Word: calliboga
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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Memphis Bound (lyrics & music by Don Walker & Clay Warnick; book by Albert Barker & Sally Benson; produced by John Wildberg) was first conceived as a swing H.M.S. Pinafore, later converted into an extravaganza about a Negro troupe who put on Pinafore to get their grounded showboat (the Calliboga Queen) off the Mississippi mudflats. But their version proves too much for their lady producer, and she bangs down the curtain...
...story of "Memphis Bound" concerns the attempts of a group of Calliboga, Tennessee, Negroes of Lord-knows-what profession to produce "Pinafore" on the deck of an old Mississippi side-wheeler. The plot is sketchy--almost inadequate--by with "Pinafore" and Avon Long and Bill Robinson no one really cares...
Robinson shifts roles between a lazy deputy sheriff of Calliboga and "The Ruler of the Queen's Navee," but he plays only Bill Robinson--the man with the magic feet and the friendly voice and the glorious smile. Whether he's just plain tap dancing, or humming "I Am the Monarch of the Sea," or imitating a 1902 waltz, he steps the show. Long doesn't have too much to do in the play. He concentrates on his own special variety of modern dancing--the slinky gesture and the ecstatic leap that made him famous as Sportin' Life in "Porgy...
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