CONTENT WARNING – This article features historical references that use derogatory racial terms which would now be considered offence.
When Paul Robeson made his first appearance at the Caird Hall in Dundee in 1930, the venue “was packed to the doors… Robeson’s magnetic personality seemed to captivate the audience even more than his singing, and he was rapturously encored at the end of every section of his programme.” Robeson (whose various Dundee appearances were described in a previous Woven Together blog post here) was perhaps the most famous performer of African heritage to visit Dundee, but he was certainly not the first. This article looks at the earlier history of black performance in the city’s theatres, music halls and other public venues.
Undoubtedly the most celebrated black actor of the 19th century was Ira Aldridge (1807-1867). Born in New York, he moved to England in 1824 in an attempt to escape racial discrimination. Although many London critics were still unwilling to accept a black actor, he gradually found success and by the time he first visited Dundee in 1840, his performances were highly acclaimed, particularly his portrayal of Shakespeare’s Othello. No reviews have been found for his first appearance in the Thistle Hall but a return visit to Dundee in 1848 to appear at the Theatre Royal was widely praised. The Arbroath Guide described his Othello as “a perfect performance – such as, we venture to say, could not be surpassed.” As well as Othello, Aldridge also played two of his other famous roles, Gambia in The Slave by Thomas Morton and Mungo in The Padlock by Isaac Bickerstaffe.
A notable successor to Aldridge was Samuel Morgan Smith (1832-1882), another actor born in the US who came to Britain to pursue his career. Like Aldridge he toured widely and first visited the Theatre Royal in Dundee in January 1867, presenting both Hamlet (described by the Courier as “a carefully conceived and intelligently rendered performance”) and Othello (an “artistic and spirited personation”) as well as performances of The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, a short piece about the black composer The Chevalier de Saint George and new interpretations of two of Aldridge’s best-known roles, Gambia in The Slave and Fabien in The Black Doctor (a translation by Aldridge himself of a French play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois). All were highly acclaimed and played to packed houses, leading to a quick return for Smith in December 1867, repeating many of his earlier successes along with playing Mephistopheles in Faust and Marguerite and giving a recital of Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade. Smith returned for a third time in October 1869, this time with his new wife Harriett Goldspring (who married him in Glasgow earlier that year) playing Desdemona to his Othello. Several of his other previous roles were repeated along with a new play written for Smith, All But Lost or The Totem of the Tortoise, in which he played a Mohican chief. By this time the enthusiasm of some of the local critics was starting to wane, the Courier claiming: “he wants fire, and inclines to the melodramatic, rather than to the classic in style.” Smith made a fourth visit in 1871, this time to the Dundee Music Hall & Opera House, repeating many of his earlier triumphs.
A quick glance through newspapers of the time would at first suggest that black performers were a regular occurrence on the Dundee stage – music halls frequently advertised “negro” comedians, singers and dancers. But virtually all of these were actually white people performing in blackface. This notorious artform developed in New York in the 1830s as white performers used burnt cork or shoe polish to create exaggerated portrayals of black people as a way of demeaning and ridiculing them. As well as solo comedians or double acts, more elaborate group performances emerged known as minstrel shows, which appropriated African American music in a manner that proved enormously popular with white audiences in the US. The fashion quickly spread to the UK, becoming a regular feature of music hall programmes in Dundee by the 1840s. Ironically, this was also the time when formerly enslaved abolitionist campaigners began to visit Dundee to give public lectures campaigning against slavery, starting with Frederick Douglass in 1846. One of Douglass’s most celebrated speeches was given in the Bell Street UP Chapel, whose basement hall was also used as a music hall, known as Springthorpe’s. In his recent history of Dundee’s music halls, Billy Rough notes:
‘In between Frederick Douglass’s scheduled speaking engagements, the UP Church basement hall hosted a “Grand Vocal and Instrumental Concert and Ethiopian Entertainment”, which included the “Original Ethiopian Troubadours” performing the “Popular N****r Melody – ‘The Yaller Busha Bell’”; the “N****r Song – ‘Jem Along Josey’”; the “Ohio Melody and Chorus – ‘Jenny, get your Hoe-Cake done’” and a “Finale – Songs and Chorus – ‘Jim Brown’”. Meanwhile, the Thistle Hall in October 1846 presented “The Original Ethiopian Serenaders” fresh from an audience of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a display of Blackface slave labourers toiling in the construction of a railroad’.
