Treasures of The Texas Collection
Jules Bledsoe
Script for KWBU-FM and Texas NPR Stations
By Robert Darden
<Play “Old Man River” sung by Jules Bledsoe from Sunny, Showboat Lido Lady:
Original Cast Series CD (Gemm CD9105)>
Host (Mary Landon Darden)
Remember that song? Sure you do. But did you know it was first sung by a
gentleman named Jules Bledsoe who was very popular in the years before
World War II. Here to tell us Jules Bledsoe’s remarkable story is Robert
Darden, an author and associate professor of Journalism.
Robert, thank you for sharing this great story with us today.
(Robert Darden)
It is my pleasure, Mary.
What can you tell us about Jules Bledsoe and that oh-so-very familiar song?
(Writer Robert Darden)
What you are hearing is Jules Bledsoe singing Jerome Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein’s immortal “Old Man River” from the ground-breaking Broadway
music, Show Boat. This particular recording is from 1931, with the original English
cast, accompanied by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. It was Bledsoe who
originated this role, rather than the better-known Paul Robeson, who would later
sing the song in the movie version.
So, who was Jules Bledsoe?
Unfortunately, Bledsoe is hardly known today, even though he was also the
first African American to sing with a major American opera company. However, in
his hometown of Waco, TX, his bust adorns the lobby of the Hippodrome Theater
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downtown and his tombstone, inscribed with the words, “Old Man River, he just
keeps rolling along,” is found in a small local cemetery.
Jules Bledsoe was a fascinating, complicated man, someone who overcame
the ferocious racism of his era before his death of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 43
in 1943. Among the many treasures of the Texas Collection are his papers, letters,
a hand-written diary, program notes, original compositions, and photographs of
this important, if now sadly forgotten figure in American musical history.
Bledsoe, originally named Julius, was born in Waco on December 29, 1899,
the only son of Henry and Jessie Cobb Bledsoe, into a large family of singers and
musicians. His aunt Mae Ollie Cobb Spiller taught him to sing and play piano and
he was singing in church at age five. The church, by the way, was New Hope
Baptist, founded by his grandfather Stephen Cobb in 1866, said to be the first black
preacher ordained following the Civil War.
Jules’ talent was so obvious that a number of people, both white and black,
saw to his education, which included a stint at Central Texas Academy, a private
prep school affiliated with Central Texas College. According to Lynnette Goggans
Geary’s wonderful master’s thesis on Bledsoe’s music, he was admitted early to
Bishop College, a historically all-black college in Marshall, Texas, where he
continued to study music. His first known public performances in Waco occurred
in July 1916, when he played an outdoor concert on the Baylor University campus
and later in the Auditorium Theatre –a remarkable feat for an era of segregation.
Upon graduation, Bledsoe became affiliated with the YMCA and eventually
moved to New York, where he enrolled in medical school at Columbia University.
But with his mother’s death in 1920, he returned to music and joined the cast of the
popular all-black musical revue, “Shufflin’ Along,” with Eubie Blake and Noble
Sissle in 1921. It was a smash hit with black and white audiences alike and Annie
Keeling Randle, a friend of the Bledsoe family, said that Jules was actually
“discovered” by legendary pianist Blake, who had often played USO shows in
Waco.
Did he ever return to his medical studies or did he give it all up for the stage?
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He was apparently committed to the stage by then, while in New York,
Bledsoe was accepted as a student by the famed Luigi Parisotti for two and a half
years, although Parisotti would only allow him to hum for the first six months of
their lessons! He then studied with Welsh singer Clara Novello-Davies and Lazar
Samoiloff, before making his official New York debut on Easter Sunday April 20,
1924. The program for this event still survives at the Texas Collection and includes
challenging, demanding pieces by Schubert, Dvorak, and Elgar – along with a
series of arranged spirituals. The reviews, again, were exceptional and he gained
his first manager, the famous New York impresario Sol Hurok.
With a famous New York manager, opportunities must have increased. What
did Bledsoe do next?
More well-received programs followed, along with more popular concerts.
