Shuffle Along

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Shuffle Along is one of the first successful "all-black- musical " on Broadway at the beginning of an era of African-American emancipation in the field of fine arts and cultural scene, the Harlem Renaissance is called.

Shuffle Along premiered on May 23, 1921 at 63rd Street Music Hall, New York , and had 484 performances. In that theater season only the Jerome Kern musical Sally was more successful.
The show was written, directed and played exclusively by African Americans (producers John and Harry Cort were white), and the black audience was allowed to sit in the stalls instead of in the stands as before.
The music was composed by Eubie Blake , the lyrics by Noble Sissle , the book by Flournoy E. Miller and Aubrey L. Lyles .
Many later well-known African American artists were among the cast - either on Broadway or on the "post-Broadway" tours: Josephine Baker , Paul Robeson , Florence Mills , Adelaide Hall , Gertrude Saunders , Fredi Washington , Elida Webb , Caterina Jarboro .

To the piece

The book is based on characters played by Miller and Lyles in the vaudeville sketches The Mayor of Dixie and The Mayor of Jimtown , Steve Jenkins and Sam Peck: The two run a grocery store together and are opponents in a mayor election campaign in the American South. They promise each other to appoint the other as chief of police if they are elected; third, hopeless candidate for the office is Harry Walton.
The burlesque plot - there is cheating and mutual distrust, a love story, a brawl and the triumph of justice, the victory of Harry - combined the various dance and singing numbers.

The musical brought traditional black and early forms of jazz music such as blues , boogie-woogie and ragtime to Broadway, bringing it closer to a white audience. Jazz dance and tap dance , especially the girls' chorus line, caused excitement and served as a role model for white choreographers. Producers like Florenz Ziegfeld and George White presented Shuffle Along a -Chorus dancers to teach white dancers.

Following the prevailing cliché, the characters depicted spoke brokenly and had a penchant for theft, fraud and trouble with the law. The two heroes of the piece wore black makeup , as in minstrel shows - whereas the chorus girls were lighter-skinned. However, portraying a black love story also broke a taboo.

The success of Shuffle Along opened the door to more African American shows on Broadway: 1922 Plantation Revue by J. Russel Robinson and Roy Turk , Strut, Miss Lizzie by J. Turner Layton and Henry Creamer , Liza by Maceo Pinkard ; 1923 How Come? by Ben Harris, go-go by Luckey Roberts and Alexander Rogers
Or near Broadway: 1921 Put and Take by Spencer Williams , Perry Bradford and James Tim Brymn ; 1922 Oh, Joy! by Salem Tutt Whitney and J. Homer Tutt.
Miller and Lyles released Runnin 'Wild in 1923, composed by James P. Johnson and produced by George White; Blake and Sissle brought out the musicals Elsie in 1923 and The Chocolate Dandies in 1924 .

Well-known music numbers

  • I'm just wild about Harry
  • Shuffle Along
  • Love Will Find A Way
  • Bandana Days
  • In honeysuckle time
  • Gypsy blues

miscellaneous

The song " I'm Just Wild About Harry " was used in Harry S. Truman's presidential campaign in 1948 .

literature

  • Kellee Rene Van Aken: Race And Gender In The Broadway Chorus. Dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, 2006.
  • Thomas Siedhoff: The manual of the musical. 1st edition. Schott, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-7957-0154-3 .
  • Robert Kimball, William Bolcom: Liner Notes to Sissle & Blake's Shuffle Along. (New World Records)
  • John Jeremiah Sullivan: 'Shuffle Along' and the Lost History of Black Performance in America , detailed history of the musical Shuffle Along , written on the occasion of a new production in 2016, for the New York Times

Web links