Over the years, countless blackface and minstrel acts performed in Dundee, including Hillary & Bailey (1858), Russell & Hurley (1862), Christopher Brown (1864), E W Mackney (1864), the African Opera Troupe (1860), the Court Minstrels (1865), Christy’s Minstrels (1867), Sam Hague’s Minstrels (1895), the Virginians (1906), May Henderson (1913) and the Famous Dixie Minstrel Show (1924). Some were regular favourites who returned year after year, including Joe Edmonds (from 1880) and the Scottish comedian Will Candlish, known as “the Black Emperor” (from 1890). Others were obscure oddities, such as Harper & Standill, “the One-Legged Negro Singers, Dancers and Skaters” (1878).
The repeated popularity of such acts led to some local imitations. In 1852-54, the Dundee Amateur Ethiopian Serenaders (described by the Montrose Standard as “imitation darkies from Couttie’s Wynd”) performed around the region to generally favourable reviews. They were followed by the Dundee Negro Serenaders in 1862 and the Brothers Smith in 1868-72. By the early 20th century, amateur blackface performances were far more widespread – St Joseph’s School put on a minstrel show in 1905, for example. It’s tempting to imagine that most of those Dundonians who enjoyed blackface were simply unaware of the racist stereotypes being perpetuated, but it is worth noting that in 1874 the Courier reported a complaint by the black population of Kansas City “that negro minstrel shows tend to degrade our race”, so at least some in Dundee must have known how those being imitated really felt about it.
Intriguingly, not every minstrel show was overtly racist. The English singer Henry Russell (who performed in Dundee in 1845) was the first British performer to build up a repertoire of ‘negro melodies’ for his act, but he did not perform in blackface and was an outspoken campaigner for the abolition of slavery. The Courier noted that “the sympathy he expressed with the degraded condition of that portion of our fellow beings must have found a response in many a breast.”
Such was the ubiquity of blackface that many genuine black performers also ‘blacked up’ for minstrel shows in order to achieve success on stage. Several appeared in Dundee over the years, notably the Bohee Brothers (1883, 1891 and 1892), Scott & Whaley (1913 and 1922), Jack Woods (1919) and the Three Eddies (1931). Perhaps most unusual was the astonishing (but short-lived) popularity of the African American dancer known as Master Juba (real name believed to be William Henry Lane, c.1825-c.1852). His outstanding dancing talents led to him becoming a novelty act with the otherwise all-white blackface troupe the Ethiopian Serenaders, but he found particular fame in Britain after being praised by Charles Dickens, who witnessed Juba’s performance during his American travels in 1842. Billed as “Boz’s Juba” to emphasise the Dickensian connection, Juba performed at Dundee’s Theatre Royal in 1849, promoted as “Greatest Novelty of the Day – The World’s Wonder!” The Arbroath Guide similarly hyped him up, hailing “that ninth wonder of the world, the renowned Juba, the American dancer. From every quarter Juba’s fame is trumpeted, and we are told by those who have seen him that no such concentration of talent, in his peculiar way, ever before appeared on the boards of any theatre in Great Britain.” Having seen him perform, the Courier’s critic claimed: “we feel that all we have heard and read of him is more than borne out.” His unique performance style later led to him being hailed as one of the pioneers of tap dancing, but sadly he died young in obscurity.
