Pop Music's First Black Stars

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, the U.S. popular music industry is worth billions of dollars. And some of its deepest roots are in blackface minstrelsy and other racist genres. You may not have heard their names, but Black musicians like George Johnson, Ernest Hogan, and Mamie Smith were some of the country's first viral sensations, working within and pushing back against racist systems and tropes. Their work made a lasting imprint on American music — including some of the songs you might have on repeat right now.

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Transcript

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0:06.6	Sometimes I'll actually preface the question with if it makes you too uncomfortable to talk
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0:21.1	we get started this episode contains racial slurs and discussions of racial stereotypes. It's 1832.
0:35.0	1832.
0:38.0	You've just arrived at the Bowery Theater in New York City,
0:41.6	the largest theater in the nation at this time, home to the best live entertainment
0:46.4	performances happening throughout the country. If you're at the show, it's likely you are a white man, sitting down and looking around the 3,000 seats.
0:57.4	Unlike as some of the city's other theaters, this is a mostly working class crowd.
1:02.8	You've seen other shows here, lots of Shakespeare.
1:06.2	But tonight you came to see something new,
1:08.7	something you might never have seen before,
1:11.5	that's taking the nation by storm.
1:13.7	Blackface minstrelsy.
1:25.0	Come listen all you gals and boys I'm just from Cutler Hole.
1:32.0	I'm going to sing a little song, my name Tim Crow.
1:35.0	This recording was produced by Warner Brothers in 1941, and it's a recreation of what an early Blackface
1:47.7	minstrel show would have sounded like.
1:50.2	The Watershed Moment is the late 1820s when a man by the name of Thomas Dartmouth Rice,
1:55.2	who was Irish American, did this performance called Jump Jim Crow.
	...

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