Bledsoe also took the role of Abraham in the Paul Green’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
drama In Abraham’s Bosom in 1927.
I should probably point out, that it wasn’t as if Bledsoe was created in an
artistic vacuum. The black community of Waco produced a number of remarkable
musicians and actors in the first part of the 20th century. For instance, Sammy
Price, known as “The King of Boogie Woogie Piano,” and a well-known pianist
and composer in the post-war era, lived in Waco until age 18 in the 1910s and
‘20s. Price even studied briefly with a “Professor Cobb,” probably one of Jules’
relatives, who said the young man had no talent.
Also in Waco in the 1920s was Dick Campbell, a significant figure in the
Harlem Renaissance. Campbell attended Paul Quinn College from 1922-1926,
became and actor and performer with the likes of Ethel Waters, Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson and Louis Armstrong before setting in Harlem, where he helped found
the Negro People’s Theatre and co-found the famed Rose McClendon Players and
Harlem Workshop Theater.
Waco was also fortunate to have a number of venues for live performances,
most notably the Waco Auditorium. From most of its history – from its inception
in 1899 to its closing in 1928 – the Auditorium benefited from the management
and booking skills of the remarkable Gussie Oscar. Oscar had an eye for talent and
capitalizing on the city’s location mid-way between Dallas and Austin, she saw to
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it that the most famous names of the day – Will Rogers, Harry Houdini, Jascha
Heifetz, Sarah Bernhardt and even the Four Marx Brothers performed in Waco
amid the operas and symphony concerts.
Oscar was also very progressive when it came to race, in addition to the
ever-present minstrel shows and so-called “colored revues,” she booked blues
legend Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds. She also brought Black Patti and Her
Troubadours back on an annual basis. Black Patti was Sissieretta Jones, a gifted
opera singer who could also sing vaudeville and show tunes and hers was one of
the very few all-black shows to tour the Deep South.
So when Gussie Oscar booked Jules Bledsoe on April 6, 1925, it was a
remarkable event in a number of ways. Contemporary records say that Bledsoe
performed to a “packed house,” even if – as was usually the case – the floor was
reserved for whites, with the balcony set aside for African Americans. For a town
in a racist era to recognize and encourage a black man like this was a tribute to his
budding talent AND Oscar’s business acumen!
Do we know how Bledsoe came to the attention of Jerome Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein II?
Apparently it was a performance in 1926 of the spiritual “Deep River” in the
opera by the same name in New York City – that led him to Kern and
Hammerstein. The two legendary composers had conceived of Show Boat after
reading Edna Ferber’s novel by the same name. Unlike previous musicals, they
wanted something where the songs were actually integrated into the story’s
narrative. Also very rare for that time, they wanted something sympathetic for
African Americans. And Wacoan Jules Bledsoe was cast in the pivotal part of
“Joe,” the black everyman who sang the musical’s defining song.
Following stints in Washington D.C., Pittsburg, and Philadelphia, Show Boat
premiered on Broadway on December 27, 1927. It was a smash, running for two
years. As for novelist Ferber, the first time she heard Bledsoe sing “Old Man
River,” she wrote: “I give you my word my hair stood on end, the tears came to my
eyes and I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama.”
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Show Boat made Bledsoe’s career, although much of America, north and
south, was still profoundly racist and it would be a rocky career at times.
Following the success of Show Boat, Bledsoe made several “soundies” in
1929, seven-minute musical clips, much like the videos formerly shown on MTV,
including “On the Levee,” “Old Man Trouble,” and “Dear Old Southland,” which
featured new lyrics to the spiritual “Deep River.” Long thought lost, “On the
Levee” and “Old Man Trouble” recently surfaced in Australia, of all places, and
will be released as part of a package of soundies on DVD in 2010 by Vocalion.
And, what do we know about Jules Bledsoe “the person?”
