Speaker 1: I guess we don't just start, do we We have
Speaker 1: we have to be people first. Yeah, it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the people want to hear are our witty banter and
Speaker 1: our delightful personal stories. Hit me quick, my friends listeners.
Speaker 1: She froze. It was a great visual gag. Unfortunately, I'm
Speaker 1: sure I like very scared and it was good. We
Speaker 1: got to get this show on video, right, it's been
Speaker 1: disguised face. Um, all right, well how about delightful personal
Speaker 1: stories then? Um, it's tough. I mean, the only one
Speaker 1: I have is that Atlanta is being sold to developers,
Speaker 1: piece by piece, so that everything we love about it
Speaker 1: will soon be gone with delightful hilarious son, But what
Speaker 1: an anecdote? I love it hilarious. I'm trying. I'm really
Speaker 1: trying to think of something. I don't know. I know,
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been a downer day. I was,
Speaker 1: I had I had a hilarious story. I was on
Speaker 1: the phone with customer service for my cell phone provider,
Speaker 1: um for I don't know, four hours last night, in
Speaker 1: six hours today, hilarious. That was a good time, rip
Speaker 1: roaring treat for the whole family. Uh yeah, go ahead
Speaker 1: and leave them unnamed. They are all time tooth heads.
Speaker 1: I could say that. Um I, I mean I had
Speaker 1: my first therapy appointment ever. Another another exciting, thrilling fun
Speaker 1: time for everyone. Uh, it's good. It's been a hard
Speaker 1: week alright, already dealing with business things. And how about
Speaker 1: how about now that the walls are down, I can
Speaker 1: see that screaming goat you got me for Christmas? Go ahead,
Speaker 1: grab it didn't come through, I don't know if it didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody saw thor Love and Thunder,
Speaker 1: but it's basically that same thing. But this toy came
Speaker 1: out long before that movie because the joke in that
Speaker 1: movie was like nine years old, extremely old. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you loved that. That should always made you laugh. You
Speaker 1: could scream you should have had it today when you're
Speaker 1: on the phone with All Time two hits. Oh that's right,
Speaker 1: I should really let your feelings out. We had so
Speaker 1: much fun in our last episode. We were talking about
Speaker 1: those Reddit breakups. We didn't even get to the Reddit
Speaker 1: marriage proposals or the Reddit sex stories, which will end
Speaker 1: up in an episode later for sure, but we did
Speaker 1: mention to all that we were doing that episode because
Speaker 1: we were deep in research for this episode, which I
Speaker 1: should say these episodes. Yes, I got I fell in
Speaker 1: love with these folks, so you know how it happens.
Speaker 1: It really does. Sometimes the ridiculous romances are really with
Speaker 1: us and our subjects, that's true. But I really fell
Speaker 1: in love with them, and I got so fascinated in
Speaker 1: the history because it's theater history, so of course special
Speaker 1: place in my soul. But but they're just so amazing
Speaker 1: and kind of forgotten today. So and they deserve to
Speaker 1: be known about, I think definitely. Yeah, I just we
Speaker 1: got real into it. Y'all might not know this about
Speaker 1: us because we hide it pretty well, but we are
Speaker 1: of the theater persuasion in our backgrounds. Hello, I'm a
Speaker 1: thespian acting act and so yeah. So this story about Vaudeville,
Speaker 1: early days of theater and uh and theater diversity more
Speaker 1: exciting also something we here in Atlanta are fortunate to
Speaker 1: get a decent dose of. Although uh, the tide's been
Speaker 1: turning more in that direction fortunately, yeah, hopefully nationwide, hopefully.
Speaker 1: I would say these performers kind of set that tone
Speaker 1: early on in the turn of the Turn of I
Speaker 1: guess I have to say the turn of the twenty century.
Speaker 1: Now we turned a whole other century since then, so
Speaker 1: but no. At the turn of the twenty century, no
Speaker 1: vaudeville act was as popular or sought after as the
Speaker 1: Black Vaudeville troop of Williams and Walker. Bert Williams, who
Speaker 1: is still recognized as one of the greatest black comedians
Speaker 1: of all time, and George Walker, who was an equally
Speaker 1: talented performer and very savvy businessman. They put together their
Speaker 1: own vaudeville troop in the eighteen nineties. But when George
Speaker 1: married Ada Overton and she joined the troop, the skype
Speaker 1: became the limit for these guys. With her choreography, their
Speaker 1: elaborate sets and costumes, and their determination to showcase black
Speaker 1: people in a less stereotypical way, they took Vaudeville by storm,
Speaker 1: and then Broadway and then the world. So let's learn
Speaker 1: more about these incredible theater legends, right, let's go, Hey,
Speaker 1: their French come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some
Speaker 1: stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's
Speaker 1: just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type
Speaker 1: of person at all, and abstract concept or a concrete wall,
Speaker 1: but if there's a story where the second Clinch Ridiculous
Speaker 1: role vance a production of iHeart Radio. So. George Walker
Speaker 1: was born in Kansas in eighteen seventy two or eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, and he started his performing career early. He
Speaker 1: toured around with medicine and minstrel shows as a child. Now,
Speaker 1: minstrel shows had been one of the most popular comedic
Speaker 1: entertainments since eighteen forty eight because northern white people were
Speaker 1: really curious about what life was like in slavery, and
Speaker 1: who better to explain it to them than white men
Speaker 1: who really understood. So, yeah, white guys would put on
Speaker 1: black face, they would paint on very wide red lips,
Speaker 1: and they would wear white gloves, and they would imitate
Speaker 1: these songs and dances of southern black people. Imitate, I
Speaker 1: think is a stretch. Imitators exaggerate, Yeah, just really do badly.
Speaker 1: I'm sure do poorly. Um. According to a New Yorker
Speaker 1: article by Claudia roth pier Punt called Behind the Mask,
Speaker 1: the minstrel show became quote the nation's first homegrown entertainment craze,
Speaker 1: which I had never I never knew that minstrel shows
Speaker 1: were like our first American made entertainment. I know, I
Speaker 1: know sadly it does, but I guess we did import
Speaker 1: a lot of our entertainment from from Europe until yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true to their own stuff. Um, but I did
Speaker 1: not know that America, you know, love it has a
Speaker 1: tendency to say I'm gonna put my own stamp on
Speaker 1: this thing, and then that stamp is super racist. Well
Speaker 1: that's It's what's what's extra crazy to me is that
Speaker 1: right and right and here, right here, the very first
Speaker 1: homegrown American entertainment thing had its roots in slavery. So
Speaker 1: it's very odd to me that, you know, people who
Speaker 1: don't like critical race theory are like, way, don't need
Speaker 1: to learn about slavery, and it's like, actually, it's like
Speaker 1: literally part of every American story. You can't leave it
Speaker 1: out because it's it left an indelible stamp on so
Speaker 1: much of American life. It's just anyway, So minstrel shows, uh,
Speaker 1: we're first about kind of introducing I guess slavery life
Speaker 1: and and southern black people's lifestyles to northern white people,
Speaker 1: but they quickly devolved into mockery's of in support of slavery,
Speaker 1: and then later after the Civil War in support of
Speaker 1: Jim Crow segregation law. So that's when they kind of like,
Speaker 1: I think, I guess at first, at least for a
Speaker 1: little while, very short period of time, they were since
Speaker 1: a year like this is this is what they look
Speaker 1: like down there they're doing. We want to share their
Speaker 1: like way of life with you. And it quickly became like,
Speaker 1: look at these idiots kind of wow, okay vibes, which
Speaker 1: almost is like exposing what was already underneath it anyway,
Speaker 1: just like oh yeah, sure they were sincere about it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were very earnest and honesty with it. No,
Speaker 1: and then it just became like, actually, we're really just
Speaker 1: being racist. Let's just go ahead and be upfront about it.
