Navigating Black Identity and White Desire - Seven-Eleven and the 1920s Crossover Musical Comedy

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2022-04-01
Journal	American Music
Authors	Peter Graff
Citations	1

Abstract

On September 6, 1924, the Cleveland Gazette announced the arrival of the celebrated black musical comedy Seven-Eleven with a lengthy article that described the veracity of its character portrayals: “The authors of Seven-Eleven have striven to depict the southern ‘Negro’ in the true character, and the cast has been selected with the same point in view.”1 Appearing in the city’s daily black newspaper, this story attempted to reassure readers that Seven-Eleven was different from earlier black musicals that had been mired in damaging African American stereotypes. This show, according to the Gazette, was more realistic and honest. Similar claims of realism followed Seven-Eleven throughout its four years on the road as it toured black and later white theatrical circuits. When headlining as the first all-black show on the Columbia Burlesque Wheel, a national theater circuit catering primarily to white audiences, stories attesting to its truthful rendering of African American life became a main selling point on par with its acclaimed music and dancing. By relying on general promises of authenticity to promote the show across racial lines, Seven-Eleven effectively tapped into emerging desires within the largely segregated entertainment industry for up-to-date black cultural products like music, dance, and fashion.Seven-Eleven was among the most popular black musicals of the early 1920s, yet it has largely been forgotten and its significance overlooked in favor of shows like Shuffle Along that dominated the New York City market.2 Although it originated in New York, Seven-Eleven earned its acclaim not on Broadway, but rather through its headlining of national theatrical circuits. While crisscrossing the country, the show made regular stops in what were then important destinations of the Great Migration, communities that in the early 1920s were rapidly undergoing profound cultural changes. The expansion of black populations across the industrial North led not only to the implementation of racist policies but also to a growing curiosity in black culture among white residents—especially youth. It likewise dynamically restructured black communities in many cities, prompting internal debates over racial uplift and issues of identity. Seven-Eleven was responsive to these markets beyond Broadway by building in character types, plot scenarios, and specialty numbers that reflected the new hopes and anxieties of theatergoers it encountered in places like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Its ability to adapt and successfully engage these distinct markets is what kept the show afloat for years.True to its claims, Seven-Eleven incorporated elements drawn from contemporary black life in subtle yet meaningful ways. A tale of migration from a small Mississippi town to the bustling port city of New Orleans sets the story in motion, paralleling the Great Migration narrative that many African Americans in the North had experienced. At its core, Seven-Eleven presents a variant of the “greenhorn” dramatic convention in which a newcomer struggles to make sense of their new surroundings in humorous yet relatable situations.3 Working- and middle-class characters likewise populate the story, reflecting the expanding black middle class in the United States during the 1920s; there is even one character who is newly among the wealthy class after symbolically selling his cotton plantation. As much as these elements distanced the show from the damaging legacy of blackface minstrelsy, Seven-Eleven still presented the nouveau riche character in a burnt cork mask, relied on racist humor, and featured settings and dialect that betray a blackface lineage. Yet for many, these elements conformed to the generic expectations of the time, with many white theatergoers viewing them as signs of authentic black entertainment. As contemporary reviews demonstrate, these audiences missed the narratives of migration and economic uplift and instead latched onto (and praised) the show’s minstrel show conventions. By expanding and layering new meaning upon familiar formats and character types, Seven-Eleven was able to captivate racially distinct audiences that—viewing the show through lenses based on individual preconceptions and lived experiences—saw different qualities in this singular production.This complex and potentially dangerous mixing of hackneyed tropes in contemporary dressing complicates the show’s claims of offering “true character” portrayals. Yet rather than wading into the uncertain terrain of parsing fact from fiction, this article instead seeks to understand what impulses these claims of authenticity tapped into. In the following pages, I first detail the production history of Seven-Eleven before examining its marketing tactics and reception as it traveled black theatrical networks and later as it crossed over to mainstream white ones. In doing so, I situate the show’s narrative themes, musical numbers, and publicity strategies within the growing body of scholarship on race and spectatorship in the entertainment industry. Relying on archival scripts and scores, photographic evidence, advertisements, and press reviews, I demonstrate how crossover black musicals engaged racialized markets by adjusting show formats and advertising campaigns. In the case of Seven-Eleven, the show offered sendups of topics familiar to black theatergoers across the upper Midwest: acclimating to new surroundings, economic hardships, middle-class aspirations, and debates over colorism. Yet when navigating white theatrical circuits, the show fed into the growing white fascination with African American music and dance by promising an “authentic negro comedy” while following the model of earlier black musicals—such as those by Bert Williams and George Walker or Bob Cole, J. Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson—which had succeeded with white audiences through a reliance on minstrel stereotypes.4 This investigation ultimately reveals how Seven-Eleven deftly navigated the crossroads of divergent worlds: between profitable models reliant on racist caricatures and the black consciousness of the emerging Harlem Renaissance; between attempts at entertaining black audiences with relatable material and not alienating potential white theatergoers with content too unfamiliar; and between competing visions of black identity in a moment of cultural transformation.Seven-Eleven followed on the heels of the immensely popular Shuffle Along, which in 1921 took New York City by storm with a 504-performance run. Observing this success, entertainment industry veterans Barrington Carter and Garland Howard joined forces with vaudeville comedy duo Sam Cook and Andrew “Speedy” Smith (Figure 1) to create a show that would entice this same growing market that was hungry for original, black-created entertainment. Knowing that it was destined for the road, Carter and Howard sketched out a simple plot that incorporated some of the new social realities facing northern black communities, particularly in its diverse array of characters and its central concern over money. After cobbling together a dozen or so musical numbers and a cast of talented singers and dancers, the Seven-Eleven troupe held rehearsals in New York just weeks before hitting the road. The show premiered on October 21, 1922, at the Dunbar Theater in Philadelphia—the city’s principal black performing venue—to largely positive reviews. As the entertainment critic for Billboard wrote, “It is a pleasing entertainment, with a reasonable plot, full of fun and with good music, well rendered.”5The “reasonable plot” that audiences first encountered at the Dunbar remained mostly unchanged throughout the show’s four seasons touring North America from 1922 to 1926. The surviving book for Seven-Eleven, which Howard and Carter submitted for copyright protection in 1923, contains only dialogue and limited stage direction.6 Producers and actors animated this skeletal outline with musical numbers and comedic routines that would periodically change to suit a given audience. The lack of a definitive version is typical of musicals from this era—reflecting what Bruce Kirle has called “unfinished show business”—but by combining the script with the many descriptions found in newspaper reviews, we get a fuller picture of the production and its evolution.7Seven-Eleven comprised two acts and six scenes (though some reviews list up to twelve scenes) that the authors packed with a variety musical numbers and dance styles, including the Charleston, the buck-and-wing, military- and Spanish-style dances, hoedowns, the hoochie-coochie, and a number involving roller skates.8 Although the budget was tight, the production offered four stage settings—two elaborate drapes and two complete sets.9 The show’s music, which I treat in greater detail below, largely followed the contemporary practice among musical comedies of repurposing existing compositions. Depending on the engagement or current talent in the lead roles, Seven-Eleven featured between fifteen and twenty-one musical numbers, including vocal solos, duets, and quartets along with ensemble choruses and instrumental features.Although the show’s title alludes to a dice game of the same name, the plot actually centers on the foolish, yet lucky, Jack Stovall (Smith), who loses a large sum of money only to win it all back in the end betting on a racehorse named Seven-Eleven.10 Act 1 opens along the levees of New Orleans with the two lead characters disembarking from a steam ship. On their voyage, Hotstuff Jackson (Howard), a dandy-type proprietor of the struggling Needmore Hotel, meets Stovall, a man from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who recently earned a fortune selling his large cotton plantation. With this information, Hotstuff preys upon Stovall’s superstitions with the aid of sham Hindu fakir Gunga Din (Carter), convincing him to purchase the hotel and supply back pay to its employees.11 A host of other characters populate the opening act, including a comedic Chinese laundryman named Go Kum (Cook), whose struggle with the English language perpetuates racist stereotypes; Elder Berry (Andrew Fairchild), an old preacher with a gambling problem; and lesser characters such as bellhops, a police officer, and a racetrack bookie named Diamond Joe (Alex Lovejoy).12 Much of Act 2 is a dream sequence in which Gunga Din’s crystal ball transports Hotstuff and Stovall to a mythical country called “Zigabooland,” famed for its beautiful women and ferocious cannibals (Figure 2).13 Seconds before their impending demise at the hands of the cannibal king, the two wake from their trance state to the news that Seven-Eleven, the racehorse on which everyone had bet money, won its race. The remaining two scenes, abbreviated in the original typescript, depict the characters boarding a train to Chinatown to celebrate their good fortune and performing an ensemble finale to close out the production (Figure 3).Seven-Eleven reprised many potent and detrimental tropes from blackface minstrelsy that circulated among early black musical comedies. The two leads of the show, Hotstuff and Stovall, are clear descendants of the two most popular blackface minstrel characters: the well-dressed dandy Zip Coon and the simple-minded Jim Crow—the striking presentation of Stovall in blackface and as a drunkard who speaks in