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105 Bert Williams and George Walker until the beginning of World War II. They then broke up, although a trio from the chorus continued performing until the1950s under the name Day, Dawn, and Dusk. No copies of the faint cylinders from 1894 are known to survive, and the chance that any will be found is remote, given the small quantities that were made. If one should turn up, however, it would represent a fascinating link with the very beginnings of spiritual singing by a group that traced its history back to the 1870s. 8 Bert Williams and George Walker Bert Williams is often referred to as the first black “superstar” of the twentieth century . He achieved enormous success in vaudeville and on the Broadway stage, and was popular with black and white audiences alike. But we need not remember him only by old photographs and the memories of those who saw him. Often overlooked is the fact that in addition to being a top-rank actor and comedian, he was also an extremely popular recording artist and the best-selling black artist of the pre-1920 period by far. His recordings managed to convey his unique stage persona in a manner that appealed to both black and white record buyers. They serve as the soundtrack of his fabulous career. He was born Egbert Austin Williams in Nassau, the Bahamas, on November 12, 1874.1 A proud man, he was in later life quite secretive about his family. No picture of them is known to exist, and it is not even certain whether he had any brothers or sisters. His grandfather was a successful businessman, possibly in the citrus industry , and his father, Frederick, held a variety of jobs in that field. The family moved permanently to the United States when Bert was about ten, settling in California. In 1893, while still in his teens, the light-skinned Bert briefly appeared with a West Coast traveling minstrel show run by Lew Johnson, where he impersonated a Hawaiian. Later in the year he joined Martin and Selig’s Mastodon Minstrels. It was while in San Francisco with the latter troupe that he met his future partner, George Walker. Walker (born c. 1873 in Lawrence, Kansas) had just arrived in town from the Midwest with a traveling medicine show, and Williams got him a job as an endman with the Martin and Selig show. The two quickly became fast friends and began to talk about working together. During the next three years Williams and Walker appeared in a variety of traveling shows and in solo appearances, gradually honing their act. At first Williams played the slick operator and Walker the “dumb coon,” but they soon discovered that the comedy worked best when they switched roles. Over time Walker, lithe and sharp-featured, became the grinning, strutting dandy, while Williams played the slow moving, dimwitted oaf. Although he was a big man, Williams was extremely agile and would never fail to convulse audiences with his body language and unexpected bits of physical “business.” He was also a talented musician. By 1895 he had begun writing songs, some in collaboration with Walker, and several were published to modest success by Howley, 02.73-152_Broo 12/17/03, 1:45 PM 105 106 lost sounds Havel, and Company and Witmark Brothers in New York. Perhaps the first song to become identified with the team was Williams’s “Dora Dean,” about the sharpdressing female half of the Johnson and Dean black vaudeville duo. It set the pattern for the clever, contemporary, sometimes slangy tone of their early material, which spoke to a hip, young, urban audience. Williams and Walker were still small-time, however, and they had their setbacks. They joined John W. Isham’s The Octoroons in Chicago during the winter of 1895– 96, but flopped and were dropped from the show. Finally, in September 1896, they made it to New York, where their act was interpolated into a faltering musical written by Victor Herbert called The Gold Bug. They were rushed into the show on its second night, but the orchestra had a hard time adjusting to their raggy material, including their new comic song, “Oh, I Don’t Know, You’re Not So Warm.” They nevertheless made a favorable impression with their clever, energetic comedy. Critics were not so kind to the rest of the show, and The Gold Bug quickly closed, but Williams and Walker were able to parlay their good...

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