New Oscar Micheaux-Themed CD

As noted in earlier posts, the past couple of years have been good ones for fans of African American writer and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951). Paul McGilligan’s comprehensive biography, Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only, came out in 2007. There was a major conference in February 2009 on Micheaux’s work at Columbia University, concurrent with a retrospective screening of his films at Lincoln Center. [See Faded Glory: Oscar Micheaux and The Pre-War Black Independent Cinema. ]

And, now, Stace England and the Salt Kings have just released an album of songs responding to Micheaux’s life and work, The Amazing Oscar Micheaux.

Although Micheaux was born in Metropolis, Illinois (and thereby came to the attention of the Illinois-based Salt Kings), he is of interest to scholars of the American West in part because of the several years he spent on a homestead near Gregory, South Dakota. His autobiography The Conquest (1913) and his novel The Homesteader (1917), both of which detail his trials and tribulations (and successes) on his South Dakota farm, are among the few books currently in print describing the experiences of an African American homesteader.

Micheaux is best known as a pioneering filmmaker. His film version of The Homesteader (1919) was the first full-length feature by an African American director.  Of the three Micheaux silent films still extant, Within Our Gates (1920), The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), and Body and Soul (1925), one of them, The Symbol of the Unconquered, returns to Micheaux’s homesteading experiences as the basis for the narrative, as does a later sound film, The Exile (1931). The Amazing Oscar Micheaux draws on both The Symbol of the Unconquered and The Exile as a source for songs.

Reviews of The Amazing Oscar Micheaux have been posted on Blogcritics and AssociatedContent.com (a review by Joseph Bridges that also reprints the albums liner notes). Click on either of the excerpts below for the full review.

Blogcritics: Over the last few years Stace England and his band the Salt Kings have put out two albums, Cairo Illinois and Salt Sex Slaves, which have [recounted] events that you won’t find a record of in most history text books. With their latest album they’ve moved into the twentieth century in order to give us not just a glimpse of events but a person. The Amazing Oscar Micheaux, available for download now and being released in the new year on Rankoutsider Records, introduces listeners to America’s first major African-American director.

From Joseph Bridges: Reading the liner notes to an album is an important part of listening to any album (Note: For those of you out there who think an MP3 is actually music, go buy a physical cd. It costs about the same and includes notations and pictures that add to the effect and tone of the music. i.e The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band). Some notes are sparse as the musicians would like you to dream some of the meanings to the songs. Some notes are copious. Those are the ones I like and on The Amazing Oscar Micheaux, Stace England remembers an almost forgotten legend in the seminal film director Oscar Micheaux. Wrapping up the life of a great director into an album is also a feat as England and his Salt kings break down the life, times, and accomplishments of Micheaux into twelve songs.

Ella Fitzgerald and Ride em Cowboy

Since my earlier post about Dorothy Dandridge’s version of “Cow Cow Boogie,” I’ve been continuing to look around for information about the Abbott and Costello film Ride ‘em Cowboy (for which “Cow Cow Boogie” was written), and it’s turning out to be another interesting case of an intersection of western narrative and African American performance. Produced in 1942, Ride ‘em Cowboy has the distinction of being jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald’s first film role.

Fitzgerald was already famous as a singer. In 1938, she adapted the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” into a song, which sold a million copies and stayed number one on the charts for several weeks. Given her association with the song, it’s not surprising that she also performed it in Ride em Cowboy.

In this clip, Fitzgerald sings “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” while riding on a bus with her fellow ranch workers, as they are heading to the dude ranch where much of the film takes place. Look for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello on the outside of the bus, hanging on to the rear door (which doesn’t prevent them from joining in on the chorus).

Dorothy Dandridge and “Cow Cow Boogie”

I’ve been interested in the African American West for around a decade now, and I find that I’m still continually surprised by new things—or, rather, by old things that I’m just now discovering, particularly in the realm of popular culture. I recently came across a clip of actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge, decked out in a cowgirl outfit (well, okay, a showgirl version of a cowgirl outfit—can’t imagine a skirt that short would be very comfortable for a long day in the saddle), singing and performing the song “Cow Cow Boogie” in this short film from 1942. And keep and eye out for actor and comedian Dudley Dickerson, who expresses his enthusiasm for Dandridge’s performance with his guns. And, is it just me, or is Dandridge’s imitation of the cowboy riding his horse (as she sings “Comma ti yi yi yeah”) somewhat suggestive?

Dandridge rose to fame as the lead in the 1954 film Carmen Jones (adapted from the opera Carmen), although she had been performing as a singer and dancer since the 1930s. Her story was brought back into public consciousness by Halle Barry’s portrayal of her in the HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999).

