular theatres. In his excellent study of minstrelsy, Blacking Up (1974), Robert C. Toll noted that for the first time “the vitality and vigor of the folk” was brought into popular culture, adding, “It was immediate, unpretentious, and direct. It had no characterization to develop, no plot to evolve, no musical score, no set speeches, no subsidiary dialogue—indeed, no fixed script at all. Each act—song, dance, joke, or skit—was a self‐contained performance that strived to be a highlight of the show.” Toll also credits minstrelsy with introducing a sense of fast pacing hitherto unknown on the American stage, and which played no small part in the later development of musical theatre. A certain formality soon crept in so that early minstrel shows quickly displayed a somewhat standard two‐part form, the first offering the minstrels' celebrated semicircle, with one end manned by a comic called Mr. Bones clacking an appropriate set of bones, and the other end manned by another comic called Mr. Tambo, wielding a tambourine. At the center was a master of ceremonies known as the interlocutor. For many the great attraction of this section was the balladeer. The second part was a freewheeling olio, much like prototypical vaudeville. Stump speeches constituted a popular part of this segment. Comedy sketches, often of plantation life or spoofing contemporary events and plays, were another feature of this part and with time became so important that many students see them as a third, separate section.

From the start minstrelsy helped perpetuate the stereotype of the black slave: lazy, dumbly guileful, noisy, flashily garbed, but essentially happy. Make‐up exaggerated the stereotype, the blackface not resembling any real Negroid features. As early as the 1850s some African‐American performers created their own minstrel shows and performed mainly for abolitionist groups. Troupes such as the Luca Family and Callendar's Georgia Minstrels were very popular during the Civil War but were taken over by white managements by the 1870s. As minstrel competition developed, the intimacy of the first shows gave way to gargantuan spectacles often featuring dozens of performers. By this time, however, the popularity of minstrelsy was waning, with vaudeville, comic opera, and musical comedy coming to replace it in the public's affection. While the shows moved away from their original emphasis on music toward an emphasis on comedy, they gave theatregoers the first enduring songs to come from American theatre. Emmett's “Dixie” jumps to mind at once, but it should be remembered that Stephen Foster was one of many contemporary popular composers to write actively for the minstrel stage. Laurence Hutton suggests that while minstrels did not invent the banjo, they were its prime developers and were responsible for the instrument's long popularity. Among the great names of minstrelsy were Dan Bryant, Emmett, E. P. and George N. Christy, Lew Dockstader, “Honey Boy” Evans, J. H. Haverly, Eph Horn, Francis Leon, and Eddie Leonard and such bands as Buckley's Serenaders, Bryant's Minstrels, [the original] Christy Minstrels, Ordway's Aeolians, the San Francisco Minstrels, and Wood's Minstrels.

By the 1880s the vogue of minstrelsy had largely disappeared. It remained alive only in a few cities, notably Philadelphia, where Sanford's Minstrels, John L. Carncross, and Dumont's Minstrels kept the tradition alive well into the 20th century. Many great performers, such as Francis Wilson and Al Jolson, spent part of their early careers with minstrel companies, although their fame came elsewhere.