James A. Bland

Biography

b. 22 Oct 1854, Flushing, NY, USA, d. 6 Might 1911, Philadelphia, Pa, USA. Educated at Howard University or college, Bland gained a qualification in regulation and worked well for the united states Patent Workplace. He was, nevertheless, set on a profession as an entertainer and songwriter. As a guy he sang and performed banjo with minstrel troupes, notably Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels, where also appeared well-known performers such as for example Jim Elegance, Billy Kersands and Tom Mackintosh. Using the troupe, he travelled broadly including visiting European countries. This is in the times when even dark entertainers ‘blacked-up’ for his or her stage performers and shipped tunes and dances that strengthened racial stereotypes, and Bland was no exclusion. He became extremely popular and in 1880 apparently appreciated a five-figure annual income, an enormous sum for your day. A lot of this income originated from his prolific songwriting. After living for twenty years in London, Bland came back to the united states in 1901 and resolved for some time in Washington, DC. By this time around, he previously spent all his cash and resided out his times in poverty and sick health, ultimately dying of tuberculosis. His loss of life proceeded to go unreported by modern papers, his grave unmarked until greater than a one fourth of a hundred years after his loss of life. Bland is normally believed to possess composed a lot more than 700 music. Among these was ‘Pay attention To The Magic Trumpet’s Sounding’, the sheet music which is normally inscribed to Harrigan And Hart, white entertainers who have been instrumental, as was Bland’s music, in assisting generate the chalk-line walk, a precursor from the cakewalk trend. Other music Bland composed which are still performed today consist of ‘Oh, Dem Golden House shoes’, ‘Hands Me Straight down My Taking walks Cane’, ‘Show ’Em I’ll End up being There’, ‘In The Evening BY Moonlight’ and ‘De Golden Wedding ceremony’. Most widely known of all is normally ‘Carry Me BACK AGAIN TO Old Virginny’. It had been this melody that motivated newly-arrived immigrant Victor Herbert, a traditional cellist, to carefully turn to composing in the favorite idiom. The melody would also end up being the condition melody of Virginia. Beneath the path of Dick Hyman, a few of Bland’s tracks and the ones of additional songwriters of his period were performed within the 1999 launch Don’t SUPPLY THE Name A NEGATIVE Place.

Quick Facts