George W. Johnson

George Washington Johnson (* probably May 1850, † probably January 23, 1914 in New York City ) was an African-American singer and one of the first stars of the burgeoning music industry . His career lasted from 1890 to around 1910.

Life

Johnson was born into slavery on a Virginia plantation around 1850 . From 1890 he made recordings for phonographs for various companies in the New York and New Jersey area . His best-known piece was the Laughing Song , probably an own composition, which was sold in 25,000 copies by 1894 alone, which was an extremely high number for the standards of the time.

In the early days of the music industry, every recording was an original, as every wax cylinder for the phonograph had to be recorded separately as long as no suitable copying technique had been developed. The singer stood in front of up to five recording devices, so that up to five copies were made with one recording. For mass production, Johnson had to record his hit over and over, up to 50 times in a day.

A second Johnson hit was Whistling Coon , written by Sam Devere. He also recorded Laughing Coon and Whistling Girl , mainly variations of his two hits.

For a long time it was believed that Johnson was executed for the murder of his wife. It wasn't until the 1970s that music researcher James Ulysses Walsh provided evidence that this was a legend. In truth, there was an investigation after Johnson's third wife was violently killed, as were his first two wives. However, the proceedings were terminated. Johnson presumably died of natural causes on January 23, 1914.

Web links

• Article about George W. Johnson at Ragtime Ephemerist (Engl.) ( Memento of 14 April 2002 in the Internet Archive )
• Recordings by George W. Johnson in the “Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project” at the University of California, Santa Barbara