Another unique talent exploited by the music halls was Blind Tom (Thomas Wiggins, 1849-1908). Born into slavery, he was blind since birth and (according to the Courier) “of almost imbecile mind”, though it is now suggested that he was actually autistic. What was not in dispute was his phenomenal ability as a musician – he could hear any tune once (no matter how complex) and immediately replicate it on the piano; he could play with his hands behind his back; and he could play two tunes at the same time with different hands while singing a third. He toured Britain while still in his teens, performing at the Kinnaird Hall in Dundee in 1866. The Advertiser sought out the opinion of a musical expert who claimed, “you never heard a better performer… Tom is as genuine an artist, and possesses as much (and for anything I can tell, a great deal more) musical talent or power… [as] anybody else you ever listened to.” Although by that time freed from slavery, Tom was still effectively owned by his white masters, who exploited his talents through a gruelling touring schedule.
As well as through individual performances, black musical culture was also celebrated (or parodied) in more ambitious theatrical productions, kicked off by the huge success of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). A literary sensation and the best-selling novel of the century, it inevitably led to numerous stage adaptations. With Stowe herself having visited Dundee in 1853 at the invitation of the Dundee Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Association, there was inevitably considerable interest in seeing her work brought to life on the stage. The first production to reach Dundee was at the Theatre Royal in 1862, and at least fourteen other versions followed up to 1917. The earliest stagings seem to have had white casts in blackface, but in 1879 the Theatre Royal hosted a new musical version by American producers Jarrett & Palmer, which boasted “real negroes; freed slaves; and the original African Jubilee Singers”, the latter performing African American spirituals as well as minstrel tunes. The show was a huge success (the Evening Telegraph noted: “we have never seen more hearty applause rendered to any performance in the Dundee Theatre”) and every subsequent production to visit Dundee likewise featured a large black cast. While Jarrett & Palmer’s version still had a white actor in blackface as Uncle Tom, later productions (mostly by Charles Harrington) cast black or mixed-race actors in the lead role, including George Walmer (Her Majesty’s Theatre, 1893), Ben Rowe (Her Majesty’s, 1897, 1899 & 1917) and J H Boehm (Gaiety Theatre, 1910 and Her Majesty’s, 1911).
Such was the success of these shows that they soon attracted imitators, the most popular of which was The Octoroon (1859) an anti-slavery melodrama featuring a mixed-race romance by Irish author Dion Boucicoult. It first came to Dundee’s Theatre Royal in 1865, with at least 25 further productions appearing up to 1917. As with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many of versions featured black actors and musicians (starting with Morgan Smith’s production in 1869), and indeed some companies performed both plays together during a week’s run.
Shows like these helped to develop an enthusiasm for African American music among British audiences, leading to other talents from the US touring the UK. A notable early example was the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an a cappella choir formed in 1871 by formerly enslaved students at Fisk University in Nashville, who toured Britain and Europe to raise funds for the building of their new campus. They performed spirituals at the Kinnaird Hall in 1873, having previously given a private recital at Wemyss Castle in Fife. The Courier noted the contrast to the blackface minstrel shows they were used to:
“There are no burnt cork faces, fantastic dresses, tambourines, bones, or breakdowns. They are simply a band of plainly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, who know what negro life really is, because they are real negroes, and have experienced it, and who give us a true idea of negro minstrelcy… those who have not heard it can form no adequate realisation of the deep suffering and anguish of mind and body which can be expressed in music.”
