Jules Bledsoe
[8] His grandfather, Stephen Cobb, in 1866 was the founding pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, the first organized religious congregation for freed slaves in Waco.
)[9] After graduation, he moved to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, where he served in the Civilian Chaplain Service, worked as a secretary, and promoted musical entertainment for the YMCA.
He was able to sign with New York City musical agent and impresario Sol Hurok, who would manage contralto Marian Anderson a decade later.
With Hurok's sponsorship, Bledsoe made his professional singing debut in New York's Aeolian Hall on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1924.
[20] Bledsoe performed in many major operas and was in high demand due to his impressive vocal range and his ability to speak and sing in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, and Dutch.
[7][21] In 1926 Bledsoe was a soloist at concerts in Boston under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky and also created the role of Tizan in W. Franke Harling and Laurence Stallings's Deep River, a voodoo-themed opera set in 1835 in New Orleans, produced by Arthur Hopkins at the Imperial Theatre.
Bledsoe's only recording of "Ol' Man River" is today occasionally played on the NPR musical theatre program, A Night on the Town.
His rendition of the song, in comparison to those by Paul Robeson, William Warfield (in the 1951 film version), Bruce Hubbard (on the 1988 three-disc EMI album), and Michel Bell (in the Harold Prince revival of the show), is somewhat melodramatic in the manner of early twentieth-century acting.
A 2007 compact disc of vintage American Negro Spirituals includes Bledsoe singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in that same style,[30] which demonstrates that it was not unique to his performance of "Ol' Man River."
[8] In 1930, Bledsoe created an original, more Afro-centric operatic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, The Emperor Jones, from which he excised the word "nigger."
[33][34][35] Literary scholar Katie N. Johnson discovered Bledsoe's operatic scenario for it (retitled L'Empereur Jones in French) concealed in an undated travel journal among his papers in The Texas Collection at Baylor University, as well as nearly 30 pages of his operatic score tucked away and not indexed in a box labeled "Sheet Music" among Bledsoe's papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.
"[33] In 1934, Gruenberg's adaptation of The Emperor Jones toured abroad, in England and the Netherlands, with Bledsoe starring in the title role.
[8] He also wrote several other songs, including "Does I Luv You," "Poor Monah," "Grandmother's Melodies," "Beside a New-Made Grave," "The Farewell," "Good Old British Blue," and "Ode to America.
[38] In 1939 he wrote a full opera called Bondage, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Jules Bledsoe was gay, but during his lifetime his personal life and sexual orientation were not directly acknowledged or discussed in the newspapers and other media.
[33] Huygens was living in London, and a reporter for the Daily Sketch wrote on July 27, 1931:Bachelor hosts, I have noticed, often give the best parties.
There was such a crowd that the late comers sat on the stairs to listen to Jules Bledsoe, the negro singer and creator of “Ole [sic] Man River’ in the American production of Show Boat.
[9] When Bledsoe died in July 1943, his aunt Naomi Cobb had his body brought to Waco, Texas for the funeral and burial.
