Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1889-06-13
ETHIOPIAN MINSTRELSY.
something About the Founder of This
Form of Entertainment.


coded to have been the founder of
Ethiopian minstrelsy. Although it
did not originate with him, he made it
| popular on both sides of the Atlantic;
and his image deserves an honored
| niche in its cathedral. The history of
Jim Crow Rice" as he was affection
ately called for many years, has been
| written by many scribes and in many
| different ways, the most complete and
most truthful account, perhaps, being
| that of MIR. Edmon S. Conner, who de-
scribed in the columns of the New
York Times, June 5. 1881, what he saw
| and remembered of its conception.
MIR. Conner was a member of the COM
| pany at the Columbia Street heater.
Cincinnati, in 1929, when he first met
Rice. doing little negro bits" between
the acts at that house, notably one
sketch he had studied from life in
Louisville the preceding summer
Back of the Louisville Theater
was a livery stable kept by
a man named Crow. The actors could
look into the stable-yard from the win
dows of their dressing-rooms, and were
very fond of watching the movements
of an old and decrepit slave who was
employed by the proprietor to do all
sorts of odd jobs. As was the custom
among the negroes, he had assumed
his masters name, and called himself
Jim Crow. He was very much de-
formed-the right shoulder was drawn
up high, and the left leg was stiff and
crooked at the knee, which gave him
painful, but at the same time ludicrous,
limp. He was in the habit of Groom
ing queer old tune, to which he had
applied words of his own. At the end
of each verse he gave peculiar step,
rocking de heer' in the manner since
so general among the long generation
OF his delineators; and these were the
words of his refrain:
Wheel about, turn about,
Do jiS SO,
An cherry time wheel about
Jump Jim Crow.
Rice closely watched this unconscious
performer, and recognized in him a
character new to the stage. He wrote
number of verses, ouickened and
Slightly changed the air, made up ex-
actly like the original, and appeared
before a Louisville audience, which, as
MIR. Conner says, went mad with de-
light, recalling him on the first night
at least twenty times. And SO Jim
Grow jumped into fame, and something
that looks almost like Immortality.
''Sol'' Smith says that the character
was first seen in a piece by Scion Rob-
inson, called .The Rifle" and that he
(Smith) ''helped Rice little in fixing
the tune"
Other cities besides Louisville claim
Jim Grow, Francis Courtney Wemyss,
in his autobiography, says he was a
native of Pittsburgh, whose name
was Jim Cuff; while Mr.. Robert P.
Nevin, in the Atlantic Monthly for
November, 1867, declares that
the original was negro stage
driver of Cincinnati, and that Pitts
burgh was the scene of Rice's first APP
pearance in the part, local negro
there, whose professional career was
confined to holding his mouth open for
pennies thrown to him on the docks
and the streets. furnished the ward
Rice was born in the Seventh ward
of New York in 1908. He was a SUPER
numerary at the Park Theater, where
Sam Cowell remembers him in
Bombastes FuriOso, attracting so much
attention by his eccentricities that Hill
son and Barnes. the leading charac-
tiers in the cast, made formal COM
1oi md
company, Cowell adding that this man,
whose name did not even appear on
the bills. was the only actor on the
stage whom the audience seemed to
notice. Cowell also describes him in
Cincinnati in 1929 as a very unassum-
ing. modest young man, who wore
"a very queer hat very much
pointed down before and be-
hind, and very much cooked
1886, where he met with great success,
laid the foundation of a very comfort
able fortune, aad personally and pro-
fessionally he was the Buffalo Bill of
the London of half a century ago. Mr..
Ireland, speaking of his popularity in
this country, says that he drew more
money to the Bowery Theater than
any other performer in the same
period of time.
Rice was the author of many of his
own farces. notably Bone Squash"
and 1.-The Virginia Mummy" and he
was the veritable originator of the |
genus known to the stage as the dan
dy darby" represented particularly in
his creations of Dandy Jim of Caro-
line" and Spruce Pink" He died in
1860. never having forfeited the re-
spect of the public Or the good will of
his fellow-men.-Laur Hutton, in |
Harper's Magazine.