A wide variety of black musical performers appeared in Dundee’s music halls and theatres in the early 20th century, including:
A “high-class negro choir” performing a sacred service of spiritual music at the Kinnaird Hall (1902)
The popular singing husband-and-wife team Smith & Johnson at the Palace Theatre (1903)
Singer and dancer Cassie Walmer (daughter of Uncle Tom actor George Walmer) at the Palace (1903, 1905 & 1918) and the King’s Theatre (1916)
A minstrel act (possibly in blackface) by Gordon Stretton at the King’s (1909) – Stretton (born William Masters, 1887-1983) would later produce his own pioneering all-black revues and was an early British adopter of jazz music
Comic dancers Rastus & Banks at the King’s (1910 & 1920) and Her Majesty’s Theatre (1917)
Pianist, singer and dancer Frank Weaver at the Palace Playhouse (1915 & 1916)
Musical comedians Martinette & Wallace at the Palace (1916)
The Four Black Diamonds, “Droll Harmonising Vocalists and Quaint Dancers” at the Palace (1917)
Singer and pianist George West at the Palace (1918)
Black performers also started to feature in the new theatrical form of revue, which grew in popularity in the 1910s. Rather than the disparate acts of a music hall programme, revues were themed shows featuring a mix of song, dance and humour. They began to appear at the King’s in Dundee in 1913 and an important early example was What Ho! Ragtime the following year, described by the Evening Telegraph as “a whirlwind of mirth”. The new African American music form of ragtime had quicky taken off in Britain and in 1912 the show Hullo, Ragtime! had begun a record-breaking run at the London Hippodrome, where it was seen by over a million people (it eventually reached Dundee later in 1914, showing at Her Majesty’s Theatre). What Ho! Ragtime sought to capitalise on its success. Both shows were based on white performers appropriating black musical styles (including derogatory blackface routines) but What Ho! did at least feature the African American dancer Willie Robbins, lampooning the celebrated boxer Jack Johnson (whose attempts to become a mason in Dundee are described in another blog post here).
Two years later, Johnson brought his own revue to Dundee, a lavishly produced boxing-themed show called Seconds Out – the first time the city hosted a musical show with a black star. Johnson had turned to the stage after losing his heavyweight title, producing and starring in Seconds Out which had been a smash hit in London and on tour before arriving at the King’s Theatre in January 1916. The show also had a black composer (Joe Jordan) and conductor (W H Dorsey). Ill health prevented Johnson from singing during his Dundee engagement but instead he gave a speech and then an exhibition of boxing, rounding off (according to the Courier) “a happy jingle of music, dancing, and humour”, which played to packed houses at the King’s.
Just four months later, the Palace Playhouse hosted another landmark show, the all-black revue Coloured Society. Although it had a white producer (George Sax), all of the talent on show was black, including Will Garland, Louis (or Lewis) Hardcastle and Hilda Dawson, accompanied by a chorus of “30 Creole beauties” as well as (according to press descriptions) two Maori musicians, Bill and Joe Kunie. Dundee seems to have been its first Scottish venue, and the show received “a hearty welcome from large audiences”.
One of the show’s stars, Will Garland (1875-1938), later took charge of the tour and would become the most significant figure in black musical theatre in the first half of the 20th century. A singer, dancer, brass player, comedian, actor, writer and producer, Garland was born in Iowa and came to the UK around 1904. Over the next twenty years he toured nineteen separate productions around the country and across Europe. He returned to Dundee in 1918 with a South American-themed revue called All Black, again at the Palace. As well as more “Creole beauties” the show starred Garland himself alongside Willie Robbins and Eddie Emmerson. While previous shows to feature black talent usually imported them from the US, Garland found most of his talent in Britain, including the Birmingham-born Emmerson. The Courier described it as “a striking success” and praised Garland’s “wonderful tenor voice and genial style”.
The 1920s saw the rapid growth of cinema as a competing attraction to live entertainment, leading many theatres and music halls to close or convert into picture houses. Dundee was no exception, but many cinemas continued to offer live performances before the film screenings and in-person appearances by film stars were guaranteed to pull in the crowds. In March 1928, the Kinnaird Picture House (formerly the Kinnaird Hall) hosted a visit by African American actor James B Lowe, the eponymous star of Universal Pictures’ new film version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although there to promote the film, the timing of his visit was somewhat premature, since the film itself wouldn’t reach Dundee for another eight months. Having appeared in only a handful of films before, mostly uncredited, it’s unlikely that anyone in Dundee would have known who he was, but that didn’t prevent the Evening Telegraph publishing an extended feature on him, revealing his love of Shakespeare and Burns and concluding: “He has all the kindliness and quiet philosophy that one imagined Uncle Tom to have.”
