by A. G. Lafley
The Whitman sisters were Bert, Alice, Essie, and Mae. Mae’s real name was Mabel. She was the oldest and took care of business: bookings, hirings, firings, props, transportation. Mae used to sing in the early days but was retired from that.
In the 1920s and thirties the Lafayette Theater in Harlem presented the best black stage shows and revues in the country. The Tree of Hope is seen to the right, in front of the Ubangi Club. (Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs collection.)
Alberta, or Bert as she was known, was a male impersonator and dancer, one of the best in the business. Was so realistic—dressed exactly like a good-looking young man.
Alice was the youngest. Blond, light, and looked like a white girl. She was a great comedienne and a sensational time dancer. Could do many of Bill Robinson’s tap routines like dancing up and down stairs. I heard Robinson agree she was the greatest woman tap dancer. Nobody knew, but Alice was not a Whitman sister at all. They billed as sisters, but Alice was actually Essie’s daughter. I can tell that now because they all passed. And Alice’s little son Albert, known as Pops Whitman, worked on the show with Billy Yates. Had a hell of a duo act.
Essie retired long before I joined. Stayed in Chicago and made all the costumes. Sometimes when there was no work to do, she came back for a two-week turn with the show, never no more. Essie had a strong voice that reminded me of Sophie Tucker, and her comedy routines was a riot. When she did her famous skit about a rich society lady that gets drunk, the audience broke up every time.
Two advertisements for the famous Whitman Sisters’ show at the Orpheum Theater, Newark, N.J., for the week of Dec. 3, 1928.
Clyde Bernhardt while appearing with the Whitman Sisters’ show, May 1929, St. Louis, Mo.
The Whitman family goes back a long way. Old man Albert Whitman, who looked white, was a Methodist bishop and first cousin to Walt Whitman, the noted poet. The Whitman girls started out singing gospel with him on the church circuit before the turn of the century.
The sisters were very religious—everyone on the show had to go to church every Sunday, no matter where we were or what we was doing. Somebody miss a service, they be fined and the money given to the church.
We always had to wear our best clothes at all times—if any of the sisters saw a show member walking down the street not looking neat and clean, they raise holy hell. Wanted us all to look successful, like we had money. Or at least making some.
The Whitman show was always a big production and changed about every six weeks. Was almost two hours long, a matinee every day, two shows every night. Had usually over thirty-five people in the show, plus the band.
After the band overture, the curtain rise and the chorus danced out singing happy songs. It alternated boy-girl-boy-girl, about sixteen in all—working like a well-rehearsed team. Their costumes was always neat—the boys had on satin shirts and pants, the girls had satin tops and short satin skirts. Later in the show the girls came out as models wearing gowns trimmed in lace with big, fluffy ostrich plumes coming out the top of their big hats. They walk across the stage, turn and pose, hold out their skirts full. The Whitmans been presenting this kind of fashion show ever since they changed over to musical comedies back around 1905, long before Irvin C. Miller and his Brown Skin Models.
They had a soubrette dressed in tails and silk pants, wearing a silk top hat and carrying a long evening stick. She do a hot jazz number. Later she sing a sad ballad wearing a evening gown with one of them small bands around her head with feathers all in it.
I remember Bernice Ellis, a leading lady and soprano whose specialty was semi-concert songs. She and Dick Campbell, a tenor, sometimes sing duets like I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. In later years he was the head of the U.S.O., in charge of black acts.
Margaret Watkins also sang on the show. Willie Bryant did some comedy work and danced in the chorus line. Willie Toosweet was the blackface comedian, and his nephew, Wilbert Toosweet, worked in the chorus.
Sambo Reid was the other blackface comedian but was so naturally black he never had to cork up because nobody could tell the difference. Sambo was a Geechee from Charleston, South Carolina, and it was very hard to understand what in hell he was saying—that’s what made him so funny. He usually wore a black derby and gray spats.
Leo Watson and Douglas Daniels worked together as a team. Leo was only fourteen and Douglas, thirteen—neither of them grown. They sang and scatted all kinds of songs. Both played banjo, mandolin, ukelele, and other stringed instruments. Another youngster I remember was Alfreda Allman, only thirteen but worked the chorus line with the grown girls. They put her on the end because she was such a good dancer. There was other acts and the audiences loved them all.
