Frank Howson, June 13, 2015
Featured in the hit musical "GENESIS TO BROADWAY" Written & Directed by FRANK HOWSON. Musical Director & Concept by WARREN WILLS. BERT WILLIAMS became the first black superstar of Broadway. W.C. Fields once described him as “The funniest man I ever saw - and the saddest man I ever knew.” Being a black star in America at this time was a sobering contradiction. Bert Williams would appear to adoring standing room only audiences in theatres, but after the show would find it near impossible to be served in a bar or a restaurant. On one occasion, the sophisticated Mr. Williams went to a bar and asked for a whiskey on ice. The bartender said, “That’ll be a hundred dollars!” Williams, without flinching replied, “Then I’ll have four.” -snip- Click for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naUN5L56Zg4&ab_channel=MamuskaDublin " Nobody ( Natural Born Gambler) - Bert Williams" published by MamuskaDublin, July 28, 2015. Here's the summary for that "YouTube video": "Classic Bert Williams mime (the first Black writer-director in film history) set to his own song - 'Nobody' - becoming a poignant commentary of internalized negative expectations."
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Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases the 1909 song "Nobody" sung by African American entertainer Bert Williams.
A partial biography of Bert Williams is included in this post along with the lyrics for that song.
The conten of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Bert Williams for his cultural legacy. Thanks to Frank Howson, the composer of this song and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to the publisher of this sound file on YouTube.
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PARTIAL BIOGRAPHY OF BERT WILLIAMS
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Williams
"Bert Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922) was a
Bahamian-born American entertainer, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the
Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his
time.[1] He is credited as being the first Black man to have the leading role
in a film: Darktown Jubilee in 1914.[2]
He was by far the best-selling Black recording artist before 1920. In 1918, the New York Dramatic Mirror called Williams "one of the great comedians of the world."[3]
Williams was a key figure in the development of African-American entertainment. In an age when racial inequality and stereotyping were commonplace, he became the first Black American to take a lead role on the Broadway stage, and did much to push back racial barriers during his three-decade-long career.
Early life
Williams was born in Nassau, The Bahamas, on November 12,
1874, to Frederick Williams Jr. and his wife Julia.[5][6] At the age of 11,
Bert permanently emigrated with his parents, moving to Florida in the United
States. The family soon moved to Riverside, California, where he graduated from
Riverside High School in 1892.[7] In 1893, while still a teenager, he joined
different West Coast minstrel shows, including Martin and Selig's Mastodon
Minstrels in San Francisco, where he first met his future professional partner,
George Walker.[8]
He and Walker performed song-and-dance numbers, comic dialogues and skits, and humorous songs. They fell into stereotypical vaudevillian roles: originally Williams portrayed a slick conniver, while Walker played the "dumb coon" victim of Williams' schemes.[9] But they soon discovered that they got a better reaction by switching roles and subverting expectations. The sharp-featured and slender Walker eventually developed a persona as a strutting dandy, while the stocky Williams played the languorous oaf. Despite his thickset physique, Williams was a master of body language and physical "stage business.
[…]
While playing off the "coon" formula, Williams
& Walker's act and demeanor subtly undermined it as well. Camille Forbes
wrote, "They called into question the possible realness of blackface
performers who only emphasized their artificiality by recourse to burnt cork;
after all, Williams did not really need the burnt cork to be Black,"
despite his lighter skin complexion. He would pull on a wig full of kinky hair
in order to help conceal his wavy hair.[12] Terry Waldo also noted the layered
irony in their cakewalk routine, which presented them as mainstream Blacks
performing a dance in a way that lampooned whites who'd mocked a Black dance
that originally satirized plantation whites' ostentatiously fussy
mannerisms.[13] The pair also made sure to present themselves as immaculately
groomed and classily dressed in their publicity photos, which were used for
advertising and on the covers of sheet music promoting their songs. In this
way, they drew a contrast between their real-life comportment and the comical
characters they portrayed onstage. However, this aspect of their act was
ambiguous enough that some Black newspapers still criticized the duo for
failing to uplift the dignity of their race.
[…]
Abyssinia and recording success
The duo's international success established them as the most
visible Black performers in the world.
