Sissieretta Jones: "The Greatest Singer of Her Race," 1868-1933

7: The Black Patti Troubadours, Early Years, 1897–1900

: 116 : 8 7 The Black Patti Troubadours, Early Years 1897–1900 Sissieretta’s triumph as star of the Black Patti Troubadours’ opening season was the first of many successes she would experience over the next twelve years as star of the African American touring company owned and managed by Rudolph Voelckel and John Nolan. The shows would change from year to year, as would the music, the cast, the touring schedules, and the venues, but the two constants that made the Black Patti Troubadours one of the most successful black road shows for thirteen seasons were Sissieretta’s singing and Voelckel and Nolan’s business and management acumen. Sissieretta and her managers would spend the next twelve years traveling across the United States and Canada. Each touring season began in August and ended forty-two to forty-six weeks later in May or early June. Sissieretta and the Troubadours did about seven shows a week, including evening performances and matinees. During the months of June and July, Sissieretta stayed with her mother in Rhode Island. This was the pattern her life followed after the Black Patti Troubadours debuted in 1896. Other than the two months she spent with her mother each summer, her life was her work, and her “family” became the people she spent most of her days with—her fellow Troubadours. An examination of the Black Patti Troubadours show and its cast from 1897 until 1909 helps to reveal how Sissieretta lived between the ages of twenty-nine and forty-one. The Black Patti Troubadours was the most successful of many African American road shows touring the country at the turn of the century and into the first decade of the 1900s, “whether judged by the fame of its star, the quality of the houses it played, or its sheer longevity,” according to music scholar Thomas L. Riis.1 Black musical comedy shows of the period employed ragtime music, coon songs, cakewalks, opera, comedy, song and dance, specialty 117 : The Black Patti Troubadours, Early Years, 1897–1900 acts, and musical farce to entertain both black and white audiences. Although many productions still employed elements of minstrelsy, the shows were moving away from that form of entertainment and more toward true musical comedies. During the years the Black Patti Troubadours toured, 1896 to 1909, many African American singers, dancers, comedians, and composers found great success in the entertainment field—Bob Cole, J. Rosamund Johnson, Ernest Hogan, Will Marion Cook, Aida Overton Walker, George Walker, Bert Williams, Ida Forsyne, Jolly John Larkins, J. Ed. Green, Homer Tutt, and Salem Tutt Whitney. These were Sissieretta’s contemporaries, and many of them spent some period of their careers as a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. One of the most famous black entertainers around the turn of the century was Hogan, who became Sissieretta’s costar from 1897 until 1899. Voelckel and Nolan hired Hogan, a veteran minstrel man, comedian, singer, and songwriter, to serve as stage manager and principal comedian. Hogan, whose real name was Reuben Crowders, was born in 1865 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His father was a bricklayer. Hogan, one of a number of children in the family, ran away at an early age and joined a traveling troupe. Although he experienced tough times during those early years, he kept working in jobs connected with the theatrical profession. “His face, black as the ace of spades, his cheery, sparkling eyes and heady wit, won for him many a helping hand in these early days of struggle,” according to an 1897 article published in the Indianapolis Freeman.2 Hogan, who had no formal education, was self-taught. He spent years in minstrel shows, although he did not use burnt cork to blacken his face or greasepaint to create large lips, as was the custom back then, even in black minstrel shows. Instead he wore old clothes and used his ability to distort his facial expressions to make people laugh. As an actor and singer, he could move people from laughter to tears.3 As the era of ragtime music took hold, Hogan began composing his own music and became famous for his 1896 coon song “All Coons Look Alike to Me.” By 1897 Hogan claimed he earned about four hundred dollars a month in royalties from this song and other popular songs he had written.4 When he wrote “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” Hogan did not consider it an insult to his race but rather just popular ragtime...