Bert Williams, Play That Barbershop Chord (1910)

(Library of University of Colorado at Boulder)
no copyright infringement intended

This record comes from 1910: the Harlem Renaissance had still one decade or so before coming into stage, still the years around 1910 had their momentum, as they witnessed the entrance of Ragtime (associated till then with bordellos and smoked taverns) into the Harlem mainstream, with its minor key and catchy rhythm. The song of Bert Williams gives us the picture: a kinky-headed ladie they call Chocolate Sadie goes to a rathskeller where a swell colored fella named Bill Jefferson Lord plays the piano, sending the audiences into something prone to ecstasy.

She heaved a sigh
every time she could catch his eye, she'd cry,

Mr. Jefferson Lord, aw, play the barbershop chord!
It's got the soothin' harmony,
It makes an awful, awful, awful hit wit me!

Play dat strain, aw, please, play it again!
'Cause Mister when you start, the minor part,
I feel your fingers slippin' and agrippin' round my heart!
Oh Mr. Lord! Dat's it!
That's the barbershop chord!

(I'm using here info and quoting abundantly from Camille F. Forbes, Introducing Bert Williams: Burtnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America's First Black Star)

(video by phonomono78s)

(Bert Williams)

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project (1913)

Odessa Warren Grey and Bert Williams in the 1913 movie
(MoMA)
no copyright infringement intended

Chaplinesque avant la lettre!
(scene from the 1913 movie with Bert Williams)
(The Guardian)
no copyright infringement intended

Often when looking for an old-old movie, I have the impression of doing some kind of archeology, or rather paleontology. It is not only the difficulty of finding a copy, or of understanding the movie from some fragments. It's also the effort to enter the universe of that bygone epoch, with mentalities so different, with names and histories that today don't tell anything anymore. Sometimes it's the language barrier. Sometimes it is also the destiny of the movie throughout the years. But never was this impression so powerful as with this movie made by Bert Williams in 1913. Imagine a new born immediately abandoned and forgotten, remained in a long lethargy, awaken and starting his life at 101 years. Because that was the case with Lime Kiln Field Day.

Like all movies of Bert Williams, it was made for the Biograph studio. It was an all-black cast, which was remarkable for those times: it is credited as the oldest surviving all-black movie. And remarkable is that it doesn't give a damn penny about all racist stereotypes of that epoch. It is a vaudeville whose personages spend some leisure time, preoccupied with dancing and romancing. Bert Williams is trying to conquer the heart of beautiful Odessa Warren Grey, which is far from simple, as there are also some rivals.

So they started to work for the movie, doing shootings on location in New York and New Jersey, but after some months the project was abandoned. The movie remained unfinished, unedited, and without a title. The footage was stored at Biograph and remained there languishing for decades. In 1939 MoMA acquired 900 negatives from the archive of Biograph. The movie of Williams was among them. It came to the attention of the curators sometime by the middle of the 2000's. The work of restoration took about ten years. Well, it needed a title, as in 1913 they left the baby unbaptized. So MoMA took care also for a name: Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project. It is now compared with movies of Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Here are four fragments from the movie

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project - Marry Go Round
(http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/311/1525)

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project - Footrace
(http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/311/1523)

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project - Rivals
(http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/311/1524)

Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project - Cakewalk
(http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/311/1522)

Some links for this movie, with stills and abundance of information:

• MoMA: 100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History
• The Guardian: Oldest Surviving Film With an All Black Cast Moved Me to Laughter and Tears (Steven W. Thrasher)
• CBS: Oldest Surviving Film of Black Actors Found

(Bert Williams)

Bert Williams, A Natural Born Gambler (1916)

(The History Blog)
no copyright infringement intended

A Natural Born Gambler from 1916, 22 minutes long, one of the three movies having Bert Williams as director, writer and star. The cinematographer is Billy Bitzer.

A group of black gentlemen, organized in some kind of fraternity or lodge whatever, meets regularly in the back room of a bar to discuss matters of interest, their reunions ending in drinking or gambling or both. However gambling seems to be forbidden those days, so the guys have to be careful not to be discovered by the police. Among them the Honorable Bert Williams, kind of a walking delegate, which means big mouth and vague duties, always in debt and in need of money, always trying to cheat for the pleasure of game, always loosing. On the wall a torn-out image of President Lincoln, like a Deus Otiosus no longer interested in the daily operation of this rapidly decaying world, while seemingly taking pleasure in watching this very movie (he from the wall where's hanging, we from this other side of the screen). Watching this movie is like visiting a nostalgia shop: each scene looks like an incredible memorabilia.

Of course the police discovers the gamblers and brings them in front of the judge. The only one put in jail is (you gotcha) no other than our main hero (only for ten days, it's a comedy, not a drama). While in prison, he plays imaginary poker games, where he keeps on loosing: his pantomime is genial.

The movie comes with all racial stereotypes of the epoch: the rule by then was that the interpret of a black personage had to do minstreling, which meant to shoe-black his face and whiten his lips for the contrast; the intertitles followed another rule, to spell the fractured English supposed to be the blacks' parlance; and many other things like that. No wonder, the movie was made in 1916. It looks now completely anti-PC, but in those days the political correctness was just the opposite.

A Natural Born Gambler, 1916
(video by Cinema History)

(Bert Williams)

Bert Williams, Nobody

(Jas Obrecht Music Archive)
no copyright infringement intended

This song, Nobody, had such a huge success that Bert Williams would say in 1918, I could have wished both the author of the words and the assembler of the tune had been strangled or drowned or talked to death. For seven whole years I had to sing it. Month after month I tried to drop it and sing something new, but I could get nothing to replace it, and the audiences seemed to want nothing else. He was the assembler of the tune, by the way.

(video by Brent Abrahamson)

(Bert Williams)

Bert Williams

Bert Williams (1874-1922)
Photo-Portrait with Cigarette
(wikimedia)
no copyright infringement intended

he was the funniest man I ever saw... and the saddest man I ever met (W. C. Fields)

one of the prominent entertainers of the Vaudeville era, and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time (wiki)

when he collapsed, it was during a performance, and the audience thought it was his comic número; his last words were, it's a nice way to die; he didn't recover and soon passed away; he was 47 (wiki)

he played in three movies, all of them also directed by him, produced by Biograph, a NY film company of fame in the first two decades of the 20th century; one of these three films was long time lost, and rediscovered recently; actually I found this information today and it put me on his traces; and thus I came upon a superb vintage collection of tunes and short movies from those times, the perfumed charm that only bygones posses.

• Nobody
• A Natural Born Gambler
• Bert Williams Line Kiln Field Day Project
• Play That Barbershop Chord

(Early Movies)