TAMBO AND BONES. A History of the American Minstrel Stage. By Carl
Wittke. 269 pp. Durham, N. C. Duke University Press. $2.50.

James Weldon Johnson.

In Tambo And Bones we have a thorough piece of research and a com-
prehensive survey made by Carl Wittke, Professor of History at Duke Uni-
versity, in a field that has heretofore been rather inadequately worked.
The subject of the book is worthy of the scholarly care that Professor
Wittke has devoted to it; for, as the author says, American Negro Min-
strelsy was the first and remains up to this time the only completely
original contribution American has made to the theater. The book is
written in five chapters: The Origins of Negro Minstrelsy, Early Min-
strel Shows, Prosperity and Decline, The Technique of the American Min-
strel Show, and Knights of the Burnt Cork. In the chapter on origins
Professor Wittke actually begins at the beginning, and in his opening
paragraph says: "Without Negro slavery, the United States would have
been deprived of perhaps the only and, certainly, the most considerable
body of song sprung from the soil, which properly can be called American
folkmusic. And without the large Negro population in the Southern states,
the only purely native form of entertainment and the only distinctively
American contribution to the theater--the Negro minstrel show--would have
equally impossible.

A full and generously documented account is given of the transfer
of Negro minstrelsy from the Southern plantations to the stage, from the
first single blackface acts put on by white performers to the organiza-
tion of the early white troupes. The development and rise of minstrelsy
is then traced through to the time when, in the closing decade of the
last century, it had become the most gorgeous spectacle and the most pop-
ular entertainment to be seen in the United States. The author points
out that this success of minstrelsy contained the causes of its downfall;
that when it departed from a simple imitation of "Negro folkmusic and

Tambo And Bones (2)

Negro folkways, as practiced by the pioneers of the burnt cork profes-
sion" and developed into a"mixture of comic operas, burlesque, variety
acts and buffoonery" it had little to distinguish it, and it began to
decline.

The second half of the book is devoted to the technique of min-
strelsy, showing how the standard pattern of "first part, olio and
afterpiece" was worked out and became fixed, and to a listing of impor-
tant performers and data concerning them. In the chapter on technique
are/
there/interesting observations on the relation of minstrelsy to American
songs. The author shows that the most popular and most enduring native
songs came by way of the minstrel stage. In speaking of Stephen Foster's
"Suwannee River" he observes that "according to one account Foster orig-
inally intended to use the Yazoo for 'Suwannee Ribber' in this composi-
tion" and that "according to another account, 'Suwannee Ribber' was the
Negro corruption of San Juan, the Spanish name for the St. Johns River
in Florida." Curiously, the author seems to have overlooked the fact
that there is a Suwannee River in Florida--and it flows through Suwannee
County.

A rather glaring omission is the author's failure to list the great
minstrels who were Negroes and had decided influence upon the development
of the profession. There is an absence of such names as Billy Kersands,
Sam Lucas, James Bland, the Bohee Brothers, Wallace King, Billy Windom,
and Tom McIntosh. Mention is made of Bert Williams, but he, although one
of the most famous of blackface performers, was never, in the strict
sense, a minstrel.

The factual style renders the book less colorful than it might
easily and properly have been made, and so its appeal to the general
reader may be lessened. But for those interested in the study of the
theater in America the work is one of great value.