Search - Bert Williams :: The Middle Years, 1910-1918

More Great Stuff from the Grandfather of Black Comedy

Andre M. | Mt. Pleasant, SC United States | 04/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Bert Williams (1875-1922) was the first major Black comedian and thankfully, most of his recordings have survivied. This collection reveals that Bert was quite a satirist. "Twenty days" is an interesting commentary on injustice on Blacks in the legal system. "I'm Gone Before I Go" is a thinly veiled barb against lynching, "I'm Neutral" deals with America's entry into World War I and "Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting" cleverly stings fundamentalist religious beleifs. Of course, some of this stuff is just plain timeless fun. "You Can't Get Away From It" is a delightfully catchy ragtime tune that you will often find singing to yourself from time to time. "Woodman Spare that Tree" is a comic tale of a man who escapes from his nagging wife in a tree in the front yard. Some really interesting sides include two 1913 monologues from Bert's stage act, "When Martin Comes" and "How? Fried?" (Bert's manic laugh at the end of the latter is worth the price of admission alone). Both of these bear interesting similarities to Bill Cosby's comic tales of a half-century later.Aside form the surface noise that may annoy audiophiles, this is a happy case of historically important material that still posesses strong entertainment value. Buy this, and be thanful that Bert lived long enough to have some of his great material preserved for all time."

A must own!

Robert Badgley | London,Ontario,Canada | 05/23/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Bert Williams was the first black man to perform in a major theatrical production(Ziegfield Follies) and was a pioneer for blacks in the recording industry,a mainstay of Columbia records from 1906 to his death in 1922.
Bert was a comedian of the first order.He starred in several self produced musicals and developed a distictive and natural style all his own.Rarely was there a show he was in that he could get away with not doing encore after encore whether it be a trademark song and/or routine.
He has been proclaimed one the greatest entertainers ever to grace a stage on one hand and has been vilified on the other.The former is definitely true but the latter does a great disservice to this enormously talented man.His vilification usually stems from his donning of burnt cork to "black up".These comments for the most part come from post-modern day critics both black and white who would wish to reform history in a different manner and most of which never saw their subject in the flesh.
It's easy to stand here in the 21st century and pontificate on all the "wrongs" of centuries gone by and how much more informed and advanced we are now.
The times of Bert Williams were exactly just that....... HIS times.As there are still many injustices and wrongs to be righted
in THIS century so it was in Berts' times(what will those in the 22nd century think of us?).Here was a celebrated performer of the stage but open to and indeed experienced racial predjudice that then existed amongst some of his peers and in the "real" world.It wasn't pretty and it definitely was not right but nonetheless that was a small part of the world in those years.
Also blackface as it came to be called was a norm in the Minstrel and Medicine shows of the mid to late 1800s,applied by both blacks and whites.This tradition carried over onto the Vaudeville and theartical stages of later years.In some cases it was caricatures but in others just a theatrical facade.As an aside for years critics have also ravaged Berts' contemporary Al Jolsons' trademark black face as a poster boy for caricaturizing blacks,when in reality his was for the most part just a theatricalization.This shows their ignorance in their subject matter and going for the "easy target".
What certainly can be agreed on however is that the inconsistancy in being celebrated on the one hand and being treated as a second class citizen(or worse)the next was certainly a factor in the "wearing" down of this fine and talented man.Bert spoke both publicly and privately of this dichotomy and constantly hoped against hope that somehow in America it might change.But it never did in his lifetime.
Being the consummate performer he was he was more than willing to give the people what they wanted.And his audiences both black and white wanted him in cork and would have him no other way.So ironically what made him famous also limited his artistic freedom.
To those critics who still fall into the trap of castigating whites for creating and perpetuating blackface and this Uncle Tom-ish type of characterization all I can say is that this is historical revisionism pure and simple,i.e.they don't treat their subject(s) within the constraints of their time period and they conveniently forget that blacks themselves were at times just as complicitous as whites were in stereotyping their race.There was a time when blackface was acceptable if not de rigeur but over time tastes changed and we moved past it.I only wish many would do the same now.
That is why we all should be so grateful to have these historic Archeophone recordings at our finger tips now.These songs give a new,fresh and long over due look into the career and person that was Bert Williams.For far too long many have relied on just old songsheets,posters,pictures and the very few extant recordings that surfaced periodically amongst mainly hard core collectors that gave a very myopic view of his career.Now the world can reassess and see him through much clearer glasses than ever before and we all can revel in the burdgeoning talent and man that was indeed one of the major talents ever to grace a stage anywhere at any time."

Really great!

Max | 11/29/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If this music is your type of thing (and of course, it isn't EVERYONE'S type of thing anymore), this disc is for you. Me, I love Bert Williams.



Actually, ALL of the discs put out by Archeophone are fantastic. They manage to find very good-sounding discs and clean them up just enough to sound good but not ruin the music. (In other words, yes, there's crackle here and there, but at least the music sounds clean and crisp instead of muffled, as can often happen with noise reduction.) Naturally the older the discs, the less clean they'll sound, but they're all quite listenable. If you're interested in more of their CD's, look them up on Amazon or go to their web site (which is the name of the company, [...]). They've got samples of every track on every one of their discs.



I have almost all of their discs, so I have this basic review up on all of them."