Backstage Book Club: Edition 2 - "Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way"

Caseen Gaines

On May 23rd, 1921, a musical called Shuffle Along opened at the 63rd Street Music Hall, one block between Broadway and Central Park. Featuring an all-Black cast and creative team, Shuffle Along broke many of the color barriers separating white and Black theatremakers, and it has been lauded both by its contemporaries and modern historians as one of the launch points of the Harlem Renaissance. One hundred years later, the reverberating effects of this breakthrough production can still be felt throughout the world of musical theatre, popular music, and pop culture.

Every so often I come across a book that I struggle to finish for all of the right reasons. I will sit with it at my bedside, savoring the final chapters, doubling back and rereading sections multiple times, as I take as much time as possible to avoid turning to the last page.

Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way by Caseen Gaines is one of these treasured books.

A renowned Pop Culture Historian, Gaines holds a Masters Degree in American Studies from Rutgers University, where he focused on racial representations in popular culture, and his work can be found in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, and many other highly respected publications, in addition to his significant literary output. A master of compressing comprehensive information into digestible passages, you can read excerpts of my interview with Mr. Gaines’ below, as well as view a handful of photographs from the original productions of Shuffle Along.

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What inspired you to examine Shuffle Along, after building your career around more recent pop culture history? (Previous books by Gaines include examinations of the Back to the Future trilogy, A Christmas Story, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and cult classic film The Dark Crystal)

GAINES: I’ve always been drawn to fascinating stories that have impacted our culture, so while Footnotes feels like a departure, I feel like it’s very in line with what led me to write my previous works. I was really drawn to this story after seeing George C. Wolfe’s 2016 reimagining of Shuffle Along, which told some aspects of the making of the original 1921 production. When I returned home, I began looking more into some of the characters and realizing they each had rich and vibrant lives, some of which were just hinted at in Wolfe’s production. The more I learned, the more a story started to come into focus; not just about Shuffle Along, but about Blacks in the 1920s more generally.

Footnotes opens with a quote from the esteemed author and educator Paul Eldridge - “History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes.” Which came first, the title or the epigraph?

GAINES: The title came first, and to be honest, finding the perfect quote for that epigraph was tough. I knew I wanted to suggest what I meant by “Footnotes” right up front, but also suggest where the book would head. It’s a triumphant story of Black artists overcoming systemic racism to succeed on Broadway, but there is also a lot of pain and loss in the narrative, which I think catches some readers by surprise.

In the opening section of Footnotes, Bert Williams of Williams and Walker comes up as an example of a Black man donning Blackface as a way to survive in the entertainment culture of early 20th century America. Williams died less than a year after Shuffle Along premiered on Broadway in 1921. How did Williams’ generation of performers react to the bombastic renaissance that Shuffle Along ushered in?

GAINES: Bert Williams and Eubie Blake lived near each other in Harlem, and by all accounts, Williams loved Shuffle Along. The show was really a watershed moment for Black representation on Broadway, and as one of the top Black performers of the day, Williams was happy to see the show become the phenomenon that it became.

When talking about Sissle and Blakes collaborations pre Shuffle Along, you discuss James Reese Europe, the Black bandleader who Eubie Blake called “the Martin Luther King of Music”, at length. What influences from Jim Europe’s brief output (he was killed by one of the percussionists in his band at the age of 38) do you see in the modern musical landscape?

GAINES: James Reese Europe is really the fifth main character in Footnotes, even though, for reasons you allude to in your question, he’s not present for most of the book. Europe believed that Black musicians would only succeed if they embraced their African roots, and traditions borne out of America’s dark legacy of slavery, and brought their culture to the mainstream. If they imitated whites, he felt, they would make subpar imitations. That thought process is what led Shuffle Along’s great success, and I think Europe’s theory still holds up a century later.

Reading about the Spanish Influenza pandemic and the Red Summer of 1919 on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder was deeply unsettling. What, if anything, feels different to you about the reckonings of the last year, in comparison to those one century ago?

GAINES: To be honest, some of the writing process was haunting. It’s a cliché, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. There was one day in particular when I returned home after attending a local march for police reforms, to work on a section of the book dealing with a Black man being lynched after a bad interaction with police. However, just like with today, there are always moments of hope. In terms of what feels different, let’s catch up in a few years and see how much has actually changed. For now, I’ll say I’m cautiously optimistic.

The performance style of Florence Mills (who replaced Gertrude Saunders as Ruth Little during the original production) is placed in contrast when discussing the way female performers were expected to look and behave in the Post-Ziegfeld musical theatre - do you believe that the star power exhibited by Mills can be taught, or was it an innate light within her?

GAINES: You know how the world stops and fades away when Tony and Maria see themselves for the first time in West Side Story? That’s kind of what star power feels like to me. Some people just have a light shining through them, and while I do think talent can be taught, or at least further developed, I tend to think star power is something you have from birth. There are lots of talented people who have great careers, but never really become stars. Conversely, there are also people who have average talent, but for whatever reason, they have that “it factor.”

Colorism, and the attempt to mitigate racism through finding “the whitest Black girls” for the chorus, features prominently when the casting process of Shuffle Along is discussed - What are the repercussions when a watershed moment like Shuffle Along shuts out a part of the community it is seeking to elevate?

GAINES: It was important for me to tell the truth about Shuffle Along throughout the narrative. Footnotes explores this shared accomplishment for Sissle, Blake, Miller, and Lyles, but there were certainly aspects of this history that complicate their legacy. Black folks who were socialized in the United States aren’t immune to systemic racism. Noble Sissle, in particular, thought he was advancing the race by presenting “white Black girls” on stage, and he did, but he also continued a horrible practice of colorism that exists to this day. Black history—all history—is always complicated, and Footnotes is no exception.

“Shuffle Along” on tour in Boston, 1921

Sissle and Blake have been far more remembered by the general public than Miller and Lyles (due in no small part to Eubie Blake’s long life, punctuated by Eubie!, a 1978 revue of his work in which legendary dancer Gregory Hines made his first big splash). What do you wish modern theatre makers and audience members would keep in mind when considering Miller and Lyles?

GAINES: Flournoy Miller, in particular, was brilliant. While a lot of his comedy doesn’t hold up to modern standards of what is acceptable, he was a cunning writer and a great businessman. He really was the brains behind Shuffle Along. Both he and Lyles have really been denied their due, and I suspect that it’s because of Eubie’s long life, but also because the music of Shuffle Along holds up in a way that the comedy does not.

You discuss at length how the 2016 production of Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed influenced the modern legacy of Shuffle Along - what other shows, if any, would you like to receive the same type of investigative production?

GAINES: I’m going to go with West Side Story. What a fascinating work.

You are given access to a time machine just large enough to fit two people. Of the numerous figures discussed in Footnotes, who would you bring with you to experience the modern world for a day?

GAINES: I’d bring back Josephine Baker and Eubie Blake. In their own ways, they both lived for the moment and adjusted to life on the fly. I think they’d most appreciate seeing where we are in 2021 (even though Eubie’d be amazed and proud of how far Black folks have come, while Josephine would probably think we haven’t progressed enough.)

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You can purchase a copy of Footnotes, and other books by Caseen Gaines, at this link

Make sure to check back with Backstage Book Club next month, when we will be covering Up In The Cheap Seats by Ron Fassler

If you are interested in submitting a book for consideration, please contact Margaret at www.margaret-hall.com