Bledsoe’s surviving correspondence is maddeningly one-sided. Most of it
consists of copies of letters he or his manager wrote soliciting performances OR
letters from creditors demanding payment. One aspect of Jules’s personality that
does come through his letters is that he was TERRIBLE with money. It apparently
just wasn’t important to him and either he didn’t have the money or he traveled so
much that most bills went unpaid for months on end. To make matters worse, he
established a bed & breakfast on a working farm in Massachusetts as a retreat for
African Americans … and it too was plagued by mis-management and over-due
bills.
Consequently, the years that followed saw Bledsoe perform at a dizzying
variety of venues, from one-night stands at local high schools to becoming the first
African-American to appear in a major operatic production in the U.S., stepping
into the role of Amonasro in “Aida” in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932.
This period also saw the first of his frequent tours of Europe, where he
became a favorite of English and Dutch audiences. So much so, in fact, that he
stayed many years abroad, during tours of Europe, sang with every principal
symphony as a soloist. In fact, the only country where he didn’t perform was in
Hitler’s Germany, where black artists were all but outlawed by the Nazis.
Here’s one great bit of Jules Bledsoe trivia: In November 1933, Billie
Holiday made her first record as vocalist for Benny Goodman's studio orchestra
doing the popular song "Your Mother's Son-In-Law", written by Nichols and
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Holiner for Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1934. In the song, there is a reference to
Jules -- "You don't have to sing like Bledsoe. You can tell the world I said so."
But his fame didn’t land him the role of Joe in Show Boat when it was
made into a movie, did it?
Unfortunately, when Hollywood finally got around to filming Show Boat in
1936, the producers chose Paul Robeson as Joe, although there’s nothing in Jules’s
surviving correspondence that addresses the issue directly. My guess is that
Robeson was simply the better known name and Bledsoe spent a lot of his time
overseas. Still, he kept plugging away.
Bledsoe’s first national radio broadcast – back when radio was the undisputed
KING of entertainment – was in the radio special “Americans All-Immigrants
All,” broadcast December 18, 1938, over flagship WABC. The show included
Jules’s rendition of “Little Black Boy.” Outside of the blatantly racist Amos ‘n’
Andy, there were virtually NO blacks on radio in those days. There is an intriguing
letter in Bledsoe’s papers from the NAACP’s secretary Walter White to The Ford
Sunday Evening Hour, one of the most popular of all radio programs. The letter,
dated January 30, 1939, is to Mr. Edsel B. Ford, suggesting that the show consider
performances by well-known, talented African American performers, including
Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson or Jules Bledsoe.
Another interesting letter is dated January 12, 1940. It’s a request from His
Imperial Highness Archduke Franz Josef and Archduchess Martha formally asking
to meet Jules backstage after his upcoming concert in New York City’s Town Hall.
Unfortunately, there’s no record of what was said or done at that meeting.
I understand that Bledsoe eventually became good friends First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt.
That’s right. Bledsoe’s 1941 tour of U.S. colleges, both black and white,
included a patriotic song he’d written, “Ode to America,” which was dedicated to
President Roosevelt. By now, Jules had become an accomplished composer, with a
number of songs and arranged spirituals to his credit. Apparently the White House
got wind of the number and Eleanor Roosevelt, was on hand to accept the
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dedication at the initial broadcast, over the NBC network, May 11, 1941. The text
of her speech that day survives in The Texas Collection:
“I’m very glad to be in the studio and to have heard that magnificent Ode,
which I’m happy to accept for the President and am only sorry that he
cannot be here in person to thank Mr. Bledsoe, who has come all the way
from California to sing it for the President and me this afternoon … I could
not help thinking as the ‘Ode’ was being sung how well it expressed the
patriotism which has always lived in the hearts of the Negro people.
Oppressed, often, never, perhaps, given their rights in this democracy as yet,
they have never failed to give to this land their devotion and their work. I am
happy also to be able to pay a tribute to what they have given this country.”
Two weeks later, Jules was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Music by his
alma mater, Bishop College on May 23, 1941.
Later that summer, Bledsoe was asked to come to Washington to give
another performance of “Ode to Freedom” to President Franklin Roosevelt in
person, supported by the Howard University glee club.
That must have inspired him!
