Commemorative Items
Commemorative photo distributed
free at time of Florence's death
The most significant ongoing commemoration of
Florence is the annual
also
My friend Ron, "The Artivist", owner of W.E.A.L.L.B.E. Blogspot radio, has created a 3-Part tribute to Florence Mills on YouTube, which can be seen from the links below (Note: the dancer in the film clips is the wonderful Nina Mae McKinney, not Florence Mills):
Florence Mills The Blackbird Of Harlem Part One
Florence Mills The Blackbird Of HarlemPart Two
Florence Mills The Blackbird Of HarlemPart Three
For other commemorative material follow these links or scroll down
To play the music you need an audio plug-in, such as RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.
Copyright issues: Material provided is not intended to breach any copyright. To avoid this I have: (1) Copied at below normal CD quality; (2) The material is for non-profit, public educational purposes, hopefully within the spirit of fair use; (3) For full enjoyment I strongly recommend getting original copies from information provided, in many cases from on-line music services for a minimal cost per track. (4) I will withdraw any items that may be considered to breach copyright on presentation of evidence or request
Duke Ellington's "Black Beauty" was the most significant piece of music written for Florence after her death. It inspired my book on Florence and this web site. The full story of that connection is told in an article I wrote for TDES Newsletter called "Duke, Black Beauty, Florence and Me". When Ellington presented his historic 1943 Carnegie Hall concert he was very conscious of his role as a cultural representative of African American society. The showpiece of the concert was his extended piece Black, Brown and Beige: a Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America. However, he also presented three 'Portraits' of the performers of his race he admired most - Bert Williams, Bojangles and Florence Mills. His Portrait of Florence Mills was the 1928 piece Black Beauty, widely believed to have been written as his tribute shortly after her death. Black Beauty, in the many versions over the years by Ellington, and many others, has been the single biggest factor in keeping Florence's memory alive. It has always been considered one of Duke's finest compositions, an early sign of the depth of his talent. My personal favorite version, and the one that originally inspired my research into Florence Mills' life and my book on her, is the one from 26 March 1928. It captures the jaunty vitality of the dynamic young dancer as well as the wistfulness at her early passing:
Black Beauty: Duke Ellington: March 26 1928
from "Duke Ellington & his Orchestra: Early Ellington 1927 -1934" Bluebird CD ND86852)
Ellington's solo piano version of 1928 demonstrates his mastery of stride piano playing:
Black Beauty: Duke Ellington (solo piano) 1928
There have been many recordings of Black Beauty over the years since 1928, by Ellington and many others - 64 are listed on Lord's Jazz Discography CD and more being made recently by groups like Pierre Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra from Denmark. A few favorites of mine are:
A delightfully wistful Swedish version by Knud Jorgensen and Arne Domnerus (PHONTASTIC PHONTCD 9312)
A novel stride guitar! version by Guy van Duser (Rounder Records CD 11533)
This version by a small Ellington group many years later (1960) has a subdued tone, like Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquility":
Black Beauty (unknown session)
Elegiac Blues (by Constant Lambert)
English classical composer Constant Lambert was an adoring fan of Florence Mills. He saw her in London for the first time in 1923 when he was a precocious emerging musical genius, and his friend Angus Morrison said:
Without a doubt this performance was one of the key experiences in his life, beginning not only his long preoccupation with jazz and the possibility of fusing and blending many of its rhythmic inventions and subtleties into the texture of more serious music, but also moving him in a far deeper way emotionally than any other music he had hitherto heard. I am convinced that the first time he saw the Plantation [Orchestra] was a moment of true inspiration — a moment he sought to recapture over and over again in his own music. The other strong impression made on him by the performance, exerting an influence more all-embracing and with even deeper emotional repercussions, was the incomparable personality of Florence Mills herself