The song “Cow Cow Boogie” was written (with two co-writers) by African American saxophonist and jazz musician Bennie Carter. Musically, the combination of boogie woogie style with western pop provides a good example of the way African American writers and performers have adapted and altered mainstream western motifs, not just imitating those motifs but transforming them into something new. Although the lyrics do not initially state that the “peculiar cowboy song” overheard is being sung by a black cowboy,  the slang “get hip” and the information that the cowboy learned this ditty “in the city” at least suggest that such is the case.

Out on the plains down near Santa Fe
I met a cowboy ridin’ the range one day
And as he jogged along I heard him singin’
The most peculiar cowboy song
It was a ditty, he learned in the city
Comma ti yi yi yeah
Comma ti yippity yi yeah

Now get along, get hip little doggies
Get along, better be on your way
Get along, get hip little doggies
He trucked ‘em on down that old fairway
Singin’ his Cow Cow Boogie in the strangest way
Comma ti yi yi yeah
Comma ti yippity yi yeah

Some versions of the song include the lyrics “he’s got a knocked out western accent with a dixie touch” in a later stanza, but, in most versions, that line reads, “he’s got a knocked out western accent with a Harlem touch,” thus making the race of the hip cowboy from the city fairly clear.

Although the song first became a hit when performed (in 1942) by the white singer Ella Mae Morse, it has proved extremely popular with African American performers. In addition to Dandridge’s version, Ella Fitzgerald (with The Ink Spots) as well as Herb Jeffries (the original “Two-Gun Man From Harlem”) have performed and recorded the song. The song was originally written for an Abbott and Costello comedy western, Ride ‘em Cowboy (1942), and Ella Fitzgerald seems to have performed the song in the movie (but I’m still investigating to be sure).

For posts on similar topics see:

Noble Sissle and His (Cowboy) Band

Revising the Wild West 100 Greatest Westerns

Weekly Roundup (Western Music), which includes a clip of Herb Jeffries singing “The Payday Blues,” from the film The Bronze Buckaroo.

“Darius Goes West” as Western Narrative

Darius Goes West is an award winning documentary that follows fifteen-year-old Darius Weems on a cross-country journey from Athens, Georgia, to Los Angeles, California, where he hopes to have his wheelchair tricked out on MTV’s Pimp Your Ride. At least, that’s the immediate goal of his journey in the film, although the larger goal is to raise awareness about the illness he suffers from, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Among the many things this film is (uplifting, touching, hilariously funny), it is also a story of western adventure, of figuratively heading out for the territories, as Darius heads “out west without a seatbelt strap” in his “raggely wheelchair” with his crew, eleven of his friends.

In a rap that Darius performs at the beginning of the film, he gives us his his history: “Athens, Georgia, I grew up in public housing. / I’ve never seen a state line, beach, or a mountain.” The film begins with Darius observing, “For the first time in my life, I was going west.” What follows is a mythic and heroic journey, which we certainly would expect in a film about going west, but as Darius states, “I”m a new hero. I’m proof, I’m livin’ .” What’s new about Darius Goes West is the film’s wheelchair-bound African American protagonist, the gregarious “junk talking” Darius, whose personality and enthusiasm fill the screen.  If Pimp My Ride is the practical goal of the journey, the more idealistic goal is to demonstrate, as Darius says, “I might go places that people think I might not go.”

Darius blazes a western trail, and the documentary shows again and again how Darius and his crew quite literally have to create a trail to get him access to the some of America’s iconic western landmarks, such as the Grand Canyon, where his friends lay down 2 x 4’s to create makeshift rails to guide his wheelchair up to an overlook. Other places, such as Carlsbad Caverns, where Darius and crew join the park service in celebrating the “birthday” (or 15th anniversary) of the Americans With Disabilities Act, have been made quite accessible. Ironically, the least accessible place they encounter is the St. Louis Arch, where a flight of fifty stairs blocks access to “The Gateway to the West.”  They can look at the arch, but because of the stairs, they aren’t able to go up into the Arch to enjoy the view.

The filmmakers are also aware of the iconography of western cinema, as suggested particularly by the framing of one shot: Darius in his wheelchair silhouetted against the sunset at the Grand Canyon.

The DVD of Darius Goes West is self-distributed by the the group that produced it, with a portion of the proceeds going toward DMD research, and it is available through the Darius Goes West website. Several versions of the film are available, including one that has been edited for showing in schools. I recommend the unedited version, which includes a scene of Darius telling a “campfire tale” (not to be missed), a (mildly) bawdy story of a “ball-less man.”

