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26 Opal D. Cooper The thriving black musical scene in New York in the 1910s produced a number of less-known entertainers who left their voices on record. One of these was Opal Cooper , a banjo player and vocalist whose career exemplifies the itinerant life of a cabaret musician. Recording as early as 1917, he later became one of the expatriate musicians who brought American jazz to Europe after World War I. Cooper was born in Cromwell, Kentucky, on February 3, 1889, to Louis and Ellen Cooper, and grew up in Chicago.1 His father was in the “mechanical business.”2 Nothing further is known of his family or early life, but by the time he was in his late teens he was performing professionally in the Midwest. An item in the December 1910 Indianapolis Freeman listed him as a soloist at a Chicago recital featuring classical soprano Anita Patti Brown, commenting that he was “a tenor of excellent timbre.” The following year the Freeman noted in its Chicago report that “Mr. Opal D. Cooper has made arrangements to travel with a quartet, doing chautauqua work.”3 A later item indicated that he had vocal training at the Chicago Musical College.4 Cooper’s career soon veered away from concert and recital work. By 1915 he was in New York, appearing in Darkydom, a musical staged by black comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. The show opened at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem on October 23, 1915, and was an evening of songs combined with an extended sketch from Miller and Lyles’s vaudeville act. Cooper performed Will Marion Cook’s new song, “Mammy.”5 The show, which was strongly reminiscent of the old Williams and Walker musicals and involved many of the same people, broke little new ground, but at least it gave Cooper the opportunity to work with some of the leading lights of the New York black musical scene, including Cook, conductor James Reese Europe, and producer/critic Lester A. Walton. It had a short run in New York and then went on tour.6 The following year saw Cooper in the cast of the Darktown Follies, Harlem’s version of the Ziegfeld Follies, which ran from 1913 to 1916. This time he had several speaking roles, including those of Jim Thomas, Jake, and Ishta, the Temporary Ruler of Somali Land. He sang “Hoola-Boola Love Song” and led the entire company in the grand finale, “Goodbye, Ragtime.”7 (The character “Hoola” was played by Jim Europe’s girlfriend, Bessie Simms.) The association with Jim Europe must have paid off, since by the fall Cooper was appearing with the conductor’s troupe. In October 1916 the New York Age listed him as a member of the “Europe Double Quintet, the greatest singing and instrumental aggregation on the stage . . . composed of the cleverest colored entertainers known,” then appearing at the Lafayette Theatre.8 Cooper sang tenor and played bandolin; Europe’s friend Noble Sissle was also in the group. In December Cooper, Sissle, and Eubie Blake were listed as members of a Europe orchestra that entertained inmates at Sing-Sing Prison in New York.9 05.335-496_Broo 12/22/03, 1:43 PM 355 356 lost sounds In some ways 1917 marked the height of Cooper’s career. In a stunning change of direction, he joined the Coloured Players and in April appeared with them in a trio of serious plays by white poet Ridgely Torrence, staged at the Garden Theatre at Madison Square Garden. Cooper starred in the first of the three, the seriocomic Rider of Dreams, as Madison Sparrow, a ne’er-do-well black man who unwisely uses his family’s savings in an attempt to build a better life. Critics were surprised by Cooper’s sensitive performance, as well as that of costar Blanche Deas as his wife, Lucy. “Opal Cooper was the most agreeable surprise of the entire performance,” wrote a black newspaper. “Heretofore he attracted favorable attention as a vocalist, this being his first venture in an important speaking role. He was best when telling Lucy Sparrow of his plans to become a businessman and of the visionary schemes that prompted him ‘to make his money work for him.’ No white actor could modulate his voice with such effectiveness, for the flexibility and religious fervor to produce this singsong effect would be missing.”10 White critics took notice as well. Heywood Broun, writing in the New York Tribune , said “a...

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