Spirituals in Uncle Tom Shows, Melodramas, and Spectacles

• Published in: Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry p. 183
• Main Author: Graham, Sandra Jean
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Illinois Press 26.02.2018
• Subjects: Agricultural geography; Agricultural land; Agricultural sciences; Agriculture; American Music; Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Artists; Arts; Behavioral sciences; Billy McClain; Biological sciences; Black America; C. H. Smith’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company; Callender’s Colored Minstrels; Carve Dat Possum; Centennial Exhibition and slave song; Charley Howard; Charlotte Crabtree (Lotta); Children Don’t Get Weary; Cultural anthropology; Economic disciplines; Economics; Elizabeth Hopkins; Employment; environmental plantation spectacles; ethnographic representations of slavery onstage; Fisk Jubilee Singers’ repertory of spirituals; Folk culture; Folk music; Folkloristics; Folksongs; George Howard and Mrs. Howard; Gospel Train; Hampton Institute Singers’ repertory of spirituals; Haverly’s Colored Minstrels; Haverly’s Gigantic Colored Minstrels; Hyers sisters; J. H. Haverly; James M. Waddy (black singer); Jarrett and Palmer’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; John H. Slavin; jubilee singers in Uncle Tom’s Cabin onstage; Labor economics; Minstrels; Music; Music genres; Music theory; Musical performance; Musical pitch; Musical register; Musicians; Nate Salsbury; Occupations; Ole Sheep Know the Road; or the Underground Railroad; Out of Bondage; Out of the Wilderness; outdoor spectacles with jubilee singers; Peculiar Sam; Performing arts; Plantations; Popular music; Popular songs; Putnam the Iron Son of ’76 (Nathaniel Harrington Bannister); Redpath Lyceum Bureau; Religious songs; Sam Lucas; Singers; Singing; Slavery; Slaves; Slavin’s Georgia Jubilee Singers; Social organization; Sociology; South before the War; Spirituals; spirituals in plays; Steal Away; summer entertainments at Oakland Garden (Boston); Sweet Canaan; The Passion’s Slave (Bartley Campbell); The Slave’s Escape or The Underground Railroad; the Standard Quartette (black); The White Slave (Barley Campbell); Theater; Virginia Jubilee Singers; Vocal music; Wilmington Jubilee Singers; “Is Massa Gwine to Sell Us Today?” (spiritual); “Rise and Shine” (spiritual); “The Rocks and the Mountains” (spiritual)
• ISBN: 9780252041631; 0252041631
• DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252041631.003.0007

A rainy night in Boston, spring 1876. ἀ e truck that paraded Uncle Tom’s little log house with its smoking chimney through the city all week long had accomplished its goal: crowds thronged the theater. Most everyone in the audience had read the novel and seen the play several times before (it had been staged off and on in Boston for over twenty years!) but it didn’t matter—every performance was a little different, and the sets were so grand and the cast so large, it was impossible to take it all in during one viewing. Fifty cents bought something