the so-called “negro dialect” makes this connection explicit (Figure 4). Hotstuff’s dancing additionally recalls the internationally renowned black minstrel Master Juba, who was famous for his energetic dance moves; a critic writing for Variety underscores this connection by describing Hotstuff as “a smooth worker who can dance like a barefooted boy on a steel deck in July.”14 As in the late nineteenth-century minstrel tradition, actors impersonated other races for the sake of humor, including the Hindu fortune-teller and the Chinese laundryman, who, in stereotypical fashion, is unable to pronounce the letter “r.” Aside from character types, Seven-Eleven projected images common to minstrelsy, including the crude primitivism of the cannibal sequence and the depiction of a romanticized South, with mention of cotton plantations and the iconic Steamboat Natchez dominating the stage in the opening scene. Song choice also bears evidence of this legacy through the inclusion of numbers that deride other cultures, such as “Chinky, Chinky Chinaman,” a song based on the racist children’s rhyme, and the reprisal of Stephen Foster’s minstrel standard “Old Black Joe” (1853).In addition to minstrel holdovers, Seven-Eleven inherited plot elements, character types, and its dramatic structure from earlier black musical productions. In Dahomey (1903), for example, similarly featured a blackface lead, a comic duo modeled on Jim Crow and Zip Coon (Williams and Walker), the inclusion of a comical Chinese character, and the appearance of cannibals from “darkest Africa.”15Darktown Follies (1913) likewise contained themes of urban migration and featured a variety of African American dance forms, ranging from ring shouts to the contemporary “ballin’ the jack” craze.16 Yet it was the success of Shuffle Along that had the greatest impact on the look and form of Seven-Eleven. As many scholars have noted, Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along reinstated black-created musicals on Broadway after nearly a decade’s absence and went on to inspire dozens of subsequent black productions throughout the 1920s.17 The show similarly featured blackface characters, “Oriental girls,” and even a hotel proprietor as a central character. For the press, the connections were obvious: “[Seven-Eleven is] the logical successor of the No. 1 Shuffle Along Co.”18Much like its contemporaries, Seven-Eleven featured a host of musical styles, from the vocal quartet harmonizing as the curtain rose to the final ensemble number that closed the show.19 Musicals in this era were constantly evolving as they test ran and updated material, and Seven-Eleven was no exception.20 Most of the show’s songs were either interpolations from earlier musicals or were popular Tin Pan Alley tunes of the day, yet the production featured a few original numbers that were specific to the narrative. A complete record of the show’s music does not appear to survive; however, news reports indicate that several songs originated from cast member Evon Robinson, whose recently deceased husband J. Leubrie Hill had produced and composed for such hit musicals as My Friend from Kentucky (1913) and Darktown Follies.21 The show adopted at least three songs from the latter, including “Lou My Lou,” “Good-by Ragtime,” and “Sure Cure for the Blues.”22 Other interpolated songs include “All Aboard for Chinatown” (1915) by Frank Davis and Win Brookhouse, “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” (1922) by African American songwriting duo Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, and two songs credited to Jelly Roll Morton: “The Animal Ball” (1906) and “Jelly Roll Blues” (1915). Finally, composers wrote at least three songs expressly for the show, including “Zigabooland Glide,” “Zigaboo Lady,” and “High Yellow and a Seal Skin Brown.”23 Songs appearing later in its four-year run include Stephen Foster’s “Old Black Joe,” Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s “Ain’t-Cha Coming Back, Mary Ann, To Maryland” (1919), and a song by African American composer Marion Dickerson titled “Vampin’ Liza Jane” (1921), which had previously appeared in Irvin C. Miller’s 1921 black musical comedy Put and Take.24The show toured with its own instrumental ensemble, about which little is known during the first two years. According to early accounts of the touring personnel, pioneering female orchestra director Marie Lucas headed the ensemble.25 For the show’s final two years, Stanley Bennet took charge of the band, which the press occasionally referred to as the “Original Jazz Hounds.”26 Critics across the country applauded Bennet’s touring ensemble, which offered “everything from old fashioned clog to modern jazz.”27 The band comprised five members during the 1924-25 season and would play alongside local house orchestras.28 As Seven-Eleven began headlining the Columbia Burlesque Wheel the next season, its band increased in size to twelve: two cornets, four saxophones (three doubling on clarinet and one on violin), bass saxophone or tuba, trombone, banjo, bass, trap set, and piano (Figure 5).29 The show featured other ensembles including the Pan-American Four male vocal quartet, a separate mixed-voice quartet, and the highly lauded “snappy chorus,” numbering between fourteen and twenty-five one of the more popular shows of the 1920s, Seven-Eleven its to and one Billboard critic that Seven-Eleven was “a good show By 1923, theatrical up the show to his newly featured black vaudeville acts in its season, comprised black from to Seven-Eleven on a of the hitting and the famed Theater on A between the show’s and the end of the first season, after which the took up a practice at New Theater to test out new The next in 1924, when theatrical and on as and the show’s market to include white early were was