Rare photo of the famous Whitman Sisters’ company appearing at the Dunbar Theater, Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 27, 1928. Roman-style names are members of George “Doc” Hyder’s house band that augmented the show. Front row, left to right: Sambo Reid (comedian), Billy Yates (dancer), Princess Wee Wee (singer/dancer), Albert “Pops” Whitman (dancer), Willie Toosweet (comedian); middle row, left to right: Maurice Wilson (dancer), Leo Watson (singer/g), Alfreda Allman (dancer), Dolores Payne (dancer), Myrtle Fortune (dancer), Troy Snapp (ldr/p), Ellis Reynolds (p), Doc Hyder (ldr), Alice Whitman, Bert Whitman, Bernice Ellis (singer), Katie Franklin (dancer), Ethel Frye (dancer), Douglas Daniels (singer/g), Margaret Watkins (singer); back row, left to right: Charles Anderson (yodeler),______ Fitzhugh (singer), Alex Stevens (t), Bernard Archer (tb), ________ Mason (t), unknown (tp), Clyde Bernhardt (tb), unknown (tu), Leslie Towles (d), unknown (d), unknown (bj), Sterling Payne (as), Josh Saddler (vio), Puny Gray (as), Archie Anderson (vio), Ernest Michall (cl), unknown (ts), unknown, ________ Hubert (singer).
The Whitmans was the stars of the show of course. Bert and Alice worked together as a team—Bert in a man’s neat, striped jacket, pants, and shoes. Hair cut short and combed back like a slick processed dude. Alice was all satin and lace with the latest wide-brimmed summer hat flopping in the breeze.
They work a long act together, maybe Bert singing It Had to Be You to Alice as both walked and danced, holding on to each other. Making eyes. Being happy and laughing. They made the perfect male-female couple.
The audience always went wild over them. But I swear nobody seemed to know Bert was really a woman. She always had young, excited girls waiting at the stage door for her. Some of them be no more then eighteen. But Bert was straight. She came out in her street dress and those silly gals be still peeping in the door for her. They ask when the “Whitman brother” was coming out and she say he slipped away and was long gone.
The gals all go away mad and Bert would only laugh.
One time I was talking to her when some gal got backstage and came in her dressing room.
“Somebody said you is a woman dressed up as a man,” the kid said with big eyes. “But I don’t give a damn what you is, I just love the hell out of you.”
“Get out gal, I’m goin’ on soon,” Bert said, not even looking around.
“I do anything you want, even work for you.”
Sister Bert winked at me. “Honey,” she said, turning to the little gal, “you can’t work for me, ’cause I got a husband working for me now. One is enough.”
We both had a good laugh. She had more trouble with stage-door gals then stage-door johnnies.
The sisters were always looking for beautiful girls to add to the show. In those days, theaters in Cleveland, Columbus, Newark, and New York had black amateur shows and dance contests. If somebody was good, girl or boy, the Whitmans came and took them in. Only the best and only the lightest high-yellas, no blacks. Then they made them up to be the same light complexion as all the rest.
Ma Rainey would pick up the good blacks the Whitmans passed by and give them a spot in her show—that made Ma very popular in the South.
Troy Snapp was the leader of the Whitman show band and played piano; Ernest “Mike” Michall, a good New Orleans clarinetist, was also one of the blackface comed
ians on the show; Sterling “Buddy” Payne played alto; a boy from Cleveland I knew only as Mason was trumpet; Leslie Towles, drums; Archie Anderson, violin; and Mae’s husband, Mr. F. B. Payton, played tenor and helped out with the luggage and props. We all paid him a dollar a week to deliver our trunks wherever we wanted.
The band always worked in tuxedo, white shirt, and bow tie. Buddy Payne was a bad dresser and once picked up a old tuxedo somewhere. When he came down front to take a hot solo, the lining in his raggetyass jacket fell out on the floor. Oh man, sister Mae got mad. Pitched a bitch.
“Come out on my stage, will you, looking like a damn old buzzard? Embarrassing the Whitmans. I won’t have it!”
She went out the next day and bought him a brand new tuxedo and duct it from his salary. They were very strict on how we looked—at all times.