Speaker 1: Why lie now? Actually, Jim Crow segregation laws were named
Speaker 1: after a minstrel character because black people were depicted as
Speaker 1: either the Jim Crow, which was a dimwitted, lazy country buffoon,
Speaker 1: or the Jim Dandy, or as it was also called,
Speaker 1: the Zip coon character um, which was a smooth talking
Speaker 1: urban high class type. Obviously, the word coon is a slur.
Speaker 1: It was a slur in its own time, it is
Speaker 1: a slur today, so not a word to like add
Speaker 1: to our vocabularies or anything like that. Usually we don't
Speaker 1: say that kind of stuff if it's not historically important
Speaker 1: relevant story. In this case, it is, so we did
Speaker 1: preserve that name in this story. It's so interesting. I
Speaker 1: really thought that Jim Crow was a guy that that
Speaker 1: public education failed to teach me about. But it was
Speaker 1: actually a character that public education failed to teach me exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: either way, public education failed you. So you can still
Speaker 1: be mad once. That's it. That's the only time public exactly,
Speaker 1: just the one time. Now in minstrel shows, even black
Speaker 1: performers wore black face because of how much white audiences
Speaker 1: just hated to see black people on stage. Serious, not kidding.
Speaker 1: They would put on black cork, a burnt cork makeup
Speaker 1: and be like, look, I'm here, I am white people.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with us? I do laugh sometimes, like I'm
Speaker 1: just like, white people are so sensitive. I mean, you
Speaker 1: see it today too, But it's just it's it really is. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't do the Southern accent because I mean, this
Speaker 1: wasn't even exclusively Southern. We're talking about New York, Boston,
Speaker 1: d C, Chicago. Forget handle it. I forget about it.
Speaker 1: I can't forget about it. Somebody got it. Do something
Speaker 1: different because it's hurt in my eyes, God, losers insane. Now,
Speaker 1: by the eight nineties, minstrel shows were being elbowed out
Speaker 1: by vaudeville variety shows, kind of a new form of entertainment,
Speaker 1: but the black face and the minstrel stereotypical characters were
Speaker 1: still incredibly popular. So when the charming and outspoken George
Speaker 1: Walker met the served talented musician and comic actor Burt
Speaker 1: Williams in San Francisco in eight they decided they would
Speaker 1: team up and create a good vaudeville act that would
Speaker 1: get him out of menstrul circuit for good, because they
Speaker 1: were done with all that awesome. Now. Burt Williams was
Speaker 1: a year younger than George. He was born in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: but he emmigrated with his parents at eleven years old
Speaker 1: to Florida and then they moved to California. Now, first
Speaker 1: he wanted to become an engineer, but he couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to go to Stanford University, so he became a singing
Speaker 1: waiter at hotels in San Francisco. Now, originally, when Burt
Speaker 1: and George got together, they just played the expectations like
Speaker 1: Burt Williams. Since he had lighter skin, he would play
Speaker 1: the straight man of the act, and he would act
Speaker 1: opposite George Walker's dark skinned, bumbling of type character, because
Speaker 1: again it's just, oh, this must be what white people
Speaker 1: want to see. It was the dandy Walker was the
Speaker 1: jim Crow, right, But then they realized wouldn't the be
Speaker 1: a lot funnier if we switched, which is brilliant comedy.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, so, George Walker, who was more dark skin
Speaker 1: than Burt, would perform not in black face. He became
Speaker 1: the well dressed, strutting dandie character, and he would spend
Speaker 1: all the money that he borrowed or tricked away from
Speaker 1: Burt Williams slow, countrified simpleton character, and Bert did perform
Speaker 1: in black face to darken his light skin. Burt Williams,
Speaker 1: in fact, once said of his stage character quote, even
Speaker 1: if it rains soup, he would be found with a
Speaker 1: fork in his hand and no spoon insight. I love it.
Speaker 1: Just an unlucky, you know, kind of guy. Camille Forbes
Speaker 1: in her book introducing Burt Williams, she points out that
Speaker 1: they suppressed the worst quality of the stereotypes they portrayed.
Speaker 1: They chose instead to lean into the comedy of opposites.
Speaker 1: So they had the wily schemer versus the innocent duke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like an odd couple. Kind of classic classic, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Forbes writes that usually Bert's character would triumph in
Speaker 1: the end through quote rare but incisive manipulation, revealing his
Speaker 1: surprising awareness of the social order, despite his recognized identity
Speaker 1: as a simpleton. At the time, white people who performed
Speaker 1: in black face build themselves, as the Sea Word talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. So Walker and Williams decided to call themselves
Speaker 1: the two real coons, and that was to distinguish themselves,
Speaker 1: even though they knew it was a slur and they
Speaker 1: both hated it. They were like, but we're the real ones,
Speaker 1: you know, basically now, Camille Forbes explains this, She said,
Speaker 1: quote black entertainer's success depended on their ability to satisfy
Speaker 1: white audiences desire for authentic performances of blackness. Bert and
Speaker 1: George's self description was a recognizable response to that demand.
Speaker 1: I just love that white people are like, I want
Speaker 1: an authentic portray alee of blackness, but only white people
Speaker 1: can do it and only white men. Also, I don't
Speaker 1: want to see a lady. Yeah right, Okay, how authentic
Speaker 1: can it possibly be? That's like, that's like me being like,
Speaker 1: I only eat authentic Italian food at good old Italian
Speaker 1: restaurants like the Olive Gardens, because that's oh my god,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, that's it's also that's what they
Speaker 1: wanted to see. They wanted to see enslave people and
Speaker 1: segregated people portrait as being like happy and fine with
Speaker 1: it and they're dumb and they don't care and it's
Speaker 1: fine and that's the proper way of things. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you showed them the reality, they said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not real. I've seen it before. I've seen shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know how. They're actually happy. They're singing. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: which did happen in slavery because they would sing. People
Speaker 1: to see they're singing, so they must be happy out there.
Speaker 1: And it's like, actually that's instructions on how to escape
Speaker 1: slavery through the river are like, I mean, look, this
Speaker 1: is important information because this is happening. This is happening
Speaker 1: when we look at like textbooks now where they're trying
Speaker 1: to change slavery to like involuntary employment and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and make it sound like people were having a better
Speaker 1: time than they were, because guess what, they weren't having
Speaker 1: any good time, or that they were treated better than
Speaker 1: they were, or even that if they were treated well,
Speaker 1: it justified the whole system of slavery, which it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I don't care how well I'm nice you were, you know,
Speaker 1: it does you owned another person. That's totally crazy. But
Speaker 1: in Burton George's publicity photos, they were always like the
Speaker 1: opposite of white people expected. They were immaculate and well dressed,
Speaker 1: and this underlined the differences between the caricatures of black
Speaker 1: men that people saw on stage and they themselves. Is
Speaker 1: the real thing. Yeah, they're like what you're seeing ain't
Speaker 1: even when I'm doing it, that ain't the truth. This
Speaker 1: is the truth. I'm a classy motherfucker. That's the true. Right.