up to the to and that they had a and successfully for Seven-Eleven to as the first all-black show to the Columbia Burlesque that and ran through its on the road, Seven-Eleven two distinct markets with what was the same show, yet it engaged different desires among those its first two years touring the Seven-Eleven to black theatergoers in by Great Migration, such as and New York in these comprised many southern who the theater as a from and for a of the of life in In Seven-Eleven, Garland Howard and Barrington Carter reflected back to audiences the in these communities, in comedic that into white of African Americans and urban black of It an that tropes from minstrelsy not to but to to the of a new of African Americans in the To demonstrate how Seven-Eleven to contemporary in the black this the of the main country character, the show’s of class and its themes of racial and that are in the musical By these narrative and themes with the show’s reception in the black press, we how Seven-Eleven with black audiences by the familiar struggles of city life for those through the of the Great Migration as well as for those just on the other of many Seven-Eleven is a story of urban migration and the of the As one of the two main characters of the show, Jack Stovall the country is and To his Stovall in blackface and his of to comedic and based on the of is a from out by the by the of the it had a of the vaudeville the Stovall’s on for when is of the Needmore Hotel, his and the comedic (Figure as Stovall in and by cannibals When they how Stovall by up his as to they from The dialect and burnt cork from minstrelsy, but urban black audiences have the or even within to a addition to his blackface and Stovall also as a As is typical of this comedic character Stovall’s as a of humor, particularly as to one of the The can only in Stovall is to understand to out of what is made made I to make out of all I to is to a little in to a little would like to I of of and and time, to this Smith an for his character late in the show’s appearance and just how different is among his New Orleans In this effectively the common to a character whose a from audiences who while to their new The of the from its ability to as a through which audiences can at and Although the show is in New Stovall’s as an ultimately the new social realities that many African Americans encountered during the Great new and cultural only the Great Migration for those undergoing the but it also dynamically restructured northern black communities, to debates within black over issues to black uplift and identity. in the press how to such an into such detail as A Cleveland Gazette for example, local of the for the of to to the in the city and to the from the and them how to in places so as to and not of this On its Stovall’s and dialect him to the Jim Crow minstrel character who is for his yet when that the original comprised many southern the narrative of the an of these and to the that were then growing in communities the show of Stovall’s appearance as well as his not only as a main of in the show, by of also to the other black characters as more realistic of African Americans who were to city by to characters drawn primarily from the bellhops, and reflected and important of black in the early The of the Needmore in point to the of the hotel industry as a of black in the 1920s, and to were among the which Hotstuff Jackson The authors of the book from these characters into but rather them as and of dialogue separate these city from for the script as a contemporary like when money from As these characters with and they a of black the urban the which audiences across the North as Seven-Eleven was from the of African Americans found in mainstream song and it was also of such of other Sam Chinese character Go Kum and Gunga Din in the press, their appearance and the well known some of the character for many a while they were to they to the other African American characters by as Stovall, Go Kum from the as a of his to understand or English In the show most of the comedic for Stovall and Go who their through dialogue (Figure J. Jackson this in his for the and Smith in a Chinese and about before a in one was Go struggle to understand English in the of Stovall’s By such racist as Seven-Eleven a of to the of the In doing so, the caricatures the racial from the characters, audiences to them and at their such a in the of Go Gunga Stovall, and even the of the of the cast out by for their in the black press and mainstream made specific mention of the A for the for example, out Garland Howard as “a of good The same went on to the as a of actors and who can and in scenes like theater critic for likewise called out Howard as “a man of This of that the actors of Seven-Eleven a in their by the “negro dialect” of earlier theatrical Yet the fact that their into racist expectations of African Americans and As and detail in While language is to social and racial in the United when one speaks of their they are either with or are what led audiences to at Zip in the and are the same Stovall’s comedic to of their class with The actors of Seven-Eleven who this at the end of the and an urban class that the of black uplift of the addition to its depiction of urban migration and class Seven-Eleven engaged contemporary debates within the black over and its connection to of and For Seven-Eleven, the topics of and are most in what the press described as the show’s specialty of “High Yellow and a Seal Skin The song debates what of women are the most beautiful and between and which are that in the to black with and According to the the an internal within the African American that places on with The of with back to the at a when with to while those with

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/19452349.40.1.02