Darius Goes West is one of the most original and most interesting “westerns” that I’ve seen in awhile–I hope you’ll check it out.

African Americans in Montana

The Montana Historical Society has recently added a section on its website for the African Americans in Montana Heritage Resources Project. This is an excellent project, well worth checking out, and potentially invaluable for researchers interested in the African American West, particularly for the online access it provides  to information from census records from 1870-1930. The website includes biographical information for every African American individual listed in the 1870, 1910, and 1930 federal censuses, as well as biographical information drawn from city directories, church records, newspapers, etc.

An interactive time-line contains information about African Americans in Montana from 1805 (when York, likely the first individual of African descent to enter what would become Montana, arrived with the Corps of Discovery) to 2007 (when Miles City resident Johnnie Lockett Thomas received a Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for her work on African-American experience in the West).

This is a great website, so do check it out if you have a chance.

C. S. I. and the African American West

My television watching usually lags days, weeks, months, sometimes years behind the actual air date of some episodes and series. I’ve only just started catching up on season 9 of the original C. S. I., and adjusting to all the changes in the cast. I recently saw the episode “Young Man With a Horn,” which originally aired in December 2008, and I thought it was particularly interesting not only in its engagement with Las Vegas history but also in its exploration of racial issues within the context of that history.

C. S. I. has with some consistency included African American actors in both starring and guest roles throughout the series, but I’m not sure how often the series has directly addressed African American issues in terms of racial identity or race-related subject matter. “Young Man With a Horn” seems part of a continuing interest in the past few seasons in investigating the history of the American West via the specific history of a Las Vegas past that continues to make itself known in the Las Vegas present. C. S. I. Greg Sanders has been working on a book about Las Vegas history (which has at this point either been published or at least accepted for publication). There have been numerous episodes that have taken place over two timelines, the present and “30 years ago” or “20 years ago” or whenever that important moment in the past might have been.

Coinciding with these investigations of the past has been an equally interesting mining of film and television history through casting of actors and actresses with long and storied careers in the guest starring roles (Faye Dunaway in the 2006 episode “Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye” comes immediately to mind). We see the continuing presence of Las Vegas’s past in these characters, but there also seems to be an archival impulse in casting, a kind of history of film and television woven into the larger narrative of the story.

This episode brings us African American actor Bill Cobbs as Harry Bastille, the “Young Man With the Horn” of the title (the elderly man with the horn in the episode’s present), an actor who has been playing in film and television roles for 30 years. Tippi Hedren (who I’ll always remember from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds) plays Karen Rosenthal. Ralph Waite plays the retired Sheriff Montgomery. Robert Guillaume plays Sonny Bridges, who is part of Montgomery’s poker group, along with Emmy-winning producer and director George Schlatter (Laugh-In, various Frank Sinatra specials, etc.) as himself. That’s quite a guest cast for one episode!

The story revolves around the abandoned casino Le Chateau Rouge, the first integrated casino in Las Vegas. A young black  singer named Layla Wells breaks into the abandoned casino because her grandmother used to perform there. [Note: From this point on, spoilers follow, so if anyone is even more behind than I am in watching this season's C. S. I., read no further if you want to avoid any plot surprises.]

Layla ends up dead, although the real murder mystery is 50 years in the past, and the death of Layla (which turns out to be accidental) serves primarily as prelude to the investigation of the earlier case, which involves Harry Bastille (who is homeless in the present and living in the casino) and Karen Rosenthal, and the murder of Karen’s husband shortly before Le Chateau Rouge closed forever.

The episode paints a picture of the African American West as a place of both potential opportunity and continued oppression. Le Chateau Rouge represents a pioneering effort, “the first casino where blacks weren’t turned away at the door,” but the primary picture painted of Las Vegas in the 1950s comes through the conversation around the poker table.  As Sonny Bridges comments, “Back then, Las Vegas was known as the Mississippi of the West.” George Schlatter remarks, after reeling off a long list of African American performers, including Sammy Davis, Jr., and Lena Horne, “I booked them all into the big rooms on the strip, but they could not stay at the hotels there. Couldn’t even gamble at the casinos. Had to come in and out through the kitchens.”

