Item #3242 Coming! The Original and Famous New Orleans Jubilee Singers. In an Entirely New and Genuine Programme of Slave, Cabin and Plantation Songs and Melodies! [caption title]. African Americana, Louisiana.

Coming! The Original and Famous New Orleans Jubilee Singers. In an Entirely New and Genuine Programme of Slave, Cabin and Plantation Songs and Melodies! [caption title]

Sandy Creek, N.Y. 1895. Broadside, 12.25 x 5.5 inches. Uniformly tanned, old folds, moderate marginal chipping. Mounted to slightly larger cardboard backing. Good. Item #3242

A seemingly-unrecorded broadside advertising a performance by an African-American singing troupe while on the road in New York. Somewhat incongruously, the Original and Famous New Orleans Jubilee Singers hailed from Petersburg, Virginia, not New Orleans, and toured between Eastern Canada and the Deep South. According to Sandra Jean Graham's Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry, "their leader was the Reverend Joseph Pollard, an African American.... They numbered six members at most, and the women sometimes appeared alone as a quartet. Pollard intended to donate the troupe's earnings to various charitable enterprises benefitting the freedmen of New Orleans, but it isn't clear whether this actually happened.... Pollard may have been the first black leader of a group of jubilee singers, and his troupe was the earliest, or one of the earliest, troupes to tour without institutional sponsorship." The present broadside reveals some of the mystery behind the group's fundraising efforts, noting that "This company has raised $58,000 for the Latache Seminary, of Louisiana." No copies of this broadside reported in OCLC.

Price: $550.00