Speaker 1: But even having done this and like making that distinct
Speaker 1: difference in their marketing materials, they did catch heat from
Speaker 1: the black community from time to time because some people
Speaker 1: felt that they were helping to maintain these stereotypes in
Speaker 1: white people's minds. But this also paved the way for
Speaker 1: more black theater professionals to change the game completely. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of a you know, it's a Mackavellian kind
Speaker 1: of thing, ends and means and all that. But they
Speaker 1: made a choice and they thought this was the best
Speaker 1: thing we can do for ourselves and our community, and
Speaker 1: we'll see how it plays out. And it seems like
Speaker 1: it played out well. Yeah. I think it's one of
Speaker 1: those cases of people having to swallow their teeth so
Speaker 1: they can take a seat at the table and make
Speaker 1: more room for other people who maybe hopefully it would
Speaker 1: not have to swallow their teeth as much, and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's like sacrificing for the progress. I'm a very impatient
Speaker 1: person when it comes to like social change. I am
Speaker 1: definitely I am definitely, like always screaming at the news, like,
Speaker 1: but why does it takes along? Just do it now,
Speaker 1: just tomorrow, have it be different. It's not hard, and
Speaker 1: I believe that it's not. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I've also had to recognize the value of incremental change,
Speaker 1: and uh, the I don't even want to say necessity
Speaker 1: because I really still don't think it is necessary, but um,
Speaker 1: it has been in the past. You've seen incremental change work.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you just like, well, let's get a little done,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get a little more done, and then
Speaker 1: a little more and eventually we'll have something to finish.
Speaker 1: I know, right, But it's like it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you're like people take a long time to change,
Speaker 1: and then systems take even longer to change because they're
Speaker 1: full of people who take a long time to change.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, it's just a pile of
Speaker 1: time on top of time and slowness and type of slowness. No,
Speaker 1: I just have and I did ever get finished either,
Speaker 1: because every time, you know, you get somewhere, you're like, great,
Speaker 1: that's where I wanted to get, and it's still not
Speaker 1: far enough. Yeah. Yeah. And in realizing that I was
Speaker 1: in a horrible situation now that I'm out of it,
Speaker 1: I realized that that was stacked underneath ten other horrible things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just had to deal with the first horrible thing
Speaker 1: and then oh good, I'm not enslaved anymore. Wait a second,
Speaker 1: I can't open up bank account, you know, like that
Speaker 1: it's not And during segregation too, was like so extra
Speaker 1: annoying because it was like you're separate but equal, so
Speaker 1: just go make your own thing, and so black people
Speaker 1: were like, great, I'll go make my own thing. And
Speaker 1: then white people are like, I don't like that you
Speaker 1: have your own things, go in and like fucking destroy it.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, what I thought, that's what you
Speaker 1: said you wanted me to do. I was over in
Speaker 1: my own corner here, and now you're up in my corner.
Speaker 1: I don't know, We're just dumb. History can be very frustrating,
Speaker 1: especially looking at social change. Uh, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, let's let's marinate on that a little, but
Speaker 1: for a second, come back and get back to this story,
Speaker 1: because otherwise we're going to go off, uh and just
Speaker 1: be like white people fixing racism on our podcast. We
Speaker 1: should probably dial that back. Yeah, we'll get back to
Speaker 1: the story right after this. Yeah, welcome back to the show, everybody. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the Bert Williams and George Walker duo was first
Speaker 1: added to a struggling musical called The gold Bug in
Speaker 1: the show closed like pretty much as soon as they
Speaker 1: were cast a week or two later. I wanted to
Speaker 1: see that. I don't know if you did well. I
Speaker 1: guess that was very good. So yeah, The gold Bug
Speaker 1: was consigned to the Broadway trash Bin, but the Williams
Speaker 1: and Walker act got really good reviews their particular section
Speaker 1: of the show, so they were able to get a
Speaker 1: gig at another theater for a thirty six week run,
Speaker 1: and that is a really good run. And they were
Speaker 1: also approached by a tobacco company to pose for advertisements.
Speaker 1: But the company wanted two women on the poster as
Speaker 1: well as the two gentlemens. So George was dating a
Speaker 1: dancer named Stella at the time, so she came along
Speaker 1: the photo shoot and she brought her friend, a beautiful, independent,
Speaker 1: extremely talented performer named Aida Overton. Now I I did
Speaker 1: the research for this episode, and I found I found
Speaker 1: several sources said she started her life as Aida Overton
Speaker 1: and then changed her name later to Aida, but they
Speaker 1: didn't seem to agree on that. So one said it
Speaker 1: was just a typo in the census and her name
Speaker 1: was always Aida, or it was just a mistake. Another
Speaker 1: said she changed it to match the Haitian goddess of
Speaker 1: fertility and rainbows. Then we saw another thing that said
Speaker 1: she changed it because another Aida joined the crew, joined
Speaker 1: the cast, so she wanted to be had an eye
Speaker 1: into her name to make it different, right, So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure the true story because again these sources don't agree.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna call her Aida Overton throughout the episode,
Speaker 1: and of which means I'm gonna be singing Aida in
Speaker 1: my head the whole time, because that's not a song
Speaker 1: from Aida. I don't know what you just said. I don't.
Speaker 1: I've never seen Aida. It's so good. First of all, theater.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's Elton John's musical about the
Speaker 1: slaves in Egypt, so take that for what it is.
Speaker 1: But it's it's, you know what, the thing about Aida.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite Elton John album because that whole show
Speaker 1: is just straight up Elton John music and it's great,
Speaker 1: and I there should have I would love to see
Speaker 1: it with an Egyptian cast and not Adam Pascal. But
Speaker 1: but I definitely played that soundtrack to Death in high
Speaker 1: school and then I saw it at the Fox. It
Speaker 1: was good. It wasn't great, but it was good, all right.
Speaker 1: I guess I should listen it is it is an
Speaker 1: iconic musical. I'm not a big musical person, so I
Speaker 1: never come into it. But it's an Atlanta staple technically
Speaker 1: because they premiered it here before it went to Broadway,
Speaker 1: and um, they had this big mechanical moving pyramid that
Speaker 1: moved around the stage that was apparently constantly breaking down
Speaker 1: the whole performances without it or with it stationary anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm getting into Aida. Yeah, that's not this
Speaker 1: is about so. Aida Overton was born in New York
Speaker 1: on Valentine's Day, and the Library of Congress says she
Speaker 1: quote was a child who seemed to have danced before
Speaker 1: she walked, so her parents got her into musical training early,
Speaker 1: and she joined her first black touring group at the
Speaker 1: age of fifteen, and a few years later she joined
Speaker 1: Black Patty's Troubadours, which was a troop owned and operated
Speaker 1: by Matilda Cceretta Joiner Jones Cisiretta Jones was a soprano
Speaker 1: who was called the Black Patty as a reference to
Speaker 1: a famous Italian opera singer named Adelina Patty. And she
Speaker 1: had a major impact on Aida because she was why
Speaker 1: wasn't Adelina Patty the attack Allien Cicretta, Well you know why? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know why? You why? I don't know if maybe
Speaker 1: Adelina came first, no idea, but you know, I still.
Speaker 1: So anyways, Cieretta Jones had a major impact on Aida
Speaker 1: because she was a black woman who owned her own company.
Speaker 1: She sang at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison,
Speaker 1: and she was the highest paid black entertainer of her time.
Speaker 1: So Ida was definitely like, let me take some notes.