The band played in the pit except for the fast finale when we finish up on stage. Sometimes the band augmented with the house band like Irving Hughes’ orchestra at the Royal Theater in Baltimore. That damn pit was full of musicians and made one terrific band—sounded so rich and heavy. Snapp never changed arrangements when we augmented, but alternated parts or had us play duo solos.
We augmented at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., the Elmore in Pittsburgh, the Globe in Cleveland, the Koppin in Detroit. Once worked with Doc Hyder’s band at the Dunbar in Philadelphia. They had a much better group then Snapp ever had.
The show traveled by railroad car. In those years, the railroad company gave us our own private coach and baggage car if we had over twenty-five in the show. Then our special car got connected to a train going to where we were going, and we be on our way. Move those coach seats down flat, make them like beds, and stretch out. Much better then Grear’s touring cars. Oh Lord yes!
We played a lot of white theaters and some black TOBA places—only the biggest ones that had flyers to take the large drops the show carried. We toured from New York to Atlanta, then down to New Orleans and out to Indianapolis, St. Louis, and up to Detroit.
The Whitman Sisters’ show was big news wherever it went. The audiences couldn’t get enough of the blackface comedians, the coloreds laughing the loudest. And all the singing and dancing. Much applause. Family people came, both black and white, bringing their children.
This was a quality show—clean, no smutty jokes. The Whitmans wouldn’t allow that. I saw the best-dressed men and women in our audiences, even preachers.
Once, when we played Philadelphia, I went over to see Professor Harris, my old teacher. Kept asking me how I was getting along with my studies, but before I could answer, said he saw this fellow in the Whitman Sisters’ pit band that looked just like me. Made me feel very good to say it was me.
“You were my best student,” he said nodding his head. “I’m not surprised.”
I kept getting other job offers during my tour with the show. Doc Hyder wanted me for his band. Dewey Jackson in St. Louis give me a offer. Neal Montgomery in Atlanta, too. But I was learning so much with the Whitmans, I turned them all down.
I was with the show about six months when it all came to a fast end. We arrived in Atlanta after a long ride, and Bert called a dance rehearsal for two hours later. Dance rehearsals was necessary as theaters are usually different sizes and it was important the chorus get a feeling for the stage.
But I was dead tired, fell asleep, and never got to the 81 Theater till after rehearsal was well along. She fined me two dollars.
By union rules she should have paid me for those dance rehearsals, but never did. Many times I fibbed to the union delegate, telling him I was paid, but I was not.
Besides, I felt those kind of rehearsals could of been done just as well with only a piano.
I’m a funny person, don’t like being taken advantage of, and I don’t take advantage of anybody else. So I gave my two-weeks’ notice.
A few days later I saw sister Mae in the barbershop having her hair trimmed in the chair next to me. Asked me not to leave the show, but I gave my notice and it was too late.
I left the Whitmans in Cincinnati sometime in June of 1929 and went to Detroit to visit a old girl friend. Sister Mae paid my train fare.
While I was there, I stopped over at a club on Saintoine Avenue where all the local musicians jammed and hung out. McKinney’s Cotton Pickers was working at the Graystone Ballroom, and some of the guys started to drift over around two in the morning. Ed Cuffee and Todd Rhodes walked in and sat off to the side. They spotted me as a stranger and started to signify, like daring me to play.
“Is that a real horn in the case, or you carryin’ your lunch?” Kept teasing me. “If there is a horn in there, I hope the boy know which end to blow.” Things like that.
Musicians can be cruel sometimes, especially to newcomers. Tease and laugh. But I was sort of shy and didn’t answer. A few guys started to jamming so I went up and hit a number. While I was playing, Rhodes came over and sat in on piano. Cuffee, a good trombonist, stopped his jiving.
When I finished, I had two pickup jobs waiting for me. One was with Bob Cruzette—had a fancy Fourth of July party lined up. Teddy Wilson was in the band—he was going to college then and came to Detroit to make some extra summer money. That man could play piano like nobody’s business.
