James Weldon Johnson's Modern Soundscapes

Notes

207 notes INtrOductION 1. On Johnson’s hands, see Carl Van Vechten’s correspondence with Grace Nail Johnson, box 37, folder 240, Johnson and Johnson Papers (Correspondence and Manuscripts), BRBL (hereafter cited as either JWJ Corr. or JWJ MSS, BRBL); on Johnson’s hands and eyes, see Ovington’s chapter on Johnson in Portraits in Color. See also Richetta Randolph, later Johnson’s secretary at the NAACP, on her first sight of Johnson, recorded in her memorial speech, provided in a letter to Carl Van Vechten: “I raised my eyes and saw walking up and down the room across the hall as if lost in deep thought a man who appeared to me to be one of the most distinguished Negroes I had ever seen” (Randolph to Van Vechten, December 1, 1942, box 21, folder 507, JWJ Corr., BRBL). See also note 26. 2. Oswald Garrison Villard, untitled obituary, Nation, July 9, 1938, 44. 3. Alfred A. Knopf, uncredited obituary, New York Herald Tribune, June 28, 1938. 4. Jackson, “Letters to a Friend,” 191. 5. Knopf, uncredited obituary. 6. While James Sr. held one of the highest social positions available to African Americans, he was functionally illiterate until middle age. Johnson saw his father lose several real estate endeavors in the years just before his death in 1912 as a result of being swindled by those who knew more than he did. 7. A portion of this discussion can be found in my introduction to Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings. 8. See Johnson’s description of Ike Hines and Jimmy Marshall in Along This Way, chap. 16. 9. See “The Czar of Czam,” box 74, folders 438–39, JWJ MSS, BRBL. 10. Cole and Johnson Brothers’ songs made several appearances in films, many of those appearances uncredited. Their wildly successful “Under the Bamboo Tree” appears in Suzy (1936), Lillian Russell (1940), White Cargo (1942), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and Bowery to Broadway (1944), to name but a few. The Johnsons’ original football anthem, “Oh! Didn’t He Ramble,” appears in Sunny (1930) uncredited. The lyrics to “Under the Bamboo Tree” also made it into T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes. 11. Berlin, “Cole and Johnson Brothers.” 12. For the insertion of arias into ragtime, see Riis, Just before Jazz, 84. 13. Johnson, Along This Way, 173–74. 14. I am indebted to Gerald Early’s interpretation of the New Negro Renaissance in Black Bohemia and the centrality of Jack Johnson as an icon of social 208 N O t e S t O P a g e S 1 2 – 2 8 change for black culture and an emblem of racial tensions nationwide, which Early discusses in his introduction to My Soul’s High Song, 4–25. 15. See Johnson’s New York Age editorial “Dealing with Mobs,” October 11, 1919, in Wilson, Selected Writings, 1:71–72. See also “The Riots: An NAACP Investigation ” (1919), in Andrews, James Weldon Johnson, 655–59. 16. Early, introduction, 27, 29. 17. Biers, “Syncope Fever.” 18. Harlan and Smock, The Booker T. Washington Papers, 7:141n2. 19. Osofsky, “Race Riot, 1900.” As Mark Anthony Neal writes, this riot “politicize [d] the black community within New York’s urban spaces in ways that would impact black political and social discourse for three decades” (What the Music Said, 10). 20. Johnson, Black Manhattan, 126–30. 21. Quoted in Knopf publicity circular for Black Manhattan, October 29, 1931, Author Files, 718.10, Knopf Papers, HRC, emphasis added. 22. James Weldon Johnson, commencement address, Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth, June 1916, box 2, folder 35, Johnson Papers, MARBL. 23. Johnson’s autograph annotations; see Anonymous, The Autobiography, copy 2, MARBL. 24. James Weldon Johnson, “‘The Poor White Musician,’” New York Age, September 23, 1915, in Wilson, Selected Writings, 1:285. 25. James Weldon Johnson, “Writers of Words and Music,” New York Age, March 2, 1918, in Wilson, Selected Writings, 1:289. 26. Radano, Lying Up a Nation, 104. 27. Ibid., xii, xiii. 28. James Weldon Johnson, “American Music,” New York Age, January 13, 1916, in Wilson, Selected Writings, 1:287. 29. Knopf, uncredited obituary. 30. Villard, untitled obituary. 31. “Rhythm” and “tonal harmony” are from Herman J. D. Carter, “My Teacher,” Pulse Magazine (1948); “Half-closed eyes of the visionary” is from Georgia Douglas Johnson, “A Reminisence [sic],” Pulse Magazine (1948). See also note 1. 32. William E. Clark, “Johnson’s Loss Blow to Theatre,” Negro Actor...