Speaker 1: But right before this tobacco ad thing came up, Aida
Speaker 1: had a bad experience when the management and the performers
Speaker 1: kind of went head to head over some pay dispute,
Speaker 1: and Aida was just not like she was not trying
Speaker 1: to get into all that. She was not trying to
Speaker 1: get into some arguments. She said, no more drama in
Speaker 1: my life, like Mary J. Blige, and she decided to
Speaker 1: retire from the stage for good. So when she accepted
Speaker 1: this cigarette ad gig, she figured it's just a one
Speaker 1: time job. She post some photos, get her cash, move on.
Speaker 1: She says, this is uh. She says, I'll do one
Speaker 1: more job. And that said, just like Danny Ocean, like this,
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of the game for good. After this,
Speaker 1: this will be enough to retire on Tahiti. I'll move
Speaker 1: on to something completely different. Well, Burton George had a
Speaker 1: different idea because they have been looking for a hook
Speaker 1: for their vaudeville act, and they thought they found one.
Speaker 1: It's called the cake walk dance. Now, the cake walk
Speaker 1: has its roots in West African tribal traditions, according to
Speaker 1: Camille Forbes, but in America it was inextricably linked with slavery.
Speaker 1: Enslave people would dress up in their finest clothing and
Speaker 1: do this partnered dance, and then the funniest or most
Speaker 1: impressive or amazing or accomplished moves would win the prize,
Speaker 1: which was a cake. Be The question is who takes
Speaker 1: the cake? Oh Tuesday from Okay? Who takes the game? All? Right? Now,
Speaker 1: usually these dances would be judged by their enslavers, but
Speaker 1: it quickly evolved into a satire of the enslavers, although
Speaker 1: they probably didn't pick up on it. The dancers would
Speaker 1: mimic all this fussy bowing and curtsying and all the
Speaker 1: overly formal and poised movements of the white dances like
Speaker 1: the waltz or the minuet, really just making fun of
Speaker 1: all these properness. Yeah. Now, white entertainers in their minstrel
Speaker 1: shows almost always included a similar dance to a cake
Speaker 1: walk that they called it a walk about or a strut,
Speaker 1: and they were usually a big feature in the show,
Speaker 1: so George and Burt knew that they should add one
Speaker 1: to their act too. And there's a real sublime irony
Speaker 1: here that Camille Forbes talks about in introducing Burt Williams.
Speaker 1: She said, quote the dance thereby became the performance of
Speaker 1: white entertainers in black face who imitated a black dance
Speaker 1: create it to lampoon whites. By the time Williams and
Speaker 1: Walker performed it, the irony was even further heightened or deepened,
Speaker 1: as these black performers now performed a dance imitating whites
Speaker 1: who mocked blacks who satirized whites pretentious and fussy mannerisms.
Speaker 1: It's me, you copy me, I'm gonna copy. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna copy the copy, and then you copy the copy
Speaker 1: of the copy, and then but your copy is better.
Speaker 1: I'm mocking what you stole from me. I stole from you,
Speaker 1: you stole back from me, and now I'm making fun
Speaker 1: of you. For that's pretty great. And it's so it's
Speaker 1: just that ship made me laugh so hard. It's like
Speaker 1: we're making Oh, let's make fun of black people. It
Speaker 1: turns out they're making fun of us the whole time.
Speaker 1: But we didn't know that because again, that's superiority. They
Speaker 1: just could never assume. I think they just couldn't put
Speaker 1: it in their minds that enslaved people would have an
Speaker 1: opinion of about them or be able to, I don't know,
Speaker 1: think of them in a satirical way or whatever. Like.
Speaker 1: They just wouldn't be able to see that irony. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was the white people who didn't see it,
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, So George went to ask Aida Overton
Speaker 1: to join Williams and Walker and she said no, She's
Speaker 1: said that was it alpha good? So George actually had
Speaker 1: to visit her several times with different proposals and really
Speaker 1: persist before she finally agreed to join. And it would
Speaker 1: be the best decision of George's life. We'll find out
Speaker 1: why right after this break. All right, welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show. All right. So the inclusion of two women
Speaker 1: in the Williams and Walker acts would set them apart
Speaker 1: all by itself. But Ida was something special. I cannot
Speaker 1: stress this enough. She would quickly become their leading choreographer,
Speaker 1: and she had a star power that just held audiences spellbound.
Speaker 1: You can't not get enough for her. You can't, don't exactly,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure George thought because he was a pretty
Speaker 1: sad producer, and he was like, people want to look
Speaker 1: at you, and that's just the truth. And if you
Speaker 1: have that, you can be even not very talented and
Speaker 1: still have a good career. Right. But like she was
Speaker 1: also incredibly talented. She's also beautiful, gorgeous, say gorgeous person.
Speaker 1: We've been reading this whole story and this is the
Speaker 1: first time I've googled her, and she is I don't
Speaker 1: know what the word is. Yeah, it's very beautiful. I
Speaker 1: want to watch whatever she's doing. In one of her pictures,
Speaker 1: she looks a lot like I want to say, Zazzi
Speaker 1: beats how to pronounce her name. I know it's wrong,
Speaker 1: but she's amusing because she was saying it's not Zay.
Speaker 1: I think it's just bits Ba. Yeah, well she's awesome.
Speaker 1: She might she might do it our journey small leads
Speaker 1: I know can sing. Maybe she would be a good choice.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Somebody make this movie and you tell
Speaker 1: me who should player, because I will watch it that.
Speaker 1: Camille Forbes writes, quote Ada in particular, made a difference
Speaker 1: that not only equal great success for Williams and Walker,
Speaker 1: but also created a national craze for the cake walk.
Speaker 1: Although Williams and Walker were not the cake walks innovators,
Speaker 1: by the time they were done popularizing it, their names
Speaker 1: would be forever linked with the dance. The first time
Speaker 1: they performed the cake walk is part of their vodellact.
Speaker 1: It was just Stella and Ada on stage with George
Speaker 1: and Burst, but within a month they had added dozens
Speaker 1: of dancers to the bill. Um. They had incredible moves.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would bend over backwards until their heads almost
Speaker 1: touched the floor. Um. Sometimes they were performed with buckets
Speaker 1: of water on their heads and danced ecstatically and energetically
Speaker 1: without spilling a single drop. Like it was just insange stunts.
Speaker 1: You know. People are like, I can't believe what I'm
Speaker 1: looking at. And through eight ninety eight they tore their
Speaker 1: acts throughout the nation, with the cake walk as their
Speaker 1: big show sopper. They received incredible acclaim and they rose
Speaker 1: to the top of the bob bill scene. Ata was
Speaker 1: even being invited by white society elites to teach them
Speaker 1: to cake walk in private lessons, which helped maintain its popularity.
Speaker 1: She even wrote an article about it to like show
Speaker 1: tell people how to do it. But people were obsessed,
Speaker 1: like they were really interested. So by eight they were
Speaker 1: established and they were successful, and George and Bert decided
Speaker 1: that they were going to rent an elegant apartment on
Speaker 1: fifty third Street in New York City, and this was
Speaker 1: in the middle of what was called Black Bohemia, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to make this the central gathering place for
Speaker 1: any black man who wanted to make a career in theater.
