May Irwin: Singing, Shouting, and the Shadow of Minstrelsy by Sharon Ammen (review)

In 1896, Thomas Edison made a fifteen-second film titled The Kiss. In the film, two fairly unattractive, middle-aged people press cheek to cheek, lips touching at only one corner while the kissers seem to be speaking to one another from "the other side" of their mouths. Then, the man pulls away, pulls his mustachios into perfect curls, and kisses the woman full on for just a few seconds. This little film has always struck me as being a bit salacious and unromantic, too broad and theatrical to be authentic. It turns out, The Kiss was indeed performed by John C. Rice and May Irwin, one of the most popular entertainers of the day. Those fifteen seconds were taken from a scene in Irwin's mega-hit farce The Widow Jones. If Irwin is remembered at all it is largely because of this little film.

Irwin may also be remembered and closely identified by the "coon songs" she wrote and recorded. The coon song was a type of ragtime rampant with racist images of African Americans. They were written in "negro dialect" and depicted racist caricatures of black life. Irwin was a "coon shouter," the name given to this style of performer, and her most popular song, The Bully, involved a coldblooded murder. The titular character, a black man, is armed with a straight razor and looking for a fight. She is thus remembered for the racist and distasteful songs that made her a star. Presciently, Irwin wrote: "Sometimes I feel a certain regret that perhaps my name will go down in history, if it even trundles along that far, as 'the woman who sang coon songs,' more than the woman who made the public laugh. The latter would be the height of my ambition" (68).

In May Irwin: Singing, Shouting, and the Shadow of Minstrelsy, Sharon Ammen unapologetically examines the layered and complex meanings of Ir-win's coon songs with their attendant negative images of black people, enacted through "comedy." "It is simply," Ammen writes, "not possible to write about May Irwin without delving into this subject, for if coon songs were indeed the 'nadir' of 'vulgarity in music,' then May Irwin was their most prominent purveyor throughout the period of their peak popularity—from the 1890s until World War I" (70). Nevertheless, Ammen's book and Irwin herself are indeed worthy of study beyond The Kiss and the coon songs that made her a star.

Sharon Ammen's exceedingly readable book introduces us to a complex, strong, savvy, and kind woman. Irwin's persona went far beyond her work on the stage. May was called by the critics the "personification of humor," and President Wilson appointed her "Secretary of Laughter." Irwin was also a writer, home-maker, mother, landowner, dairy farmer, and a vigorous supporter of suffrage who also wrote a cookbook, and she was frequently a contributor to magazines such as Green Book and Cosmopolitan. Yet, despite her great wealth and power, "she was just a sweet, jolly, harmless, fat woman" (111).

Ammen examines a complicated life whose success lies in no small part to minstrel music that celebrates a form (the coon song) that today's reader will find shameful and deeply disturbing—no small feat, indeed. She handles the material with a gentle yet insistent hand that mediates the harsh nature of her subject's career. Ammen's writing reveals a sense of humor and irony, is impeccably researched, and very successfully contextualizes the culture of Irwin's time. The reader not only comes to know May and her personal and professional personas but also to understand how performers and audiences could call such racist, violent, exaggerated, and false portrayals of black people "entertainment."

Ammen has been studying May Irwin for more than twenty years, and this book is clearly the result of that labor of love. Ammen met with many challenges collecting material, as there are no major studies...