Lambert himself said that his major masterpiece Rio Grande was an attempt to capture what he felt on seeing Florence in her two London shows. When she died he expressed his sorrow in the hauntingly melancholic "Elegiac Blues":
Elegiac Blues - Piano; Anthony Goldstone (Chandos Chan 9382)
Elegiac Blues - Orchestral; BBC Concert Orchestra (ASV WHL 2128)
In the aftermath of Florence's death there was a flood of tearful recorded tributes by her grief-stricken contemporaries. Though typically soulful laments of little musical value (except perhaps the Fats Waller one that was deleted without being issued ) some of them have a sentimental appeal because of their obvious sincerity, or because of who recorded them. They are also a proof of the depth of community feeling over Florence's death. Here are some of the most appealing:
May We Meet Again, Florence Mills (Eva Taylor, co-written with her husband Clarence Williams)
All the World is Lonely for a Little Blackbird (Andy Razaf, lyricist for "Ain't Misbehavin", "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Black and Blue" )
Bye Bye Florence (Bert Howell vocal, with organ accompaniment by Fats Waller, the nearest thing we have to Fats' lost personal tribute - he gets joint composer credits on this one)
She's Gone to Join the Songbirds in Heaven (Eva Taylor again, one of Florence's staunchest friends and admirers, composed by Porter Grainger who wrote "Ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do")
Memories of You ( Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf's beautiful song from Blackbirds of 1930 was clearly intended as a reference to the lost Blackbird, Florence
As with recordings, Florence's death brought a flood of poetry at the time, though most of it was rather amateurish. The best is a recent one by Colleen J. McElroy, Professor of Literature and the author of "A Charleston for Florence Mills," a beautiful tribute poem to Florence's memory. It's in her collection "Travelling Music", StoryLine Press (Ashland, OR). Other excellent writings by her are listed on her web site above. The tribute to Florence is reproduced here by kind permission of Professor McElroy herself.
T
A Charleston for Florence Mills
Josephine
might have been
the toast of Paris, but Florence
just shimmied out of the blasé slouch
held by Broadway queens from cabarets
on Dover St. and straight down to Dixie
Sissle and Blake
Put and Take
hoi-polloi running wild with only six years
of limelight and Florence dancing knock-
knees and flying legs as if nickel
subways would end that day - and they did
Bye Bye Blackbird
sing high 'n strut
unlike sister, hardfoot Maude, just Florence
stepping feather light, crooning: I'm just
a little Blackbird waiting for a Bluebird too
and satin garters popped for the hardluck '20s
oh buckdance
and cakewalk
and kicks that mimicked slaves, Florence out
dancing for the Prince of Wales, 20 times some
said in that certain age when darktown shuffle
was de rigueur for matrons of the dark tower
comedy streaks
jocose tricks
yes, all the vogue was jazz for Baby Florence
with her circles and shakes and feet skipping
like polished stones while ribbons of arms
danced with a flame too brightly held but some
said Panama
took the cake
to see Florence dance the shimmy shake
with a smile so wide it hurts still
T
The following short item was reported as having been written years before Florence's death, on seeing her in Kansas City with the Tennessee Ten, probably around 1920.
T
A figure slim'
So lissome trim
Like that an artist loves to limn
White teeth that flash
Like sunbeams rash
So saucily clouds can't abash
A voice pure - clear
Like bell tones near
Or brooklet's joyful tinkling tear,
She sings to life
Then pain and strife
Fade out, her song with joy's so rife.
TOne of the most interesting poems didn't appear until 1931 though it was reportedly written on the day of her funeral. It appeared in the only issue ever of a quarterly literary magazine called American Autopsy. The White editor of the magazine, Harold Hersey, is best remembered today as the king of “gangster pulp” publishers and may be the author of the poem, though it appears to have been written from a Black perspective. Here it is:
T
Florence Mills BluesA high yaller baby on the golden stairs,
She’ll take Lord Jesus unawares,
Jesus, Jesus unawares,
A Blackbird singin’ the latest airs,
The St Louis Blues on the golden stairs,
Jazz baby
Steppin’ high,
Every jazz baby’s got to die,
And there ain’t no use askin’ Jesus why.
