Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Will Marion Cook: Threads And Themes, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This document is a supplement to "Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of Will Marion Cook," a 2017 document which is mounted on-line at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/musicfacpub/66/. It draws out of that resource some material on five themes or threads that are constant elements over Cook's career, concerning the history of African American music and dance, and the promotion of schools and professional troupes for African American musicians and actors. Occasionally there is more information below than in the 2017 document, but readers are cautioned that more often, the older document will have additional detail not simply cut and pasted here. …

Family Members Of Will Marion Cook: Biographical Materials For Immediate Family Members, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This document is a supplement to "Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of Will Marion Cook," a 2017 document which is mounted on-line at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/musicfacpub/66/. It presupposes some familiarity with the "Chronology and Itinerary," and puts into some kind of order a number of additional research notes, principally drawing upon newspaper and genealogy databases, that amplify the earlier work in certain respects regarding the public lives of his immediate family members. This is not a finished, polished effort; it represents work in progress, complete with repetitions, missing data, and the occasional typographical error. I invite queries, amplifications, and corrections, …

Black Us Army Bands And Their Bandmasters In World War I, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This essay sketches the story of the bands and bandmasters of the twenty seven new black army regiments which served in the U.S. Army in World War I. The new bands underwent rapid mobilization and demobilization with their regiments over 1917-1919. They were for the most part unconnected by personnel or traditions to the long-established bands of the four black regular U.S. Army regiments that preceded them and that continued to serve outside Europe during and after the Great War. Pressed to find sufficient numbers of willing and able black band leaders for these new regiments, the Army turned to …

Will Marion Cook And The Tab Show, With Particular Emphasis On Hotsy Totsy And La Revue Nègre (1925), Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

This document is a supplement to "Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of Will Marion Cook," a 2017 document which is mounted on-line at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/musicfacpub/66/. It puts into some kind of order a number of research notes, principally drawing upon newspaper and genealogy databases, that amplify the earlier work in certain respects. This is not a finished, polished effort; it represents work in progress, complete with repetitions, missing data, and the occasional typographical error. I invite queries, amplifications, and corrections, which may be directed to plefferts1@unl.edu. The present document is a first draft of November 2018.

Will Marion Cook (1869-1944): Shows List And Songs And Instrumental Numbers, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The present material supplements my on-line document “Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of Will Marion Cook.” That put into some kind of order a number of biographical research notes, principally drawing upon newspaper and genealogy databases. It is one in a series ---“Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of”---devoted to a small number of African American musicians active ca. 1900-1950. In those other documents, compositions were interleaved with other kinds of references following a chronological sequence. Instead of doing the same for Cook, his shows and songs and instrumental numbers, spanning a creative career of almost a half century …

Chronology And Itinerary Of The Career Of Will Marion Cook: Materials For A Biography, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Will Marion Cook (1869-1944) devoted his creative life to the musical stage as composer, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, producer, director, violinist, pianist, librettist and lyricist, as well as making important contributions as an author and educator. One of the foremost American musicians of his generation, and regarded by many in the African American community of his day as its leading composer, he was, in contemporary eyes, an eccentric, irascible genius of great heart. This document assembles a chronology of the principal public events of his life.

A biography of Will Marion Cook by Marva Carter, Swing Along (2008) is an excellent …

Chronology And Itinerary Of The Career Of J. Tim Brymn Materials For A Biography, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

James Timothy Brymn (1873-1945), a composer, conductor, and arranger, was one of the cohort of top African American dance band and theatre orchestra leaders active in Chicago and New York who became Army bandleaders in WWI. In the first decade of the 20th century, he was acknowledged as a pre-eminent master of ragtime and one of the premiere song writers of America. Brymn was the author of one of the first published blues (1912), the author of some of the first published tangos (in 1913 and 1914), the author of one of the first published jazz numbers (1917), and the …

U.S. Army Black Regimental Bands And The Appointments Of Their First Black Bandmasters, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

The black regimental bands and their bandmasters in U.S. Army service between the Civil War and World War I comprised a fluid yet tight little community of soldier-musicians. Conspicuous in their own day, these units and their leadership teams are by no means familiar to modern readers. Replacement of white by black bandmasters in this community in the first decade of the twentieth century represented in its day an important public battle in the struggle for civil rights and racial fairness in the military. The following narrative offers a fuller account of this battle than has previously been available, but—full …