As an integrated space, Le Chateau Rouge only lasted 6 months before, as Sanders puts it, “The KC mob didn’t like the east coast boys poaching their pigeons” and thus shut it down.  That, of course, was not the whole story, and neither was it even the murder of Le Chateau Rouge owner Rosenthal that caused the closing. Rather, what was most offensive to the men who ran Las Vegas, according to Karen Rosenthal, was the sexual danger represented by this integrated place. Karen, who killed (arguably in self defense) her husband when he discovered her with Harry Bastille, reveals that that murder was covered up and an innocent man framed for the crime as a means of hiding the true cause of the death, because “A white woman could get away with murder, but she couldn’t love a black man.”

An episode that deals so explicitly with show business, and with the tangled racial politics of show business, seems to suggest a kind of metacommentary on history of television and the racial politics of that medium, but I’ll leave that investigation for another day.

Noble Sissle and his (Cowboy) Band

I recently came across this musical clip, a short film from 1933 with bandleader Noble Sissle and his band playing an instrumental medley that includes “The St. Louis Blues,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” and “Swanee River.” What’s particularly interesting, at least from the perspective of western studies, is to see the African American members of Sissle’s band decked out in what seem to be cowboy outfits—particularly their hats and vests.  The instrumental combination of saxophones and fiddles is also interesting, as the fiddles give the song a bit of a western swing sound in counterpoint to the jazzier sounds of the saxophones. There’s a similar effect created in the second song via the combination of someone playing a washboard and the vocalist’s skat singing.

The short, titled “That’s the Spirit,” begins with a comic interlude starring Flournoy Miller and Mantan Moreland as two night watchmen at a pawn shop. The material is stereotyped (the pawn shop is haunted, the night watchmen are horribly afraid of ghosts, and Miller performs the routine in blackface), but it is well performed by the two veteran black performers. Miller in particular is a central figure in terms of early twentieth-century African American performance, from his days as a vaudeville performer with partner Aubrey Lyles to his major role in the 1921 musical comedy Shuffle Along, a huge hit that some argue sparked the Harlem Renaissance, and one that also launched the career of Josephine Baker.

Mantan Moreland had a film, stage, and television career that stretched into the 1970s, although he may be best known as Charlie Chan’s chauffeur Birmingham Brown (a role he played in fifteen movies). He also played a small part in Two-Gun Man From Harlem, the black-cast western from 1938. And, he played other small parts in mainstream westerns (usually as the cook) in the 1930s and 1940s.

So, despite the stereotypical material, it’s good to see these two actors working together, and to see two individuals who both had long and storied performance careers on the screen together—there’s a lot of African American performance history in this short clip.

And, of course, there’s Noble Sissle, who collaborated with Eubie Blake on the music for Shuffle Along (with Sissle contributing, for example, the lyrics to the song “I’m Just Wild About Harry”). Sissle was a well-known singer in the 1930s, and here he contributes a tap dance routine to his bandleading duties.

The short begins with Miller and Moreland enduring various ghostly happenings, the last of which is when a miniature band comes to life and starts playing.

African American Performance in Montana

As part of a continuing research project on African American singer Taylor Gordon (who was born in 1893 in White Sulphur Springs, Montana), I’ve been looking at late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Montana newspapers, searching for items on Taylor Gordon as well as for information generally on African American life in Montana.

Recently, I’ve been reading through The Montana Plaindealer, which operated for a five-year period as an important news source for Helena’s African American population. One thing I’ve noticed is the importance of musical and comedic performance in black western communities in Helena and White Sulphur Springs. Brass bands comprised of African American members were formed in both communities, and national touring companies of black performers (such as the Fisk University Jubilee Singers) made stops in both Helena and the Springs.

The Montana Plaindealer is particularly useful for documenting the frequency of  such performances—whether consisting of local talent or touring professional groups. I would suggest that  attending and / or participating in these performances was a way of building a sense of a shared African American community and a way for black westerners to remain connected to the larger African American national community.

Below, I’ve pasted in several items from The Plaindealer related to touring and local performance groups. Although we often associate minstrelsy with white performers in blackface, there were also a significant number of African American minstrel troupes touring the country, and several of those groups made stops in Helena and elsewhere in Montana.

Maharra’s Minstrels, May 11, 1906:

Damon’s New Orleans Colored Concert Company, May 25, 1906

An advertisement seeking performers for a new Helena-based group, July 13, 1906

Richard and Pringle’s Georgia Minstrels, one of the most famous of the early-twentieth-century black minstrel troupes, July 12, 1907

Montana Plaindealer (1906-1911)

As part of a research project on African American singer Emmanuel Taylor Gordon (1893-1971), I’ve been looking at late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century newspapers from Montana. Taylor Gordon was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, and although he lived in New York City throughout most of his career, he returned to White Sulphur Springs in the 1950s. His sister Rose and brother Robert both remained in the Springs. Rose Gordon frequently published columns and letters in the Meagher County News, and the various members of the Gordon family make frequent appearances in the “local items” sections of the White Sulphur Springs newspapers (which also include the Meagher Republican and the Rocky Mountain Husbandman) over the years.