Speaker 1: George Walker wrote that quote, by having these men around,
Speaker 1: we have the opportunity to study the musical and theatrical
Speaker 1: ability of the most talented members of our race. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know what I need the most talented black people
Speaker 1: there is. How about I just throw open my doors
Speaker 1: and welcome them to me, and they'll come to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, having a good central hangout spot is beneficial
Speaker 1: for any artistic community, you know, or people to show
Speaker 1: up and exchange ideas. I mean, I'm thinking about the factory,
Speaker 1: thinking about a ton of different Broadway locations, East Village
Speaker 1: in general. You know, like and you like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: meet people to collaborate with and you'll come up with
Speaker 1: things and you work on stuff and just having the
Speaker 1: fellowship period, even if you do no work together, it's
Speaker 1: just nice to hang out with people, like like a
Speaker 1: fringe festival, you know, like that might be a good
Speaker 1: place for artists to convene. If only someone I knew
Speaker 1: organized and operated one of those, I would marry her
Speaker 1: in a second. And um, although I want to ask
Speaker 1: they specifically say men here, they were not inviting to
Speaker 1: women performers, I didn't see that they did. Particularly. Things
Speaker 1: were just so gendered at this time that I think
Speaker 1: if you had an organization, it was a fraternal organization,
Speaker 1: it was a men's group. It was business was for men.
Speaker 1: So I think it's not that different. But like the
Speaker 1: image of theater, you know, and you're thinking of, like,
Speaker 1: all these are men, and we hang around and we
Speaker 1: smoked cigars and we talked about what Broadway performance we're
Speaker 1: going to do next week, you know. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's so opposite of the image I grew up with
Speaker 1: about what theater is. But then you get into theater
Speaker 1: and you're like it's still male dominated dominated definitely. Alright,
Speaker 1: So at this time, black acts were only given a
Speaker 1: single slot on a vaudeville bill. At this was meant
Speaker 1: to limit black entertainers influence and also to limit the
Speaker 1: number of black people in the audience as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stated goal by the way like this, It wasn't just like,
Speaker 1: oh we figured out there the real reasons for doing it.
Speaker 1: They were open about it was a feature. Now, George
Speaker 1: and Burt knew that to build a real career they
Speaker 1: would need to put up their own really big show.
Speaker 1: And thanks to this meeting place that they've created, they
Speaker 1: were in the best company possible to form their own
Speaker 1: production team, which they called the Williams and Walker Company,
Speaker 1: and they started producing full length musicals. Some of their
Speaker 1: frequent collaborators were composer will Marion Cook or playwright Jesse A.
Speaker 1: Ship and the poet and lyricist Paul Lawrence Dunbar and
Speaker 1: Ida was their leading choreographer. Yeah, Paul Lawrence Dunbar I
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a connection with because in
Speaker 1: my high school we actually performed his poem We Wear
Speaker 1: the Mask Kidding. We studied it and we we uh
Speaker 1: like put it up as part of one of our
Speaker 1: shows that we did. Um. But yeah, he's it was
Speaker 1: it was cool to learn a little bit more about him.
Speaker 1: He's not much in this episode because we had too
Speaker 1: much to go over. But he's an interesting guy. Look
Speaker 1: him up all right. Now. George was the business savvy
Speaker 1: spokesman type in this group, and both he and Bert
Speaker 1: insisted that they were only going to produce quality theater,
Speaker 1: elaborate sets, big fancy props, costumes and lighting on par
Speaker 1: with the white theaters. They wanted to elevate the professionalism
Speaker 1: of black theater and encourage black people to pursue theatrical careers.
Speaker 1: They also paid good salaries to their artists and their
Speaker 1: stage hands. Now look at that, we're talking about an
Speaker 1: abstract support of a place to gather together and like
Speaker 1: very like encouraging, like we can do better, we can
Speaker 1: do the best. We don't have to do these stereo types.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an abstract support in that, but it
Speaker 1: was paired up with a very real, solid financial support
Speaker 1: of money, good wages, which you need. Both so important.
Speaker 1: It's been so hard, there's been a real um, it's
Speaker 1: been a real reckoning. And I feel like in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: at least in the last few years, UM, we've been saying, look,
Speaker 1: you have to pay people. I know you're a low
Speaker 1: budget theater company, but you got to find it. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you're not a little budget theater company, you know, like
Speaker 1: not a company. Yeah. I mean there's like we had
Speaker 1: a theater company for you know, still technically and and
Speaker 1: we did shows for well over a decade, um, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly not paying ourselves at all. It was just like
Speaker 1: we take our ten dollar ticket sales, we put them
Speaker 1: back into account. We used that to paint the sets
Speaker 1: next time. Um. And we all knew that going into it.
Speaker 1: And there wasn't like one person in charge getting paid
Speaker 1: while no one else did or anything like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, and and that's okay. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of artists are like, look, they're still projects you do
Speaker 1: for the love, sure, sure, or like to get yourself
Speaker 1: established or can write folks or whatever. There's plenty of
Speaker 1: reasons to work for free. It's just that people will
Speaker 1: do it to exploit you, and they're like, your talent
Speaker 1: is the reason I'm making money. So it was people
Speaker 1: kind of going, well, then, my talent is worth money
Speaker 1: right right exactly now. In The New York Age, which
Speaker 1: was one of the most prominent black newspapers of its time,
Speaker 1: they would later call George Walker quote the commander in
Speaker 1: chief of the Black theatrical Forces. Pretty cool, Pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Their first full length show was called The Senegambian carnival Um.
Speaker 1: It's described in the books Spread and Rhythm Around Black
Speaker 1: Popular Songwriters from as being about George's dandy character trying
Speaker 1: to con Bert's character out of some gold that Bert's
Speaker 1: character had found in a Laska. But that plot quote
Speaker 1: served mainly as a clothes line to hang song and
Speaker 1: Dan numbers on. So they hadn't quite got to like
Speaker 1: a story, you know, a full story. It's more of
Speaker 1: a through line exactly. Yeah. And it toured successfully for
Speaker 1: a few months in Boston, d c. And Cincinnati. During
Speaker 1: this tour, Bert started courting a widowed actress eight years
Speaker 1: older than him named Lottie Thompson Latti Dotti dog In.
Speaker 1: He surprised George by announcing that he had married Lottie
Speaker 1: in a private ceremony, and I wonder if George was like, man,
Speaker 1: I want to come, I'm your friends. Uh. Burt and
Speaker 1: Lottie would stay together for the rest of Bert's life.
Speaker 1: They never had any children of their own, but they
Speaker 1: did adopt and raised three of Lottie's nieces, and they
Speaker 1: opened their home to orphans and foster children at just
Speaker 1: like sweet romance between these two. But Burt was not
Speaker 1: the only one hit with Cupid zero because George and
Speaker 1: Ada had been falling in love during their two years
Speaker 1: before arming together, and in June they got married when
Speaker 1: she was nineteen and he was twenty six, and Ada
Speaker 1: became Aida Overton Walker, which is the name she's best
Speaker 1: known as now. Their next show was called Sons of
Speaker 1: Ham and this was a force about two bums who
Speaker 1: get mistaken for twin airs to a fortune that, according
Speaker 1: to an article by Lily Johnson on Dartmouth Dot ETU,
Speaker 1: was written as just a general plot outline so Burton
Speaker 1: George could add lib and improvised throughout. They're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're two bums who are now rich. Hi, what's gonna happen? Now?
