Bert Williams - Sons of Ham and In Dahomey

Sons of Ham and In Dahomey

The following month, Williams & Walker had their greatest success to date with Sons of Ham, a broad farce that was perhaps most notable for its lack of the extreme "darkie" stereotypes which were then common. The pair had already begun to transition away from racial minstrel conventions to a more human style of comedy. In 1901, they recorded thirteen discs for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Some of these, like "The Phrenologist Coon," were standard blackface material, but the financial lament "When It's All Going Out and Nothing Coming In" was race-blind, and became one of Williams' best-known songs. Another Williams composition, "Good Morning Carrie", was covered by many artists, becoming one of the biggest hits of 1901. These discs existed only in pressings of fewer than 1,000, and were not heard by very many listeners. Sons of Ham ran for two years.

In September 1902, Williams & Walker debuted their next vehicle, In Dahomey, which was an even bigger hit. In 1903 the production, with music by Will Marion Cook and lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar moved to New York City, where it became the first black musical to open on Broadway. This was a landmark event, but seating inside the theater was segregated. One of the musical's songs, "I'm a Jonah Man," helped codify Williams' hard-luck persona and tales of woe. In Dahomey then traveled to London, where it was enthusiastically received. A command performance was given at Buckingham Palace in June 1903.

In February 1906, Abyssinia, with a score co-written by Williams, premiered at the Majestic Theater. The show, which included live camels, was another smash. Williams committed many of its songs to disc and cylinder. One of them, "Nobody", became his signature theme, and the song he is best remembered for today. It is a doleful and ironic composition, replete with his dry observational wit, and is perfectly complemented by Williams' intimate, half-spoken singing style.

When life seems full of clouds and rain,

And I am filled with naught but pain,

Who soothes my thumping, bumping brain?

Nobody.

When winter comes with snow and sleet,

And me with hunger and cold feet,

Who says, "Here's two bits, go and eat"?

Nobody.

I ain't never done nothin' to Nobody.

I ain't never got nothin' from Nobody, no time.

And, until I get somethin' from somebody sometime,

I don't intend to do nothin' for Nobody, no time.

Williams became so identified with the song that he was obliged to sing it in almost every appearance for the rest of his life. He considered its success both blessing and curse: "Before I got through with 'Nobody,' I could have wished that both the author of the words and the assembler of the tune had been strangled or drowned... 'Nobody' was a particularly hard song to replace." "Nobody" remained active in Columbia's sales catalogue into the 1930s, and the musicologist Tim Brooks estimates that it sold between 100,000 and 150,000 copies, a phenomenally high amount for the era.

Williams' langorous, drawling delivery was the primary selling point of several similarly-structured Williams recordings, such as "Constantly" and "I'm Neutral." Williams even recorded two compositions titled "Somebody" and "Everybody." His style was inimitable. In an era when the most popular songs were simultaneously promoted by several artists (for example, "Over There" was a top ten hit for six different acts in 1917-18), Williams' repertoire was left comparatively untouched by competing singers.

Williams & Walker were prominent success stories for the black community, and they received both extensive press coverage and frequent admonitions to properly "represent the race." Leading black newspapers mounted campaigns against demeaning stereotypes such as the word "coon." Williams & Walker were sympathetic, but also had their careers to consider, where they performed before many white audiences. The balancing act between their audience's expectations and their artistic impulses was tricky.

In his only known essay, Williams wrote:

"People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white. I answer . . . most emphatically, "No." How do I know what I might be if I were a white man? I might be a sandhog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day. I might be a streetcar conductor at $12 or $15 a week. There is many a white man less fortunate and less well-equipped than I am. In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient . . . in America."