Behind them on the stage, a giant watermelon. In their hands, little tiny guitars, which they play like mosquitoes on speed. They scat, they dance, they get halfway through the alphabet. Their percussionist has the coolest little drum kit ever, but that doesn't stop him from playing the stage floor and the walls. Who are they? Why,
The Five Racketeers, of course! And who's that lady who storms the stage for a little shimmy at the end of the clip? Well, that's Eunice Wilson, and she stuck around to do
another number with the fellows. You want more, right? OK! Then let's head down to the
All-Colored Vaudeville Show, for some serious oooold-school entertainment.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jun 16, 2009 -
21 comments
Every trade has a history, a culture and secrets, all most vividly expressed in the special terms used by its workers. The circus is, of course, no different
as this handy dictionary of circus slang shows. It contains entries for both American and European circuses, and has a handy list of vaudeville slang words as well. These unique words used on the carnival lot around the world demonstrate a language that defines a world of wonders, and now you can use them to impress your friends and insult your enemies!
posted by Effigy2000
on Sep 25, 2008 -
14 comments
Virtual Vaudeville [shockwave] Watch a 3D simulation of legendary comedian Frank Bush in a vaudeville performance from a variety of perspectives. Switch between any of eight perspectives at any time and read the extensive hypermedia notes to gain a richer understanding of the performance in its historical context.
posted by tellurian
on Sep 4, 2008 -
11 comments
Let's pay a little visit, shall we, to everyone's favorite lasso twirlin', geetar strummin' stars of the Vaudeville stage,
Otto Gray's Oklahoma Cowboys Then let's head for the South Pacific, for the "Hawaiian" sounds of
Witt and Berg. And from the early days of the "talkie", Max Fleischer explains the new-fangled technology for us in the 1929 cartoon,
Finding His Voice.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 25, 2008 -
10 comments
Joan Rhodes, strong woman. Born
ca. 1920 in England, as
Josie Terena, ‘Joan
Rhodes became
famous in the 1950s and 60s as a
strong woman,’ sometimes billed as
The Mighty Mannequin. ‘She performed in cabaret, variety and vaudeville, stunning
audiences with her amazing feats of strength. She could
bend heavy steel
bars that no
man in the audience could even dent, she could break six-inch nails with her hands, and she could tear the 1000 page London phone book not merely in half, but into quarters.’
posted by misteraitch
on May 29, 2007 -
9 comments
Jump Jim Crow, through the hoops of one Robert Christgau's erudition as he surveys the literature extant in
In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter, through multiple readings of
Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop,
Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World and and
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Consider, too,
The Minstrel Cycle from
Reading The Commitments and other various and sundry attempts to peek
inside the minstrel mask—all multiple readings reading blackface minstrels from the
pejorative to the
explorative, subversive to oppressive, past to future, unfolding tesseractly, if not exactly, with singing, dancing
and extraordinary elocutions. Buy your tickets and step within for
The Meller Drammer of Minstrelsy in
The Minstrel Show 2.0…
posted by y2karl
on Mar 31, 2005 -
17 comments
While culling my clippings file for the big move, I came across
Ragtime: No Longer a Novelty in Sepia, which led me to the
The Rag-Time Ephemeralist, a labor of love by one
Chris Ware , whose
'The Acme Novelty Library' and
Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Boy In The World I had long admired. The Ragtime Ephemeralist's mention of
Out of Sight - The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895---here's a
review from
Musical Traditions--and, its very own
links page, as a consequence, led to this post about Ragtime, Cakewalks, Coon Songs and Vaudeville, with a slight nod to Barbershop Quartets. There's more, of course...
posted by y2karl
on Jan 21, 2005 -
27 comments
The Minstrel Show The Minstrel Show presents us with a strange, fascinating and awful phenomenon. Minstrel shows emerged from preindustrial European traditions of masking and carnival. But in the US they began in the 1830s, with working class white men dressing up as plantation slaves. These men imitated black musical and dance forms, combining savage parody of black Americans with genuine fondness for African American cultural forms. By the Civil War the minstrel show had become world famous and respectable. Late in his life Mark Twain fondly remembered the "old time nigger show" with its colorful comic darkies and its rousing songs and dances. By the 1840s, the minstrel show had become one of the central events in the culture of the Democratic party..
The image of white men in blackface, miming black song, dance and speech is considered the last word in racist bigotry for some. And yet, standing at the crossroads of race, class and high and low culture, blackface minstrelsy is one fascinating topic in academic circles. It’s history is intertwined with the rise of abolitionism, the works of Mark Twain and the histories of
vaudeville,
American vernacular music, radio, television,
movies, in fact all of what is called popular culture. Details within.
posted by y2karl
on Mar 13, 2002 -
26 comments