Speaker 1: Give me an emotion and a fruit it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty fun. Yeah. Just the first thing that popped into
Speaker 1: my head was trading places. I know it's a little difference,
Speaker 1: but you know, making bums rich and seeing what they
Speaker 1: do with it is a classic story. I also wonder
Speaker 1: if they joked a little about the twins thing, because
Speaker 1: they were not meant to be related, and I don't
Speaker 1: think their characters were related, So I wonder if they
Speaker 1: had any any humor in that of like y'all think
Speaker 1: we look alt, Oh yeah, that's okay, we're twins. Give
Speaker 1: us this money. That's good. I don't know. Unfortunately, there's
Speaker 1: no book to read of it or anything, but it's
Speaker 1: I like to think that they had a good moment,
Speaker 1: that a good little bit with that. Now, brit and
Speaker 1: George had a friend in the audience who would write
Speaker 1: down jokes and slapstick that that worked, that hit that's brilliant,
Speaker 1: and that helped Williams and Walker learned what their audiences liked,
Speaker 1: and that helped them keep what worked and lose what
Speaker 1: didn't in their shows. Brilliant because you can't always tell.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're on stage and you're like, man, they are
Speaker 1: not responding at all right now, And then you talk
Speaker 1: to someone who was in the audience later and they're like,
Speaker 1: I was dying. We were all laughing our asses off.
Speaker 1: You can't always get it. So that's very clever, it is,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the beauties of theater, to be honest,
Speaker 1: because you're doing the show over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and they're like, so let's change it, let's fix it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll put it up and then what doesn't work,
Speaker 1: don't do it tomorrow, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: very stand up. Yeah, I hear. I was just listening
Speaker 1: to the Patton as well to talk about that. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll do your show and you'll write down
Speaker 1: what works. He said, he was talking about taping a special.
Speaker 1: He was like, I tape this special, and of course
Speaker 1: the five times after that that I did this show
Speaker 1: was so much better. Yeah, And I know you always
Speaker 1: wish that, Like, I mean, that's just true live performance
Speaker 1: all the time. You want to keep changing it because
Speaker 1: you're always finding good things that work and things that didn't.
Speaker 1: As long as you keep working on it, I'll always
Speaker 1: get better. Well well if you're if you do it
Speaker 1: right in theory. In addition to cutting out what didn't work,
Speaker 1: they also cut all the black stereotypical characters. They were
Speaker 1: well known to vaudeville audiences. We already know that Burton
Speaker 1: George hated those kind of characters from the start, and
Speaker 1: they worked to subvert the stereotypes of black men on
Speaker 1: stage and also Aida totally refused to play stereotypes she
Speaker 1: said she would only portray black women as dignified and
Speaker 1: well rounded. Good for her, but she's like, I know
Speaker 1: what I'm worth, and it's more than this and well
Speaker 1: and and it was so much about the culture. You know, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you're from a marginalized population, you don't everything you
Speaker 1: do is not just you representing everybody else, which is
Speaker 1: an extra weight that is not shouldn't be there, but
Speaker 1: it's just the fact of the matter. And Steve really
Speaker 1: felt all all three of them really felt like we
Speaker 1: can use we're right in front of a bunch of
Speaker 1: white people all the time, we can use this to
Speaker 1: help every black person in the nation. And so they
Speaker 1: really felt they really felt like they could make some changes.
Speaker 1: I'll borrow a story I just heard, uh Carrie Washington
Speaker 1: give on on our Friends Jason and Sean and Will's
Speaker 1: podcast SmartLess Friends of the Show. Um. She was on that,
Speaker 1: and she said that when she got Scandal, when she
Speaker 1: was cast on Scandal, she was the first um Black
Speaker 1: woman in a leading role on a on an hour
Speaker 1: long drama. She was like, I know that if I
Speaker 1: don't do this right, it'll be another forty years before
Speaker 1: this happens again. Wow. And I was like, damn, that
Speaker 1: is so much extra weight to have to carry. That's outrageous.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? I can't. I'm like blown away that
Speaker 1: it took that long for there to be a leading
Speaker 1: actress in an hour long drama. That it was just scandal,
Speaker 1: which pretty recent. That's wild, but it's true. It's just
Speaker 1: like a female director. You know, you're like, well, if
Speaker 1: this movie is amazing, people will say it's because of
Speaker 1: some guy, and if it's bad, they'll say it's because
Speaker 1: of me. And no one will give a movie to
Speaker 1: a woman ever. Again. We tried that once. It didn't
Speaker 1: work exactly. I'm like, how many bad movies and men
Speaker 1: made and they get a million other chances. We've all
Speaker 1: made bad movies, and you know what you need next time?
Speaker 1: Probably more money. That'll help. I'll fix it. So, all
Speaker 1: that being said, they decided they were going to move
Speaker 1: away from their minstrel roots into fuller, more human comedy styles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really realizing their dreams. You know, they're getting there now.
Speaker 1: Aida got a ton of fame during this show with
Speaker 1: her rendition of a song called Hannah from Savannah, and
Speaker 1: she brought this song up to an instant hit, and
Speaker 1: she got national attention for her voice and her graceful
Speaker 1: dance mastering. Plus Bert's rendition of a song good Morning
Speaker 1: Carrie made that one of the biggest hits of nineteen
Speaker 1: o one, and that was covered by several artists, so
Speaker 1: multiple nationwide hit songs came out of this show. Still,
Speaker 1: the world had its way of her mind in them
Speaker 1: that they were second class citizens in America. The New
Speaker 1: Yorker says that back when they were on the minstrel circuit,
Speaker 1: both Bert and George barely escaped a Colorado mining camp
Speaker 1: where they were performing when they were accused of being
Speaker 1: more well dressed than a black man had the right
Speaker 1: to be, and they were stripped of their clothing by
Speaker 1: this mob. Some like jealousy because they're in a mining camp,
Speaker 1: so I'm assuming the miners maybe didn't have nice clothes
Speaker 1: and they were like, why do you have something nice?
Speaker 1: And I don't. That's what sounds like to me, which
Speaker 1: got some jealousy in it, I think definitely. In August
Speaker 1: of nineteen hundred, all these hysterical rumors started spreading around
Speaker 1: New York that a white detective had been shot by
Speaker 1: a black man. This caused a riot, and George did
Speaker 1: not know about this and he got caught up in
Speaker 1: it and was yanked off of a street car and
Speaker 1: beaten by a white mob. Just still like, no matter
Speaker 1: they're fame levels or anything like that, they're still being
Speaker 1: like we said, reminded constantly, don't forget where a lot
Speaker 1: of people in this country want you to be right.
Speaker 1: And it's like on stage you're a god, but off
Speaker 1: stage you're just another black guy, and I don't care.
