Black Europe – The sounds and images of black people in Europe . Vol.1: 1899-1909 (2025)

2009

Long before Sousa performed his marches in Europe, German musicians performed original American dance tunes including Cakewalks for the Americans, both live and as mechanical music. And from the 1870s African-Americans brought their banjos to Europe, and performed Buck, Sand and Tap dances, as well as Cakewalks, to European audiences. Long before Josephine Baker reached European shores, hundreds of black vaudevillians toured all over Europe, northern Africa, the Balkans, and well into Siberia. Racially mixed stage acts - often performed by husband-and-wife teams – were common, and socially acceptable. They all had to bear in mind that they performed for exclusively white audiences. Their niche in vaudeville entertainment was twofold: by exotic appearance and by eccentric performances. They had to provide a carefully balanced selection of popular tunes and Tin-Pan-Alley coon songs, spiced with both European elements - recognizable by their audiences - and black elements. Many of these performances left a legacy of recordings and moving pictures, as well as postcards, publicity shots, and illustrated publicity items. Thanks to their rediscovery we now have a much better understanding than only a few years ago. We shall have to amend the Blues, Gospel, Country, Music Hall and Ragtime discographies, and rewrite some chapters of the early black music research literature.

The Banjo on Record - A Bio-Discography

University of California at Santa Barbara (2nd edition), 2021

It’s hard to believe we published The Banjo on Record in 1993 - in the previous millennium! We put it together largely with typewriters and a 78rpm record player, using our personal collections and a few grey cells between the ears. The internet was still in its infancy. Today's researchers have the convenient option of using search engines, Wikipdia, Facebook, YouTube, email and countless other sources Every discography begins to become out of date the moment the ink dries. With this in mind, the work is astonishingly complete and remarkably flawless. In the past decades it has proven to be a valuable resource, especially for musicians, collectors, music librarians, or researchers. We were all the more pleased about the letter from Brian Rust, the nestor of jazz discography, who had willingly accompanied the work in its creation: “The great book arrived a few days ago, and I must say I think you've done a great job, one I am proud of having assisted. It is the realization of my dream of 1965 or whenever it was, of a book devoted to records of banjo solos, but one that has been taken much further than I thought all those years ago. It looks good - it is good. Congratulations to Uli Heier and your good self! " (Rust to Lotz, Aug 13, 1993). George Bohee's legendary wax cylinders for the Edison Bell Supply Company (Liverpool, before May 1898) have not been found to this day. On the other hand, sensational early banjo solos by minstrel Charles Asbury have surfaced, which are dated between 1891 and 1897 and thus originated before the Columbia cylinders, which we had already noted in the Banjo Discography (and where we had wrongly identified Asbury as white). Several knowledgeable specialists, from Frank Andrews to Steve Walker, have since pointed out inevitable mistakes and omissions. However, we the authors are now octogenarians and leave it to others to compile updated revised editions. This is the “digital reprint” of the original, only this introduction has been added. Uli Heier & Rainer E. Lotz, January 2021

From Minstrelsy to Jazz

2006

In 1997 I published a book entitled "Black People, Entertainers of African descent in Europe, and Germany": The book attempts to analyze the impact of African-American music in Europe around the turn of the century. We, the record collectors, are guilty of the neglect of areas of musical tradition which are under-represented or un-represented on record. And since most of the early authors of scholarly books and discographies on jazz were Europeans, whose only contact with the music was through recordings, the pre-history of jazz has tended to disappear from history.

A Good Black Music Story? Black American Stars in Australian Musical Entertainment Before ‘Jazz’

Popular Music, Stars and Stardom, 2018

Hyers Sisters and family - Concert singers, ,minstrel actors, theatrical stage performers, recording pioneers

1965

The classically trained Hyers Sisters were concert singers, minstrel performers, and theatrical stage actors. They were among the first black women to enter the concert world in the post-Civil-War period. They toured widely in the United States and Canada, as well as Australia. Their step mother May C. Hyers became the first black woman to make solo sound recordings on phonograph cylinders.

High Drama in the Record Industry: Columbia Records, 1901-1934

2002

Ragtime: From the Top

Ragtime, 1985

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-13952 P r i n t e d i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s o f A m e r i c a printing number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0

Y’All Come! When the Saints Go Marching In. Chronologically from 1923 and onward

2020

When the Saints Go Marching In – Herostratically famous, well-known to one and all, and the song some of us love to hate. The Saints began its existence as a serene African-American spiritual, presumably well spread in the American South. Initially it was recorded by jubilee singers, self-accompanied vocalists and country musicians in the 1920:ies. The tune later became the jazz standard, worn out to disgrace. It was eventually taken up by a plethora of rock singers, gospel artists, folk singers, comedians, dance orchestras and marching bands, and the song also made its way into children's music. The Saints has become emblematic of the city of New Orleans, LA and even provided the name to its American football team. All the time, however, the tune has maintained its role as a religious hymn, sung by individuals, in congregations and played at funerals. It is certainly not easy to decipher why and how The Saints became what it did and a tune everybody almost everywhere is familiar with, but a good start is to look at the music itself in retrospect. The present book is thus the accompaniment to a 4-CD collection of 82 recordings of the song, comprising a chronological compilation of all extant recordings of The Saints from 1923 and through the 1930:s, including 'field recordings' from the US Library of Congress. After 1940, the collection is more selective, in that it encompasses versions of the tune that were deemed particularly interesting or representative for some reason or another. The waning of the 78 rpm era put a natural end to this cavalcade. The recordings can be obtained from the author in mp3 format.

The Jazz Republic

University of Michigan Press, 2017

And now I have to tell you how it was back then, when the world, pretty much reaching its goal on the first try, had become jazz.-Hans Janowitz Contents Acknowledgments ix This project has accompanied me now for more than ten years and across four institutions. Over this period, I have had more opportunities than I can recount to converse with scholars and colleagues about the subject of jazz music and popular culture in Germany during the 1920s. Their cumulative effect has helped shape The Jazz Republic. Even more so, without the collective support, guidance, and knowledge of friends and colleagues, The Jazz Republic simply would not have been completed. Throughout, I've also been financially supported through a number of grants and stipends from the University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. At both my current and previous institutions, senior colleagues in German have supported me to a degree that went far beyond the call of duty. Fittingly, they each share the first name "Ruth." At North Carolina State, Ruth Gross was my department chair, a scholarly mentor, and simply a wonderful colleague. At Milwaukee, I have had the luck to be helped along and quite often lifted up by Ruth Schwertfeger: our conservations always left me with a smile on my face. I cannot thank each of them enough. The following is an attempt to list, in no particular order other than alphabetical, some of those who have contributed to the current work over the years.

Before and After the Ball, Approaching Tin Pan Alley