You bet! Energized by the experience, Jules then wrote and dedicated the
song “Maybe He’s Your Boy in Khaki, Maybe He’s Your Boy in Blue” for
Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he called First Mother of the Land and All the Mothers,
Wives and Sweethearts of Fighting America.” There is no record of whether he got
to sing that for Mrs. Roosevelt in the files. I don’t know -- maybe it was something
about title …
Not very catchy, is it? Now it was about this time that Bledsoe had
moved to Hollywood, right?
That’s right. Jules was cast in his first motion picture, Drums of the Congo
in 1942, a low-budget “B” film for Universal. His initial letters home to his sister
are very hopeful. However, the movie is most notable for an early appearance by
the beautiful Dorothy Dandridge and its preposterous plot – two sets of secret
agents comb Africa’s jungles for a meteorite that may have secret powers, all the
while avoiding territorial native peoples and rampaging wild animals. Bledsoe was
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cast as Kalu, a tribal chief, who gets to sing parts of three Milton Rosen/Everett
Carter songs, “Round the Bend,” “River Man” and “Hear the Drums Beat Out.”
Reviews of Drums of the Congo, as you might imagine, Mary, were mixed
at best. Released in July 1942, Variety called the film “a fair programmer of
convenient length, 59 minutes,” and at least mentions Jules: “A native leader who
sings portions of songs here and there, but is not featured as a soloist with a spot to
himself, is Jules Bledsoe.”
Alas, The New York Times doesn’t like it much at all, citing the “hordes of
screaming Hollywood extras trying hard to look like villainous natives, and
medicine-men jitterbugging on the village square like a lot of restive Mickey
Rooneys.” At one point, the story comes to a complete halt while a honey bear and
a hyena fight it out, prompting one actor to ask, “Why do we waste so much time
watching these animals?” … and the reviewer agrees. Mercifully, Bledsoe isn’t
mentioned.
Oh my – Drums of the Congo sounds really awful!
Actually, the worst thing about the film was that Jules somehow broke a leg
during the shooting in December 1941 and it bothered him for nearly a year,
costing him several important engagements. Still, in The Texas Collection is a
piece of mail sent to Miss N.R. Cobb at A.J. Moore High School in Waco from a
fan who said she loved Bledsoe’s acting and singing and hadn’t seen a better film
in years.
Perhaps unwilling to endure any more stereotyped roles, Bledsoe signed Oct.
3, 1942 with Rudy Vallee talent agency on October 3, 1942 for motion pictures,
radio and stage – but not concerts.
Throughout the 1940s, Bledsoe toured relentlessly, singing dozens – if not
hundreds of charity concerts. His enormous stamina was such that in one stretch
from April to May of 1940, he performed 21 concerts, including concerts for
organizations such as United Spanish Veterans, the National Negro Congress in
Detroit, Finnish Relief, Red Cross Refugee Relief, and a number of concerts for
relief efforts for the Netherlands and England. He also co-organized a grand opera
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caravan, The Bledsoe Grand Opera Company, to present musical version of
“Emperor Jones,” together with the Negro Ballet.
He must have had an incredible professional repertoire!
Oh, he does! In one folder in The Texas Collection there are copies of
Bledsoe’s repertoire, which was sent by his management to prospective clients. His
active repertoire consisted for four 9x12 pages, single spaced, of challenging
lieder, arias, operatic roles (including Tonio from “Pagliacci,” Elijah in “Elijah”
and Boris Godunov as the title role), along with French songs, Spanish songs,
American and English songs and a number of original compositions. Also featured
are several of his own arrangements of beloved spirituals, including “Steal Away,”
“Go Down Moses,” and “Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder.”
There are also several newspapers clippings from the Texas leg of Bledsoe’s
tour in the spring of 1941. Newspapers that otherwise were routinely given to
racist and segregationist language praised Bledsoe’s concerts in effusive language.
On April 8, 1941, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes, “He rates as a distributor
of the Gift of Music. Those who love music recognize it for that which it is,
wherever found.”
Did he ever perform in Waco again?