Speaker 1: It's like as Sons of Ham ran for about sixteen performances,
Speaker 1: they did eight ninet and eight in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: The meanwhile, the team of Williams and Walker were hard
Speaker 1: at work on their next show in Dahomey, where their
Speaker 1: characters are con men who traveled to the African country
Speaker 1: of Dahomey to colonize it along with a group of
Speaker 1: poor black people. And this was the first full length
Speaker 1: show to open at an indoor venue on Broadway, entirely written,
Speaker 1: produced and performed by black people. And there's a great
Speaker 1: story where George Walker said that he was playing to
Speaker 1: an East Side audience and he was like singing a song,
Speaker 1: and he said, one day I'll sing this on Broadway
Speaker 1: and they all laughed, and like a month later they
Speaker 1: were on Broadway. So I love that amazing he manifested
Speaker 1: it even cooler than that, it was a major hit
Speaker 1: and charters. In her book Nobody, The Story of Burt Williams,
Speaker 1: wrote that critics noted that quote. All Burt Williams had
Speaker 1: to do was look at the audience and it went
Speaker 1: into spasms promptly, which makes me think of how sen
Speaker 1: Apparently now these days we'll write a sketch and they'll
Speaker 1: just go Keenan cut to Keenan. Keenan reacts like Keenan
Speaker 1: Thompson whatever. So good. I mean, all he has to
Speaker 1: do is make a little face man, and I'm on
Speaker 1: the floor. So good. He's got Burt Williams energy. But
Speaker 1: to be fair, I was I've been a lifelong Keenan
Speaker 1: fan because my favorite show as a kid was all
Speaker 1: that I never saw, Oh my god, and his bit
Speaker 1: about his bits like the frenchman in the bathtub doing
Speaker 1: it was everyday French with Pierre's Marco, and he just
Speaker 1: read the most ridiculous He'd be like, he'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing did you French? Today? We learned to say
Speaker 1: what does this fish doing in my mayonnaise jar? Was
Speaker 1: very useful. It would take in French first and then
Speaker 1: reveal what the ridiculous phrase was and then do his
Speaker 1: whole keenan comedy legend. Forever be a fan. Well anyway,
Speaker 1: Burt Williams was getting praised for his comedy stylings and
Speaker 1: Aa became known as the Queen of the cake Walk.
Speaker 1: One vaudeville performer Tom Fletcher wrote in his autobiography that
Speaker 1: she was a dancer quote who could do almost anything,
Speaker 1: and no matter whether it was a fucking wing cake
Speaker 1: wop or even some form of grotesque dancing, she lent
Speaker 1: the performance and made gracefulness of movement which was unsurpassed
Speaker 1: by anyone. Tom Fletcher, by the way, was a black
Speaker 1: Fodeville performer, and he wrote his autobiography One hundred Years
Speaker 1: of the Negro in Show Business. It was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen four. It's like the only eyewitness account of black
Speaker 1: performers at the turn of the century, and apparently it's
Speaker 1: used as a source by like most theater historians. So
Speaker 1: that's a book I'd like to read. Tom Fletcher. Ladies
Speaker 1: and Gent's into Homie played for fifty three performances on Broadway.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, before touring throughout England and Scotland, where
Speaker 1: they were so popular. They ended up doing a command
Speaker 1: perform Our Months for the King and Queen of England
Speaker 1: at Buckingham Palace for Edward the eighth ninth birthday. Edward
Speaker 1: the eighth would later go on to abdicate the crown,
Speaker 1: to marry a divorcee, and also become a fascist. So
Speaker 1: this is kind of funny. He's became a big white supremacist.
Speaker 1: But for his ninth birthday they were like, let's watch
Speaker 1: in Dahomie. I wish it had done more for him
Speaker 1: his mindset. So this was like the most popular musical
Speaker 1: in London. It even became the first black musical to
Speaker 1: have its score published in in the UK. That is,
Speaker 1: it was still not published in the US because we're
Speaker 1: still on our bullshit and aristocrats. They are also paid
Speaker 1: Aita to teach them private lessons in the cake Walk,
Speaker 1: like she was doing in the US Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: writes quote. In the cake Walk, Williams and Walker had
Speaker 1: found a quintessential black modernist expression high art worthy of
Speaker 1: being performed before royalty for the white elite and on
Speaker 1: the concert stage, Aida Overton Walker provided the dance with
Speaker 1: new gloss, converting it from its past in lower class
Speaker 1: black dance halls that referenced the old slave culture to
Speaker 1: being an icon of the modern concert hall. And after
Speaker 1: a year they returned to America and went on a
Speaker 1: forty week tour across the United States and with this massive,
Speaker 1: massive hit, i mean worldwide hit, everyone involved became household
Speaker 1: name that includes George Walker, Burt Williams, Ida Overton Walker,
Speaker 1: will Marian Cook, Jesse Ship, and Paul Lawence Dunbar like,
Speaker 1: everyone involved were famous, so awesome. It's just so cool
Speaker 1: to see how how they did that incremental change. Right
Speaker 1: they started off in minstrel shows. They were like, well,
Speaker 1: do your stupid thing. Now we'll do our Roadville show
Speaker 1: where we still do your stupid thing, but a little
Speaker 1: less stupidly. And then now we're doing our own musicals
Speaker 1: and we're just not going to do your stupid thing
Speaker 1: all We're just gonna show black people in black culture
Speaker 1: and you're gonna enjoy it. And they fucking did because
Speaker 1: it was so good. That's so cool now, Lily Johnson
Speaker 1: on Dartmouth Dot E du writes that their success within
Speaker 1: Dahomie helped George and Burt quote develop a formula for
Speaker 1: their musicals, Fanciful Locations, big chorus numbers, featuring Aida over
Speaker 1: Tin Walker in a leading role, and a whole evening
Speaker 1: of laughs before the clowning hard look Simpleton Williams finally
Speaker 1: got wise to the fast talking dandy Walker, and I
Speaker 1: love that they were like, okay, listen, we wanna we
Speaker 1: want to be successful. Aida has to have a solo.
Speaker 1: Aida has to be one of the main She is
Speaker 1: the main attraction, so we've got to put her all
Speaker 1: over this bitch. Of course. I love that you don't
Speaker 1: put Michael Jordan in a movie and he doesn't play basketball,
Speaker 1: You don't put you don't put Ryan Gosling in something
Speaker 1: and he doesn't take his shirt off? Does he know?
Speaker 1: Did you take a shirt off? And Gray Mane like
Speaker 1: he always gets a shirt off at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got shot and they like banaged him up. You
Speaker 1: know they always do that. It's it's for us, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for you. It's for all of us, always, for
Speaker 1: all of us. Whatever. I has never never been a
Speaker 1: big Ryan Gosling fan, But this isn't about him, No,
Speaker 1: it's not way to make this great episode about black
Speaker 1: people about a white guy throwaway reference to Ryan Gosling
Speaker 1: America's Sweetheart. No, I actually I love in my mind
Speaker 1: at a teaching the cakewalk dance to all these rich
Speaker 1: white aristocrats is just like, it's what am I picturing.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing like somebody teaching a bunch of rich white
Speaker 1: people the Superman or something, you know, at a wedding.
Speaker 1: But it's just like so embarrassing and she has to
Speaker 1: be like, no, you're doing a great job, and they
Speaker 1: look ridiculous. I don't know if it was that, but
Speaker 1: that's what it is. In my mind. I thought about
Speaker 1: like TikTok dances, because you know, there's so many TikTok
Speaker 1: dances that come from black creators and it's amazing sharp,
Speaker 1: really dope choreography. And then you'll see I think people
Speaker 1: were making fun of like Addison ray On Jimmy Fallon
Speaker 1: because she came on to teach him some of these
Speaker 1: tech shook dances and she was like, like, not good.
Speaker 1: It was barely as good. If you see them side
Speaker 1: by side, you're like, what is the comparison? And so
Speaker 1: it was just it was like I was just picturing
Speaker 1: these they're bending over backwards with their heads touching the ground.
