vaudeville

Laddie Springs, jazz pianist.

Who was Laddie Springs? A passing mention of his orchestra in a 14 August 1937 Journal and Guide article led me down a rabbit hole. It turns out Springs spent only a few  years in Wilson, but what a life he led!

Laddie Springs was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In the 1910 census of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, N.C.: at 714 West Street, janitor Frank Springs, 36; wife Annie, 37; children Pearl, 14, Clyde, 11, and Lattie, 8; boarder Jim Stearling, 23, laborer on street car line; and mother-in-law Nancie Abernathy, 65.

In his late teens, Springs found work as a clothes presser.

1923 Charlotte, N.C., city directory.

But he was soon on the road — the beginning of a half-century of professional piano-playing on the chitlin’ circuit, in vaudeville theatres, in schools, in jazz clubs, and in private homes.

We first see him — just two years out of the laundry — heading the New Orleans Jazz Band at Bailey’s 81 Theatre on Atlanta’s Decatur Street. He was touring as part of Seals & Mitchell’s “big revue,” a variety show featuring musicians, “real dancers — who can sing,” and comedians. The 81 was a black-owned venue, but this frolic was for a whites-only audience.

Atlanta Journal, 27 November 1925.

The show was a hit, and Laddie Springs’ “famous” band was hailed as the “best in the country.”

Atlanta Constitution, 28 November 1925.

A week later, Seals and Mitchell’s chorus were in Birmingham, Alabama, with Springs fronting a different group — the Six Melody Boys.

Chicago Defender, 5 December 1925.

At the end of the year, Springs fetched up at the Booker Washington Theatre in Pensacola, Florida, with Frank Radcliff‘s Musical Comedy company.

Pensacola News Journal, 29 December 1925.

Eighteen months later, Laddie Springs leading a seven-piece orchestra. His wife Bernice Springs — I don’t know where they married — was planning “to spend a week with Ma Rainey in Chicago while she is recording and enjoying herself  riding in her $13,000 bus.” The Springses could be reached at their home at 428 East 2nd Street in the old Brooklyn neighborhood of Charlotte’s Second Ward. (The site is now under a Hilton Garden Inn.)

Pittsburgh Courier, 2 July 1927.

In 1929, the Springs’ old colleagues in the Seals and Mitchell show wrote from San Bernardino, California, that they wanted to hear from “Laddie Springs and wife.”

Saint Louis Defender, 2 March 1929.

The Springses apparently rode out much of the Great Depression in Wilson. A 1932 social column in the Journal and Guide mentioned that Laddie Springs furnished music for a home wedding and, as a member of the Carolina Stompers Orchestra, entertained guests of the Pleasure Seekers Social Club.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 2 April 1932.

Several months later, both Springses performed for the Moonlight Chasers club at a house on Church Street.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 10 September 1932.

The following month, Laddie Springs played piano at a birthday party held at the Whitney Hotel.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 1 October 1932.

The Carolina Stompers performed at Wilson’s Black high school in February 1933. Vocalist Catherine Wilkerson performed “Strange,” composed by Laddie Springs, which became one of the band’s signature tunes.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 18 February 1933.

A few weeks later, the high school’s home ec club gave a dance at “Vicks Hall,” which was probably a space in the Odd Fellows building Samuel H. Vick had built.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 11 March 1933.

Doris Henderson was born 14 December 1935 in Wake County, N.C., to Bessie Henderson and Laddie Springs.

Laddie and Bernice Springs separated, and he moved north to Philadelphia. Bernice Springs appears to have remained for some time in Wilson County, where she is listed in the 1940 census enumeration of the town of Elm City.

On 27 October 1940, in Wilmington, Delaware, Laddie Springs, 36, of Philadelphia, single, musician, born in North Carolina to Frank and Anna Springs, married Mildred F. Smith, 30, of Wilmington, Delaware, divorced, born in Delaware to Wesley and Alretta B. Taylor.

In 1942, Laddie Springs registered for the World War II draft in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Per his registration card, he was born 22 April 1904 in North Carolina; lived at 1340 North 57th Street, Philadelphia; his contact was Mildred Springs; and he worked for Pop Clede Subway Grill, Chester, Pennsylvania.

1950 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, city directory.

In the 1950 census of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: at 5526 Master, apartment 2, Laddie Springs, 45, orchestra musician, and wife Mildred, 42, operator in dress factory.

