Original Nashville Students
[2] As “the Original Tennessee Jubilee and Plantation Singers,” they toured small towns on the western lecture circuit, led by the World Lyceum Bureau and its proprietors H. T. Wilson and Harry B. Thearle.
This appreciation for music and black folk culture seems to have made an impression on his son: as a lyceum agent, one of the first groups he hired was an ensemble of jubilee singers.
Beginning as early as 1884, the Original Nashville Singers performed under the agency of the prestigious Redpath Lyceum Bureau, with Thearle remaining as their proprietor.
The following is an excerpt from that season's program, as reported by Sandra Jean Graham in her book “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry”: "Note.-The “NASHVILLE STUDENTS” claim to possess cultivated voices and to be competent to sing what is commonly termed classical music; but it is not their mission, and they leave that field to the white concert companies.
B. McPherson"[5] This concert program complicates their claim to be singing the “original Jubilee and Plantation Melodies,” since “Listen to Dem Ding Dong Bells” is a novelty song by Jacob J. Sawyer, who was their music director in at least 1884 and 1885, and both “Every Day Will Be Sunday, bye and bye” and “O, I’ll Meet You Dar” are commercial spirituals composed by Sam Lucas, an African American songwriter who had close ties with the Original Nashville Singers.
[6] While for the most part performing traditional music, the inclusion of a plantation sketch draws a connection to exploitative minstrel shows, which contradicts the true-to-tradition nature of the ensemble in both name (their allusion to the Fisk Jubilee Singers) and repertoire choice.
On July 20, 1895, the New York Clipper reported: “Notes from the Mahara Minstrels,” “The latest addition to the company is the original Nashville Students, eight in number.
A portable stage will be erected each day in the most prominent street of the cities that they visit, and a performance of pleasing plantation and old time melodies will be rendered.”[9] In a companion website to her book “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry,” Sandra Jean Graham lists the complete personnel of the Original Nashville Students, as she does for over one hundred other jubilee troupes.
It reads as follows: “Personnel in 1885–1886: Helen Sawyer Moon (who sang with the Boston Ideals) and Cornelia Franklin Hawkins, soprano; Fannie Chinn (later a member of Glazier's Jubilee Singers) and Nellie Scott, alto; W. J.
Personnel in 1890, according to the Cleveland Gazette: Cora L. Watson, Clara Bell Carey, Mr. and Mrs. William Carter, Miss Gertie Heathcock, Joseph Hagerman (bass), and John M. Lewis (cited in Abbott and Seroff, Out of Sight, 171).
Ike Simond says the troupe "handled a great many people in its time" and recalls the following members (Old Slack's Reminiscence, 21): Cora Lee Watson, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Cary, Allie Hall, Neal Hawkins, and Ada Woods.
With a body of eighteen instrumental compositions (mazurkas, waltzes, scottisches, polkas, and marches for solo piano), twenty-four vocal songs (eleven of which were commercial spirituals), and six arrangements - published over a mere six years (1879-1885) - he was also one of his generation’s most prolific songwriters.