Speaker 1: You know, I know white person did that, like you know,
Speaker 1: so they must have been doing a very lame version
Speaker 1: of it. In comparison, Geralds, my head touched the ground
Speaker 1: just like a over. In my childhood, they would play
Speaker 1: musical chairs and whoever one they want a cake, whoever won,
Speaker 1: and they just called a cake walk. That what I
Speaker 1: thought was a cake walk a long time. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: I did this episode and I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: not what a cake walk is. Apparently it has its
Speaker 1: roots in Americans slavory. Why did anyone tell me? I
Speaker 1: think it's so interesting that this elaborate dance for people
Speaker 1: who bending a records, touching their heads in the ground,
Speaker 1: or having buckets of water on their head not spilling
Speaker 1: any it's called a cake walk. And now a cake
Speaker 1: walk means something easy, easy, Yes, right, I guess that's
Speaker 1: deliberately ironic. Maybe so maybe so well, And I will
Speaker 1: say they talked a lot about how like Bird and
Speaker 1: George had some incredible moves to where I mean, they
Speaker 1: were like, most of these reviews are from white people,
Speaker 1: so they're like, he'll just pop his I'll blow out
Speaker 1: and his legs will go in opposite directions, and I
Speaker 1: just don't even know how he's doing this. You know,
Speaker 1: how are your body moved like that? And then he
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Um, But they made it look so easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're like, it just looks so so simple, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you doing it, but you're making
Speaker 1: it look really easy. So I wonder if, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: an added irony of like it's a cake walk, but
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of hard, right, right, There's got to
Speaker 1: be something there about sort of being detached from white culture,
Speaker 1: like so much of white performance at the time is
Speaker 1: based in its own history, Like I have to be
Speaker 1: building on this of the past, or I have to
Speaker 1: even be reforming what we've already done, or or improving
Speaker 1: what we've already you know, there's rules and things I
Speaker 1: have to follow, and these guys come in and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to do an I'm gonna try something different,
Speaker 1: entirely different new styles that that break convention because I'm
Speaker 1: not living in the same conventions as you. And that's
Speaker 1: why there shows are able to be so impressive, especially
Speaker 1: to white people. Who are like, well, I've never even
Speaker 1: considered something different than what I'm used to before, and
Speaker 1: it blows their minds. And then they have, you know,
Speaker 1: they have so many, so much incentive to put themselves
Speaker 1: fully into this work and really create something impressive that's
Speaker 1: going to stand out and and earn them, you know,
Speaker 1: the recognition and the money that they deserve for it.
Speaker 1: So it just I feel like you can see the
Speaker 1: inherent drive that makes these shows so incredible. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're putting ten times the amount of effort
Speaker 1: and heart right and passion because I mean, partly because
Speaker 1: they have to, and partly because if they don't do it,
Speaker 1: who's going to do it? You know, like, no one else,
Speaker 1: no one else is trying to put a bunch of
Speaker 1: black shows up on Broadway but me. So let me
Speaker 1: do this and do it to the best of my ability,
Speaker 1: which is pretty damn good. So you're gonna be blown
Speaker 1: away by me, you know. I just think they're just
Speaker 1: so cool. I love them, and I love seeing how
Speaker 1: they're little steps. You know, they really I don't know
Speaker 1: if they really had like a master plan or anything,
Speaker 1: but you can see their little steps and how they
Speaker 1: kept continuing like every show they would push a little
Speaker 1: bit more and a little bit more against what everyone
Speaker 1: wanted to see or what they thought they wanted to see,
Speaker 1: because they always loved what they were given. So even
Speaker 1: if it was like, you know, even if it was
Speaker 1: a show making fun of white people, white people liked it.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just like, I love it. Whatever you
Speaker 1: want to show, we I'm into it, you know. I
Speaker 1: guess that's a question I have to was their audience
Speaker 1: perpetually predominantly white? It depended on the venue, because the
Speaker 1: venues were all segregated, of course, so early on they
Speaker 1: performed only for black audiences, and then when they would
Speaker 1: get they would be like the George Sorry, Williams and
Speaker 1: Walker would be like the only black act on a
Speaker 1: vaudevilla bill, and that would be for white audiences. In
Speaker 1: in England and Scotland, it was a lot of white people.
Speaker 1: You know, it just kind of tended theaters. But they
Speaker 1: did play for white audiences, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how different those shows were too. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be like, all right, we can we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the white people in the audience for
Speaker 1: this show. So we're can have a little more fun
Speaker 1: or something. Maybe I do wonder that would make sense,
Speaker 1: right if you were, if you were in a room
Speaker 1: that felt really safe. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you you
Speaker 1: pushed the boundaries more and made different jokes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that brings us to the end of part
Speaker 1: one our episode, because at this point, you know, we
Speaker 1: got Williams and Walker there there. They can only go up,
Speaker 1: they can only go up from here. They're already like
Speaker 1: blown people's minds, and they have more to give, even
Speaker 1: more to give. So we will tackle the rest of
Speaker 1: their career highs and lows, tragic lows, um in our
Speaker 1: next episode. And I really hope that you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: this part because I'm just in love with all of them,
Speaker 1: and I want a movie so badly. I'm already trying
Speaker 1: to like come up with a budget to produce a
Speaker 1: play about them or something, because I don't understand why
Speaker 1: there's not a million projects about them. They're so cool. Look,
Speaker 1: we're we're in a bit of a fight with HBO
Speaker 1: Max right now, okay, because they're making some insane decisions. Um,
Speaker 1: but I am telling we need so badly ridiculous romance
Speaker 1: TV show at this point because I'm just like so
Speaker 1: many of these episodes and it's not this is not us,
Speaker 1: this is not like because of our skills or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's just the stories we're digging up and
Speaker 1: have gone largely untold. Uh that just should absolutely be
Speaker 1: at minimum movies, and some of them need supernatural length
Speaker 1: TV shows about Maximilian and carlst You're going to say that,
Speaker 1: but it's true. There's so many of them that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't even need to be in it, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? An actor, of course, I'd love to
Speaker 1: be in it, but to be well, we'll be producers.
Speaker 1: We can do whatever we want, do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: We'll have a cameo and she'll get the news with
Speaker 1: Diana Banks as you know Overton Walker. Oh no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, I would never do that. No, this is
Speaker 1: not the James at go Our Oh my god, can
Speaker 1: you believe? Well anyway, let's but yes, I hope that
Speaker 1: you loved if you have heard of Aida, Overton Walker,
Speaker 1: George Walker, Burt Williams. Already love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: and especially if we've got anything wrong, obviously love to
Speaker 1: hear that. Would love to learn more about them. We
Speaker 1: haven't had a corrections corner in some time, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. That's what I am sitting on one. But
Speaker 1: that's just because we don't want to admit that we're wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly know, because it'll fit into another episode. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't, so I'm very happy about that. But if
Speaker 1: there's anything and here, obviously please do you know, reach out.
Speaker 1: But if you've never heard of them, I hope that
Speaker 1: you fell in love with them the way that I
Speaker 1: did and are on edge of your seat for the
Speaker 1: end of their for the second part of their story,
Speaker 1: because it's just as awesome and fascinating and Aida is
Speaker 1: just the Beyonce of her time. She deserves many a documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah real, I hope you enjoyed the part of this. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. Please reach out to
Speaker 1: us and we love to hear from you guys. Our
Speaker 1: email is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. Let's right.
Speaker 1: Find us on Twitter and Instagram. I am at Oh great,
Speaker 1: it's Eli and I'm at Diana Mite Boom and the
Speaker 1: show is at ridic Romance. Yeah, and drop us a
Speaker 1: rating and a review on Apple podcast and we cannot
Speaker 1: wait for part two, so come back and hear the rest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll catch you all then, love you bye. So long friends,
Speaker 1: it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show?
Speaker 1: Tell your friends name's uncles in dance To listen to
Speaker 1: a show Ridiculous Role Nance