Harlem, Harlem’s all in white
With whimperin’ mourners in a yaller night,
Ev’ry little Harlem honkatonk,
Ev’ry little Harlem honkatonk,
Silent ‘cept for the hummin’ flight
Of a lonely little Blackbird wingin’ outa sight.
Down at the bottom of the cellar stairs
Jazzbo’s comin’ on God unawares,
Muted horn and saxophone,
Berlin dreamin’ over ivory keys:
"All alone at the telephone."
Thompson prayin’ on bended knees.
Harlem, Harlem’s all in white . . .
"You gotta see mama every night
Or you can’t see mama at all."
Sheiks and shebas movin’ slow;
Black and tans a-talkin’ low:
"Yo po’ fays don’t hand around
They done put Florence underground
In a coffin lined with silk.
She’s struttin’ now where her yaller skin
Ain’t no reason not to let her in,
Ain’t no reason,
Ain’t no reason,
And it ain’t no sin."
Every little Harlem boardin’ house,
Every little Harlem boardin’ house,
Is silent, ‘cept for the creakin’ stairs
When the boarders gets Jesus unawares,
Jesus, Jesus, on the stairs.
The Blackbird’ll meet Him on golden stairs
When blacks and tans step up in pairs
And kisses Lord Jesus,
The great Lord Jesus
In a blaze of blues on the golden stairs.
A jazzbo taps his lacquered cane
For a fay is hummin’ "Charmaine, Charmaine,"
While another’s mumblin’
"A little green cottage,
A little green cottage,
At the end of Honeymoon Lane."
‘Cause Harlem, Harlem’s all in white
With mourners shufflin’ in a yaller night
Apartment houses where the fay goes in
Is silent ‘cept for the scrapin’ feet
Of white folk sneakin’ back to the street
Meetin’ Jesus unawares
Good Lord Jesus,
Good Lord Jesus,
Forgivin’ ‘em all on the golden stairs.
They’s a mighty good reason now to pray.
Black and tan and sneakin’ fay
Her slender feet won’t twinkle for yo’
Never no mo’ like they used to do,
Never no mo’
Never no mo’
‘Cept in the sky
Where a lonely little Blackbird’s
Lookin’ for a bluebird flyin’ high.
They laid her in a hammered copper coffin,
(Harlem, Harlem’s all in white)
In a hammered copper coffin under shinin’ glass.
And the mourners pass,
And the mourners pass,
By a withered Blackbird sleepin’ under glass.
Each mourner sees
Her dress of white satin
Endin’ just above her knees.
And as they goes by in their shufflin’ shoes
The angels is a prayin’ and a passin’ on the news . . . .
The St. Louis Blues,
The St. Louis Blues,
The angels all is hummin’ the St. Louis Blues.
And goin’ by her coffin in the soft candlelight
Is Harlem, Harlem dressed in snowy white.
The heavens they is weepin’,
The streets a-runnin’ tears,
And a lonely Blackbirds hummin’
Is a buzzin’ in our ears . . . .
Harlem, Harlem all in white . . . .
A grave that’ll hide her outta sight,
And Jesus singin' in the night.
T
Although the dancing statue by Antonio Salemme was never created to stand over her grave, Florence was commemorated in art a number of times. The world knows of Paul Colin's iconic posters of Josephine Baker but this delightful portrayal of Florence Mills by Paul Colin when she was in Paris remained unidentified for 80 years until I recognized it in a traveling art exhibition this year (2008).
For details see: Florence Mills and Le Tumulte Noir
Here are some more items:
Portrait by Alexander Stuart-Hill (Royal
Society of Portrait Painters) 1927
An attractive commemorative poster created recently by artist Noble Sissle III, grandson of Florence's old Shuffle Along co-star Noble Sissle.
One of the interesting people who saw Florence in London in 1923 was Indian artist and philosopher Mukul Dey, who used dry-point etching technique to capture her in this work later publicly exhibited in London in 1927
Harlem Renaissance Party shows a beautiful quilt by African American artist Faith Ringgold, which depicts Florence in company with other notable figures of the Harlem Renaissance.