Nobody (1905 song)

The show, which included live camels, premièred at the Majestic Theater and continued the string of hits for the vaudeville team of Williams and Walker.

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 Records' sales catalogue into the 1930s, and musicologist Tim Brooks estimates that it sold between 100,000 and 150,000 copies, a phenomenally high amount for the era.

The show Abyssinia was a smash hit, intertwining the depths and gravity of the historical narrative with the common stereotypes, drenched in drama and humor.

The Topeka Daily Capital wrote about the shows debut that "the complications arising are varied and many, and furnish the theme of Abyssinia, the latest and by far the best vehicle in which these clever colored comedians ever appeared.

Stemming from images, phrases and common beliefs, the stereotypes held power and weight, as they were the force and the background behind much of the daily encounters that whites had with blacks even after the end of slavery.

Changes in social structure, the polarization of rich and poor, and the growth of a salaried middle class anxious about its own opportunity — indeed, created the necessity — for the healing properties identified within high culture.

Taking on the character of a lowly, lazy, lonely black man who has lived through hardships, he plays into the stereotypes that white people created.

Dressed in blackface, as he always did performing alongside Walker, he embraced the racist caricature with the intent to walk the fine lines between humiliation, assimilation and humor.

Although the song was published in 1905, the lyrics are similar to a poem "The Bachelor's Complaint" that appeared in The American Musical Times, Volume 4, Number 6, June 1894, page 8.