In 1970, Springs briefly joined Ed Ashley’s Jazz Band, which played small clubs in the Philadelphia area. The liner notes for their single album includes a brief bio of Springs, which noted that he had written “Strange” and had played duo piano with Earl Hines and Fats Waller in the 1930s.

Laddie Springs died in Philadelphia in July 1988. His obituary glosses over his early years on the road and his years in Wilson and erroneously credits him with founding the Carolina Stompers, but sheds light on his decades in Philadelphia. [Sidenote: my grandmother spent her more than four decades in Philadelphia at 5549 Wyalusing Avenue, just one block from Camphor Memorial United Methodist.]

Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 July 1988.

Image of “Strange” record courtesy of Swing Blues Jazz 78 RPM.

Vick and others incorporate theatre business.

I knew Samuel H. Vick founded a vaudeville hall and movie theatre on the second floor of the Odd Fellows building, and I knew he (and later his son, Samuel Vick Jr.) booked talent for his venue. I was surprised, however, to learn that Vick had joined with other Black North Carolina businessmen to incorporate First National Negro Theatre Corporation in 1926.

The theatre corporation’s purview was broad — financing, theatre operation, vaudeville development, film production, booking services, and standardized theatre plans. “In the case of the First National … the Negro banker and business man and the theatre owner or operator will join hands and will unite capital and experience in the promotion of the corporation.” S.H. Vick was a charter member and treasurer. “Movie King” Frederick K. Watkins of Durham, N.C., and William S. Scales of Winston-Salem, N.C., were also charter members, and notable Durham lawyer R. McCants Andrews signed on as legal advisor.

New York Age, 23 January 1926.

I have found little additional mention of the First National Negro Theatre Corporation and suspect it tanked during the Great Depression.

A call for help from Istanbul.

We first met entertainer Isaiah Prophet Thorne via passport applications, here. In 1941, Thorne wrote the Daily Times, asking for help locating his family.

Wilson Daily Times, 24 June 1942.

Isaiah Thorne’s family appears in the 1870 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: farmer Preston Thorne, 23; wife Julia, 22; William, 3, James, 1, Charity, 5 months, and Alice, 10; and John Bullock, 18.

In the 1880 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Pettigrew Street, farmer Preston Thorne, 37; wife Edney, 36; and children William, 13, Eugene, 11, Hattie, 6, and Annie, 4.

On 12 March 1890, Hattie Thorne, 17, daughter of Preston and Edney Thorne, married Willis Grissom, 21, son of Willis and Carry Grissom, in Wilson.

Isaiah Thorne’s sister, Hattie Grissom Henry, died 21 November 1930 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born in Wilson County to Preston Thorn of Edgecombe County and Eddie Adams of Greene County; lived at 203 Vick Street; was a widow; and worked in nursing. Lydia Grissom was informant.

I have not found anything else about Thorne’s family, including anything about his father and brothers in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds — one day only!

Every week or so, a large manila envelope arrives in the mail, postmarked Wilson, N.C. Inside, a sheaf of xeroxed newspaper clippings from late 19th and early 20th century editions of the Wilson Daily Times. Bobby Boykin is the benefactor, and I thank him mightily, especially when gems like this appear:

Wilson Daily Times, 25 January 1921.

Just a few months past the earth-shattering release of “Crazy Blues,” the first blues recording by a Black artist for a Black audience, Mamie Smith and Jazz Hounds would have been a hot ticket anywhere, much less Wilson. The band played three shows in a single day at the Globe Theatre, Samuel H. Vick‘s vaudeville hall/movie theatre on the second floor of the Odd Fellows Lodge on East Nash Street. Darcy Yancey and Isaac Shade were selling tickets at their respective drugstores. 

(If I could time-travel, I’d want not only to see Smith perform at the Globe, but see who saw her perform at the Globe.)

Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds, including Willie “The Lion” Smith on piano, 1920.  Donaldson Collection/Getty Images.

2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the release of “Crazy Blues.” For more about the significance of Mamie Smith’s work, see Daphne A. Brooks’ New York Times piece, “100 Years Ago, ‘Crazy Blues’ Sparked a Revolution for Black Women Fans,” published August 10.

Mamie Smith publicity photo, Apeda Studio, New York, circa 1922, in collection of Old Hat Records.

Gala Mid-Nite Show.