Then I took a job with Lou Hooper because his trombone player got TB and had to lay off a while. I really didn’t want the job. It was way out at a lake pavillion some eighty miles from Detroit, and Cruzette had other jobs lined up for me. But Hooper needed me bad, he said, and I felt sorry for him. After a few weeks, Hooper wanted me regular, but I was homesick and came back to Newark.
It felt nice being home again and I didn’t take any more work until after Labor Day when that crazy roller rink job came along.
12. Dinah and His Orchestra, 1929
My family was always helping and advising me. I respected them, as they were older and much wiser then me. They knew how hard it’s been for coloreds to get ahead and was giving me the benefit of their experience.
I remember my uncle used to say: “Clyde, just ’cause these musicians after you to play jobs, don’t think you the best horn player in the world. Some damn blower out there might play like hell, but nobody know nothin’ about him. Always stay down to earth,” he added, “because then you won’t have to come down to earth.” I thought that was good advice.
After soaking up Mama’s home cooking and talking about all the places I been with the Whitmans, I took this job with Dinah and his orchestra.
Now, that’s a odd name for a man. Years ago, when his name was George Taylor, he did a stage act dressed as Topsy in a spit-tail wig and dress. Always clown and fool around. Jump all over. Called himself Dinah and it stuck on him the rest of his career. Even after he became a drummer he kept jumping all around his drums, sometimes laying on the floor, pitching his sticks in the air, catching them on his back, and never miss a beat. A real flash drummer. He once worked with Jimmy Cooper’s Revue on the Columbia Burlesque Wheel circuit.
Dinah had about seven pieces in his band. One was Chalmers Harley on trumpet—I worked with him in the Pearl Smothers’ orchestra back in Harrisburg.
Dinah’s gig was at a indoor roller skating rink up in Yonkers, New York. It was a fairly large place with bleachers all around the sides. We were hired to play intermission music while the skaters rested. But when we start to play, the manager come out, wave his hand to stop us, and make some announcements. Then we start again but here he comes running out again waving and the skaters come back on. We never played when they were skating.
The rink must of made money when the skaters skated, because we never got to play more then three choruses of any song. I get up to take a solo and have to stop right in the middle because the manager was waving. Couldn’t finish the number. The people all applauded, especially when old Dinah did his thing, but there wasn’t time for nobody to do much of anything.
The manager was the busiest guy there—always running out, waving.
I hated the job. The other guys didn’t seem to mind—as a matter of fact, they liked it. It was easy and they didn’t do much. But I thought it was too easy.
After the first week, I gave my two-weeks’ notice. That wasn’t a job, that was a embarrassment.
13. Honey Brown’s Orchestra (Willie Wilkins’ Band), 1929–1930
I used to hang around the Rhythm Club that was in the cellar next door to the Lafayette. I was living across the street at the time and used to run over often because it was the hottest after-hours place in New York where a guy could play just for himself. Sometimes it was so crowded with musicians I had to wait in line to get up on the bandstand to blow. All the greats came to relax and talk music. And jam.
One night in September of 1929 I was sitting there enjoying myself when Red Elkins came over. We met when he augmented the Whitmans at the Palace in Dayton, Ohio. Said that Honey Brown’s trombone player was always drunk and hard to get along with, so she was looking for a new slide horn player. I was on my two-weeks’ notice with Dinah so I walked over to the Bamboo Inn where she was working and got the job.
Honey Brown made a name for herself as a ballet dancer in some Buffalo night clubs. She been hired the year before in Memphis to play the lead in the first all-black musical film, Hallelujah. During the baptizing scene, Honey got pneumonia, so they brought in Nina Mae McKinney out of high school to temporarily fill in. When they saw how much better Nina sang and danced, Honey was out. Nina just took that part.
Honey was twenty-three years old, a keen looking, light gal with sharp features. She was very small and petite, usually wore a evening gown and always had a baton in her hand. Sometimes she go into a little dance act, up on her toes, doing high kicking and singing in her little kitty-cat voice.
The Bamboo Inn had a floor show and Honey was in charge of the acts. One of them was Race-Horse Smith, a long, tall, brownskin from Chicago—Jesus, could she dance. She throw out her long legs, jump up, twist about, and do the biggest split you ever saw. She couldn’t sing a lick, but man, could she dance. Her real name was Mamie Smith but was not related to the famous blues singer.