Yes. The Waco Sunday Tribune-Herald on February 23, 1941 trumpeted
Bledsoe’s upcoming March 13 concert, noting that while he’d toured with Show
Boat in Europe – Hitler’s Fascist Germany never allowed him to sing. There is
more than a little irony here that the writer apparently missed because African
Americans in the South at that time were still banned from restaurants, hotels and
most venues in the Deep South, unable to vote, assemble freely or even participate
in the most fundamental freedoms accorded other Americans … and would remain
excluded for another 25 years.
Bledsoe, for his part, bravely included a section called “Songs of Freedom
and Hope.” He had this to say about them in the program notes -- “They are
dedicated to the victims of racial, religious and political persecution, through
whose suffering we in American have again been made conscious of the true
meaning of freedom and democracy.”
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His last Waco concert was for British war relief for a mixed audience of
2,500 people, who demanded repeated encores. Afterwards, he received his friends
and family at the house of his aunt, Naomi Cobb, at 817 North Fourth Street.
Incidentally, the newspaper noted that both “white and colored” friends were
welcome.
In the summer of 1943, Bledsoe embarked on yet another overly ambitious
tour selling war bonds for the same government that wouldn’t allow him to vote in
Texas, often appearing with his friend Eleanor Roosevelt.
So what finally happened?
An exhausted Jules Bledsoe died on July 14 at age 43 of what was said to be
a cerebral hemorrhage at his manager’s house in Hollywood. Bledsoe’s death was
a front page story in July 15, 1943 edition of The California Eagle, Los Angeles’
largest African-American newspaper.
His body was returned to Waco for a funeral service and this memorial
service was also front-page news of The Waco News-Tribune on July 21, 1943.
The church service was held at Second Baptist and 1,800 mourners, black
and white, filled to overflowing the church his grandfather had founded and where
he’d sung as a child. Throngs of people stood outside the doors and windows to
listen, including a number of friends who had come from the Netherlands. Eulogies
were delivered by Dr. A.J. Armstrong of Baylor, Dr. J.J. Rhoades of Bishop
College, and Dr. J. Newton Jenkins, the pastor of New Hope.
Jules Bledsoe never married.
Geary notes that Bledsoe once began a biography, written in pencil in his
flowery, almost un-readable handwriting on a small tablet. At one point, he had
this to say:
In order not to pass out of this world forgotten in a few years like the
vegetable that is plucked and forgotten after consumption, do some unselfish
good. Touch and influence some young budding life for good as you are
using life on borrowed time and posterity will bless your name and your
memory and you will not have lived in vain. You will have a place in the
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hearts of men of succeeding generations. It does not take genius or fame or
fortune to touch a young, growing life, all it requires is a good heart and a
kindly spirit.
It’s a shame that Jules Bledsoe isn’t better known today.
Yes it is. He’s nearly forgotten today, though he had the talent to touch, as
he writes, “the hearts of succeeding generations.” His modest tombstone is in a
small, out-of-the-way cemetery in East Waco. Only a few recordings of his rolling
baritone survive the decades. And the Texas Collection’s boxes of his papers only
hint at the power and perseverance of a man who defied Jim Crow’s official and
unofficial laws to carve a legacy for himself.
But I think that each time Show Boat is performed, each time the song “Old
Man River,” that mournful litany of the sins of racism, is sung, Jules Bledsoe lives
on. And that’s not a bad legacy for any of us.
Thank you for joining us Robert.
It’s been my pleasure
We will close today’s show with a more of Jules Bledsoe singing “Old
Man River.”
<Play a few more seconds of “Old Man River”>
Property of The Texas Collection at Baylor University
Final Edit: January 9, 2010
_________________________________________________
Robert Darden, Writer
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_________________________________________________
Dr. Mary Landon Darden, Executive Producer
_________________________________________________
Pattie Orr, Vice President of Information Technology and Dean of
University Libraries
_________________________________________________
John Wilson, Associate Director of The Texas Collection
_________________________________________________
Dr. Thomas L. Charlton, Director of The Texas Collection
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