Jolson

Read any article mentioning The Black And White Minstrel Show and one of the things that always shocks the author most is that it didn't get cancelled until 1978. In other words a relic from the age of Vaudeville was still being enjoyed by millions in the age of The Sex Pistols and one year before the first hip-hop record charted. Now I'm not going to mourn the disappearance of Dai Francis and Co. from prime time; neither am I going to witter on about PC gone mad and marmalade jars while shouting "You can't even use the word 'gay' properly anymore!" Shows like this began when the received wisdom for the majority was that black people were inferior to white. The portrayal of white men blacked up and cavorting with scantily clad white female dancers has a lascivious whiff of the plantation about it like a bad novel from the Mandingo series. It was offensive and had to stop. End of.

But before consigning it, along with George W Bush and Gary Glitter, to the dustbin of history it's worth looking at how normal blackface minstrelsy used to be. Are you a fan of Fred Astaire? Love the Fred & Ginger films? Then you may or may not want to see this from their 1936 film Swing Time. As you've probably realised, this clip isn't just unsettling as a result of Astaire blacking up; it wouldn't be so bad if Bojangles Of Harlem wasn't one of the most hypnotically wonderful performances in any film musical before or since. A look at the comments accompanying the clip only goes to show how it's not a cut and dried issue. Some make the remark that Fred was playing tribute to one of his greatest influences as a dancer and was blacking up out of respect. Others say that if Hollywood really wanted to pay tribute to Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson they would have given him a decent starring role and not had him playing second fiddle to Shirley Temple.





The fact that Swing Time is now over 70 years old makes it easier to put in the box marked 'harmless' because everyone involved in its production is probably dead. So let's look at something more recent. The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and its frontman Viv Stanshall are hipper than hip sixties icons seemingly loved by all. They are featured in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour; then there's Neil Innes's Monty Python connection and when it comes to Stanshall himself we've got the credibility of John Peel (Sir Henry At Rawlinson End) and The Who (Keith Moon's drinking buddy). But most people got to know The Bonzos via Do Not Adjust Your Set, a TV show which (with The 1948 Show) is now seen as John The Baptist to Monty Python's Messiah. And here they are in action. Again the comments go from the 'PC gawn maaaad!' brigade to those a little shocked by what they see. This is something that could never happen today, not just because blackface comedy has disappeared except when done with the most leaden irony but because, for those who don't know, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a children's programme.



I can honestly say that I first heard Look Out There's A Monster Coming on the Bonzo's Gorilla LP years before seeing this and it was definitely one of my favourite songs of theirs. And I'm still wondering whether its detractors could be accused of over-reacting - it's not as if they're wearing swastikas or anything. One final observation: Neil Innes is the only one who hasn't blacked up for this. I wonder if this is his own silent protest or if he just arrived to late for the recording to go into makeup.



All of which brings me to Al Jolson. Hard as it may be to imagine, Jolson was once the biggest singing star on the planet. His 1928 film The Singing Fool (featuring one of the worst songs ever written) was the highest grossing film ever until Gone With The Wind beat it 11 years later. But for the same reason as The Black And White Minstrels and The Bonzos wearing burnt cork you won't see it outside tastefully programmed and contextualised retrospectives or documentaries on the history of racism. Jolson was enormous - adored by the public and hated by everyone in showbiz for his arrogance and ego.



An example of the latter tells us how he came up with his famous catchphrase "You ain't heard nuthin' yet!" Up until after World War I the biggest singing stars in the World were the great opera singers. Jazz had barely made it to Chicago at this point while music hall and vaudeville was not the to the taste of many genteel types who could afford a gramophone. Without doubt the biggest star of all was Enrico Caruso. In 1918 he was playing a benefit concert in New York where he brought the house down. Following him on the bill was this vulgar Jewish vaudevillian minstrel. Did he display due deference and respect to the great Caruso? Not a bit of it - he bellowed his soon to be famous one liner. There was uproar until, good to his word, Jolson blew the great tenor away.



So arrogant, yes, but racist? That's where it gets complicated. It's too easy to argue that he performed in a style that was popular for the time. Bernard Manning was also once hugely popular in Northern clubs but saw I his act and it was bloody inexcusable. Jolson's core American audience was the have nots. He rose to greatness during a time of huge immigration from Europe where millions of impoverished and persecuted foreigners swapped rural penury for urban industrial squalor. Struggling to make sense of their new life and new language the sentimental singing fool, pining for the cotton plantation of old, provided a perfect metaphor for their new lives in the New World. I can think of no better example of this than this from his 1930 film Mammy. To anyone in an early 20th century factory town missing the hills above Naples or the fjords outside Trondheim I doubt that they thought of race and The Klan when they heard him sing:

Let me sing of Dixie's charms

Cotton fields and mammy's arms

And if my song can make you homesick I'm happy