I’ve recently been reading through the five-year run of The Montana Plaindealer, which was published from March 16, 1906, until September 5, 1911. Distributed to the black community of Helena, the newspaper was edited by African American Helena resident Joseph B. Bass.

Although my purpose in this research is to discover more information about the activities of the Gordon family, the Plaindealer is well worth looking at in and of itself for what it tells us about the everyday activities and the interests of Helena’s African American citizens, a small (420 individuals in 1910) but active group in the larger Helena community. And, given how little has been written about African American life in the West, The Montana Plaindealer can probably shed some light on the experiences of black westerners in general, who, like the black citizens of Helena, were often members of small minority communities  living within towns and cities in which whites made up a much larger percentage of the population.

The newspaper comments on political issues of concern, reports on the activities of members of the community, and sometimes includes critical commentary about individuals whose activities reflect poorly on the community. Among other services to the community, The Plaindealer provided an advertising forum for local black-owned business (which, in turn, supported the newspaper by purchasing ad space). Similarly, The Plaindealer often published supportive articles about black-owned businesses and business owners, especially those business owners who embodied The Plaindealer’s proactive philosophy: “Our ideal of living is to BE SOMETHING, HAVE SOMETHING and DO SOMETHING” (March 6, 1906).

One individual who certainly exemplified that ideal was Mrs. Agnes Bush, of Boise City, Idaho, who was profiled (with an accompanying photograph, something of a rarity) in the May 17, 1907, edition of the newspaper. In the image below, you can also get some of the flavor of the local businesses and advertising styles (for Lloyds, which offered a barber shop, shoeshine parlor, and tailor shop; for Arthur P. Curtin, a second-hand furniture store; and for a benefit concert sponsored by The Plaindealer, which featured local residents as singers and performers).

The photograph, The Plaindealer informs us, “is the likeness of a colored woman of Boise City, Idaho, who is perhaps the wealthiest colored woman in the entire West. She recently purchased one of the finest residences in the city of Boise, and paid $30,000 in cash for the same, and an additional $5,000 for furnishings. She often visits Helena, and last year came to public notice through the loss of a trunk of immense value.”

Certainly, Mrs. Agnes Bush has put into practice the motto of BE SOMETHING, HAVE SOMETHING and DO SOMETHING. She is presented as a model of African American achievement, someone who has “done something” in the American West, and like other individuals profiled in the newspaper, her achievements are celebrated; and, at the same time, those achievements are implicitly presented as a challenge to others—to follow her path and do something as well.

Oscar Micheaux Conference

The past couple of years have been good ones for fans of African American writer and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951). Paul McGilligan’s comprehensive biography, Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only, came out in 2007. This month, a major conference on Micheaux’s work is being held at Columbia University, concurrent with a retrospective screening of his films at Lincoln Center.

Although Micheaux was born in Metropolis, Illinois, he is of interest to scholars of the American West in part because of the several years he spent on a homestead near Gregory, South Dakota. His autobiography The Conquest (1913) and his novel The Homesteader (1917) detail his trials and tribulations (and successes) on his South Dakota farm, and they are among the few books currently in print describing the experiences of an African American homesteader. Several members of Micheaux’s family lived in Kansas (and Micheaux himself is buried in Great Bend).

Micheaux is best known as a pioneering filmmaker. His film version of The Homesteader (1919) was the first full-length feature by an African American director. Although most of the film was shot on a sound-stage, Micheaux traveled around South Dakota briefly with his primary actors for some location filming (The Homesteader, alas, is a lost film). Of the three Micheaux silent films still extant, Within Our Gates (1920), The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), and Body and Soul (1925), one of them, The Symbol of the Unconquered, returns to Micheaux’s homesteading experiences as the basis for the narrative. A later sound film, The Exile (1931), is an adaptation of The Conquest. Throughout his career as both a writer and a filmmaker, Micheaux would return again and again to his homesteading experiences and to western themes as subject matter for his stories.

For more information on the conference at Columbia University (February 6-7, 2009), see Faded Glory: Oscar Micheaux and The Pre-War Black Independent Cinema.

Or click here for a list of the films being screened  (February 6-19, 2009) at Lincoln Center.

For more information on Oscar Micheaux, see the Oscar Micheaux Society website.

See also the Oscar Micheaux Film and Book Festival, held in Gregory, South Dakota.