Black musical and comedy talent continued to appear in the city’s remaining variety theatres – for example The Amazons (Alhambra, 1930), the Four Harmony Kings (Victoria, 1930 & 1932 and Broadway, 1933), The Three Eddies and Hutton Convers (Victoria 1931), Bob Williams & Ivan Browning (Broadway, 1934), Lottie Abrew (Broadway, 1935) and Dinah Lee (Broadway, 1936). But at the same time, the start of national radio broadcasting and improvements in sound recording for gramophone records led to a new craze for jazz and dance music. As theatres and music halls closed, dance halls opened. This in its turn brought new black talent to Dundee.
Perhaps the most notable example came in 1933 with a special appearance by jazz legend Louis Armstrong at the Palais in South Tay Street. James Duncan, manager of the Palais, discovered that Armstrong was appearing at the Empire Theatre in Edinburgh and quickly arranged for him to motor up to Dundee for a single show immediately after one of his performances (reputedly paying him £40 to do so). A few days beforehand, the Palais’ resident bandleader Harry Smead and pianist Billy Miller met Armstrong in Edinburgh to plan out the numbers. All went according to plan and (according to the Courier) “a large gathering” was given “ample evidence of his amazing trumpet technique”, with Smead’s band accompanying him in many of his best-known hits including Tiger Rag and St Louis Blues. The Evening Telegraph claimed that “Louis Armstrong, maestro of the trumpet, gave them notes so blue that they resounded off the roof like animated sapphires.”
Dundee’s dance halls would later host other black talent, such as the Caribbean jazz musicians described in another blog post here). And after the war, many other jazz legends would perform at the Caird Hall, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie – but that is another story…
Written by Matthew Jarron, University of Dundee Museums
Sources
Dundee Courier 5/3/1930
Arbroath Guide 27/5/1848
Dundee Courier 29/1/1867, 30/1/1867, 13/10/1869
Northern Warder 13/8/1846
Evening Telegraph 8/8/1878
Montrose Standard 13/8/1852
Dundee Courier 26/6/1874
Dundee Courier 30/9/1845
Arbroath Guide 22/9/1849
Dundee Courier 26/9/1849
Dundee Courier 5/12/1866
Dundee Advertiser 5/12/1866
Dundee Courier 7/4/1879
Evening Telegraph 8/4/1879
Dundee Courier 19/9/1873
Evening Telegraph 27/1/1914
Dundee Courier 4/1/1916
Dundee Courier 9/5/1916
Dundee Courier 1/10/1918
Evening Telegraph 1/11/1938
Dundee Courier 2/12/1933 & Evening Telegraph 2/12/1933
And various other newspapers
Anon, ‘Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype’, National Museum of African American History & Culture website at https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/blackface-birth-american-stereotype
Anon, ‘Master Jube: The Inventor of Tap Dancing’, Master Juba website at https://masterjuba.com/
Jeffrey Green, ‘Blind Tom: The Musical Phenomenon in Britain 1866-1867’, Jeffrey Green, Historian website at https://jeffreygreen.co.uk/167-blind-tom-the-musical-phenomenon-in-britain-1866-1867/
Sean Mayes & Sarah K Whitfield, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950 (Methuen, 2022)
Billy Rough, ‘”Fun without vulgarity”: a brief history of Dundee’s Music Halls, from the 1840s to the Great War’ in Cooke, Nisbet, Rough & Stark, A Dundee Miscellany (Abertay Historical Society, 2023)
Derek B Scott, The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour (Ashgate, 2001) – chapter on the cultural assimilation of minstrel shows reproduced online at https://www.victorianweb.org/mt/dbscott/4.html
Springthorpe’s poster, 1846 (Local History Poster Collection, Dundee Central Library)
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