Irving Sayles

He spent much of his life in Australia as a popular minstrel show performer, touring the Tivoli circuit.

He performed coon songs and employed a self-deprecating humor involving comic interpretations of plantation slavery that reinforced negative racial stereotypes.

Following a leg in Tasmania, Hicks wrote in 1890 that Sayles was the hit of their trip, saying that "[h]is song, 'Father of a Little Black Coon,' gets three and four encores nightly.

"[4] After the minstrel group broke up in 1890, Sayles went to Melbourne, where he worked for Frank Clark.

[6] He made a long run as the cornerman "Tambo" and appeared on the cover of Theatre magazine in 1911.