Word: minstrell
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Composer Emmett never regarded "Dixie" as his ablest creation. He personally liked better his now-forgotten "Old Dan Tucker." Emmett, runaway son of a blacksmith, sang and banjoed in the country's earliest traveling minstrel quartets, barnstorming from hall to hall with striped calico shirts, ruffled sleeves, flaring collars. One Saturday night, on tour, his minstrel leader asked him to compose a new "walk around" (stage march) for use the next day. Emmett frowned at the hurry order, went to his hotel, rummaged out of his trunk the rough draft of a tune he had thought up some years...
...burlesque in favor of more subtle satire like Americana. Others love display, like Lucky. Some would prefer Le Maire's Affairs, full of crudely ridiculous skits, awkward clowning (by Charlotte Greenwood), amazing absurdities (by Lester Allen), pretty chorus girls, striking ensembles. Two numbers, the cameo dance and the minstrel drill are as pleasing to the eye as anything in town. The skits are funny-at times, definitely embarrassing; Ted Lewis' band jazzes well toward the end. After a few more presentations, the show will probably be corrected for tempo. Then it will be as good an entertainment...
Last week an enterprising German publisher advertised that he would shortly distribute a bit of popular sheet music entitled "The Minstrel's Waltz by Dr. Hjalmar Schacht." At Berlin, the sensation equaled that which might be produced in Manhattan by announcing that Mr. John P. Morgan had just composed the words for a new jazz moaner's "blues." The denouement...
...Schacht was obliged to admit that he had written the song-poem in question, that he had sold it to the publisher many years ago "for a song." None the less he started suit "to protect the dignity of the Reichsbank"?demanded that The Minstrel's Waltz be suppressed once and for all. Shrewd lawyers opined that the suit will certainly defeat its aim?if that be suppression of publicity...
...Traveller--to use the style affected by my friends in the next column--Lillian does her stuff, to the extent of one story, "The Eternal Triangle". And it is really worth mentioning, worth even more than mentioning. For Lillian's muse is equal the fiddling flair of Maine's minstrel of the bobbed haired wife. It prefaces a return to the casual in contemporary letters and, more than that, reminds me of the Marks' remark about the Revere Beach of yesterday, the Coney Island of today...