[…]
In February 1906, Abyssinia, with a score co-written by Williams, premiered at the Majestic Theater. The show, which included live camels, was another smash. Aspects of the production continued the duo's cagey steps toward greater creative pride and freedom for black performers. The nation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) was the only African nation to remain sovereign during European colonization, repelling Italy's attempts at control in 1896. The show also included inklings of a love story, something that had never been tolerated in a Black stage production before. Walker played a Kansas tourist while his wife, Aida, portrayed an Abyssinian princess. A scene between the two of them, while comic, presented Walker as a nervous suitor.
While the show was praised, many white critics were uncomfortable or uncertain about its cast's ambitions. One critic declared that audiences "do not care to see their own ways copied when they can have the real thing better done by white people," while the New York Evening Post thought the score "is at times too elaborate for them and a return to the plantation melodies would be a great improvement upon the 'grand opera' type, for which they are not suited either by temperament or by education."[19] The Chicago Tribune remarked, disapprovingly, "there is hardly a trace of negroism in the play." George Walker was unbowed, telling the Toledo Bee, "It's all rot, this slapstick bandanna handkerchief bladder in the face act, with which negro acting is associated. It ought to die out and we are trying to kill it." Though the flashier Walker rarely had qualms about opposing the racial prejudice and limitations of the day, the more introspective and brooding Williams internalized his feelings.
Williams committed many of Abyssinia's songs to disc and cylinder. One of them, "Nobody", became his signature theme, and the song he is best remembered for today. It is a doleful and ironic composition, replete with his dry observational wit, and is perfectly complemented by Williams' intimate, half-spoken singing style.
When life seems full of clouds and rain,
And I am filled with naught but pain,
Who soothes my thumping, bumping brain?
[pause] Nobody.
When winter comes with snow and sleet,
And me with hunger and cold feet,
Who says, "Here's two bits, go and eat"?
[pause] Nobody.
I ain't never done nothin' to Nobody.
I ain't never got nothin' from Nobody, no time.
And, until I get somethin' from somebody sometime,
I don't intend to do nothin' for Nobody, no time.
Williams became so identified with the song that he was obliged to sing it in almost every appearance for the rest of his life. He considered its success both blessing and curse: "Before I got through with 'Nobody,' I could have wished that both the author of the words and the assembler of the tune had been strangled or drowned.... 'Nobody' was a particularly hard song to replace." "Nobody" remained active in Columbia's sales catalogue into the 1930s, and the musicologist Tim Brooks estimates that it sold between 100,000 and 150,000 copies, a phenomenally high amount for the era.”
[…]
Late career and death
Williams' stage career lagged after his final Follies
appearance in 1919. His name was enough to open a show, but they had shorter,
less profitable runs. In December 1921, Under the Bamboo Tree opened, to
middling results. Williams still got good reviews, but the show did not.
Williams developed pneumonia, but did not want to miss performances, knowing
that he was the only thing keeping an otherwise moribund musical alive at the
box office. However, Williams also emotionally suffered from the racial
politics of the era, and did not feel fully accepted. He experienced almost
chronic depression in his later years, coupled with alcoholism and insomnia.
On February 27, 1922, Williams collapsed during a performance in Detroit, Michigan, which the audience initially thought was a comic bit. Helped to his dressing room, Williams quipped, "That's a nice way to die. They was laughing when I made my last exit."[26] He returned to New York, but his health worsened. He died at his home, 2309 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, New York City on March 4, 1922, at the age of 47.[1][27] Few had suspected that he was sick, and news of his death came as a public shock. More than 5,000 fans filed past his casket, and thousands more were turned away. A private service was held at the Masonic Lodge in Manhattan, where Williams broke his last barrier. He was the first Black American to be so honored by the all-white Grand Lodge. When the Masons opened their doors for a public service, nearly 2,000 mourners of both races were admitted. Williams was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
In 1910, Booker T. Washington wrote of Williams: "He
has done more for our race than I have. He has smiled his way into people's
hearts; I have been obliged to fight my way." Gene Buck, who had discovered
W. C. Fields in vaudeville and hired him for the Follies, wrote to a friend on
the occasion of Fields' death: "Next to Bert Williams, Bill [Fields] was
the greatest comic that ever lived."[28]”…
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