The 7 October 1933 edition of the Wilson Daily Times ran this advertisement for a Gala Mid-Nite Show at the Carolina Theatre featuring Moran & Mack, the Two Black Crows, and unidentified “all colored musical and dancing vaudeville acts.”

Screen Shot 2020-05-18 at 2.49.06 PM

The Carolina was a segregated theatre with seating for African-Americans available in its balcony. Moran & Mack were a famed blackface minstrel act. If you care to see a snippet of Hypnotized, here you are.

Screen Shot 2020-05-18 at 2.53.48 PM

Brown Skin Models — sho nuf they’re coming to town.

Screen Shot 2018-12-21 at 8.43.29 PM.png

Wilson Daily Times, 1 December 1936.

Though booked at the whites-only Wilson Theatre, “Brown Skin Models” revue (featuring “struttin'” and “moanin’ low tunes,” uproarious comedy, and “spirituals as only the negro can sing them”) the show’s “special midnight midnight performance” was an accommodation that allowed an African-American audience through the doors.

——

As adapted from Wikipedia:

Irvin Colloden Miller (1884–1975) was an African-American actor, playwright and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including Broadway Rastus (1921); Liza (1922); Dinah (1923), which introduced the wildly popular Black Bottom dance; and Desires of 1927 starring Adelaide Hall. “In the 1920s and 1930s, he was arguably the most well-established and successful producer of black musical comedy.”

In 1925, Miller started an annual show, Brown Skin Models, inspired by the Ziegfeld Follies, but glorifying attractive black women and exclusively using black performers. The show toured the country with great success for forty weeks a year and during the Second World War toured army camps as part of the United Service Organizations. Although the shows included song, dance, and comedy, the focus was on the models themselves, who “did not necessarily sing or dance [but] merely appeared in costume, walked across the stage, and posed.”

The show was hailed by the Chicago Defender as a radical departure from stereotyped plantation song and dance shows. Miller continued to produce versions of the show with his wife Blanche Thompson, one of the leading models, until he retired around 1955.

And see here for more on Sammy Stewart’s orchestra.

Irvin Miller - Brown Skin Models - poster

Photos courtesy of Matthew F. Delmont’s blog, Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers.

Theatrical jottings.

Samuel H. Vick‘s Globe Theatre was the first black-owned moving picture theatre in Wilson. As early as 1914, the Globe occupied the second floor of the Odd Fellows Hall at 549-551 Nash Street and, in its earliest days, under the management of J.J. Privett, also hosted vaudeville acts.

Here, from the New York Age‘s weekly “Theatrical Jottings” column in 1914 are announcements of the Globe’s offerings:

1 22

22 January.

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 9.58.26 PM

29 January.

2 12

12 February.

3 19

19 March.

3 26

26 March.

9 17

17 September.

9 24

24 September.

A teenaged Ethel Waters joined the Hill Sisters act when it passed through Philadelphia and, on the road with them, gained the sobriquet “Sweet Mama Stringbean.” See Cullen et al.’s Vaudeville Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performances in America, volume 1.

Even if these people are negroes ….

Five years before he was assaulting black teachers, school superintendent Charles L. Coon was writing letters to the editor complaining about vice and depravity incubating in an East Wilson theatre. In the paternalistic and unself-conciously racist language typical of the time, he limned the dangers the show place posed to “young negro school girls” and warned that even small children were carrying to school “suggestive songs” heard at the theatre.

CL Coon Vice letter 8 2 1913

Wilson Daily Times, 11 April 1913.

The Sanborn Company issued a new volume of fire insurance maps for Wilson in 1913, but no movie theatre or vaudeville hall is depicted along East Nash Street. However, check the previous volume, produced in 1908, and there it is — a “moving picture show” just across the tracks at the corner of Nash and South Railroad Street. (In 1913, this building is [mis?]marked as a restaurant.) This theatre, at 414 East Nash, predates Sam Vick‘s Globe Theatre, which at any rate was located in the next block. Who was its proprietor? What was its name?

Moving picture show

Sanborn map, Wilson, North Carolina, 1908.

[A personal aside: seventy years later, school girls were flocking to another spot in the 400 block of East Nash. In the mid to late 1970s, Midtown Lounge, located roughly where the restaurant and cobbler shop are shown above, lured in patrons in the very best smoke-and-mirror balls disco way. On Teen Night, I was one of them. — LYH]