Jules Bledsoe

Jules Bledsoe (1897-1943)

Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe (December 29, 1897 – July 14, 1943) was an American baritone, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the first major Black opera singer in the United States, and one of the first Black artists to gain regular employment on Broadway.

Early life and education

Jules Bledsoe was born Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe to Henry L. and Jessie Cobb Bledsoe in Waco, Texas in 1898. When Bledsoe's parents split in 1899, Julius went with his mother to live with the Cobb family. During his youth Bledsoe attended Central Texas Academy from 1905 to 1914. After graduating as valedictorian he studied at Bishop College where he earned his B.A. in 1918. He then attended Virginia Union College from 1918 to 1919, where he was a member of ROTC, and finally Columbia University, where he studied medicine from 1920 to 1924. Throughout his time in school, he studied music under Claude Warford, Luigi Parisotti, and Lazar Samoiloff.

Career

Debut Recital Program, Aeolian Hall, New York City, April 20, 1924.

Opportunities for Black singers–especially Black male singers–were nearly non-existent on the concert or operatic stage in the early 1920s. Most of the few who found any success did so by traveling to Europe to establish a professional career. Bledsoe was an exception. He was able to sign with 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 April 20, 1924. Over the course of his career he traveled throughout the United States and Europe performing, acting, and writing. In 1927, when he was hired for the musical Show Boat, he announced that he changed his first name from "Julius" to "Jules."

In New York City, Bledsoe lived on Sugar Hill in Harlem. His addresses included:

• The Colonial Parkway Apartments at 409 Edgecombe Avenue
• 880 St. Nicholas Avenue
• The Garrison Apartments, 435 Convent Avenue, where in 1929 he was one of this cooperative apartment building's original shareholders and Board members

Opera and music

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. In 1926 Bledsoe appeared as Tizan in W. Franke Harling and Laurence Stallings's Deep River, a voodoo-themed opera set in New Orleans in 1835. A critic from the New York Morning Telegraph praised Bledsoe as the Deep River star who could “pick the heart right out of anybody.” In 1927, Bledsoe shared the stage with Rose McClendon, Abbie Mitchell, and Frank Wilson in Paul Green’s In Abraham’s Bosom, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1927.

Bledsoe was the first to perform the role of Joe in Florenz Ziegfeld's 1927 production of Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (based on the 1926 novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber). It became Bledsoe's best known role, and his interpretation of "Ol' Man River" made the song a popular American classic. He recreated the role in the part-talkie 1929 film Show Boat. Bledsoe's only recording of "Ol' Man River" is occasionally played on the NPR musical theatre program, A Night on the Town. His rendition of the song, in comparison to those made famous 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. Bledsoe rolls all of his Rs, as a baritone might when singing solos in an oratorio. A recently released album of vintage spiritual recordings features Bledsoe singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in that same style, which demonstrates that it was not unique to his performance of "Ol' Man River." Bledsoe was also filmed singing "Ol' Man River" in the sound prologue to the 1929 film Show Boat.

Jules Bledsoe as Amonasro in Verdi's Aida. Paris, 1937.

In 1932, Bledsoe appeared with the Cleveland Stadium Opera Company in its production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida. He was called up with only 24 hour's notice to replace Mostyn Thomas in the role of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro. It was a performance that crossed the color line for first time in American opera. In 1933, Bledsoe also sang the role of Amonasro with Alfredo Salmaggi's Chicago Opera Company at the New York Hippodrome and with the Royal Dutch-Italian Opera Company in Amsterdam. He reprised the role in 1934 with the Cosmopolitan Opera Association, also at the New York Hippodrome.

Opera The Emperor Jones, 1934. Poster by Willy Sluiter

In 1930, Bledsoe attempted to create an original musical setting of Eugene O'Neill's play, The Emperor Jones, but he lacked O'Neill's permission, which was already secured by composer Louis Gruenberg. When Gruenberg's opera The Emperor Jones premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1933, the legendary baritone Lawrence Tibbett sang the title role, Brutus Jones, in blackface. Barred from singing at the Met because of his race, Bledsoe took his own portrayal of Brutus Jones on the road, performing it in a triumphant European tour—in Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, Brussels, and London—and back in New York in 1934 under the aegis of the short-lived Aeolian Opera Company, which aimed to provide performing opportunities for Black opera singers but folded almost immediately. Bledsoe also performed the title character in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Bledsoe was also a composer. For voice, violin, and orchestra, he composed a set of four songs called African Suite, which he performed with the BBC Symphony in 1936 and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam in 1937. He also wrote several other songs, including "Does I Love You," "Grandmother's Melodies," "Beside a New-Made Grave," "The Farewell," "Good Old British Blue," and "Ode to America." He set Countee Cullen’s poem “Pagan Prayer” to music and performed it to widespread acclaim. In 1939 he wrote a full opera called Bondage, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Most of his composing was done on his farm in the Catskill Mountains, outside Roxbury, New York, which he had purchased in 1929 and named "Jessie's Manna Farm" in honor of his mother.

Film

Between 1929 and 1930, Bledsoe appeared in three musical film Shorts: Old Man Trouble, On the Levee, and Dear Old Southland. He spent 1940 and 1941 working in Hollywood, and played the part of Kalu in Drums of the Congo. He is believed to have acted in Safari, Western Union and Santa Fe Trail, although his name did not appear in the credits.

Personal life

Jules Bledsoe (right) with his life-partner Freddy Huygens

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. Bledsoe’s manager, Freddy Huygens, a well-to-do Dutch businessman, was also his lover and life-partner. They had met in 1931. 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. The one given by Mr. F. Huygens, who is Dutch, young, very rich and has a lovely house in Lowndes-square, was one of the most successful. 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.

In March 1940, Bledsoe and Huygens moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, California so that Bledsoe could pursue the next phase of his career in film. Their shared home is described in Charles P. Rhambo’s self-published biography of Bledsoe. According to the 1940 Census, the house was at 6930 Camrose Drive in Hollywood, rented by Adrian F. Huygens, age 40, of the Netherlands. Mr. Bledsoe is not listed.

When Bledsoe died in July 1943, his aunt Naomi Cobb had his body brought to Waco, Texas for the funeral and burial. A spray of red roses from Huygens covered the casket. Heartbroken, Huygens decided to leave the Hollywood house he shared with Bledsoe; he wrote to Naomi Cobb, “I cannot bear being in this house any longer, where every object speaks of him, and where I would suffocate.”

Legacy and death

Bledsoe died in Hollywood, California, on July 14, 1943 following a cerebral hemorrhage. At his funeral at New Hope Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, he was eulogized by J. J. Rhoades, the President of Bishop College, and A. J. Armstrong, the President of Baylor University. Bledsoe is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, a city-owned cemetery in Waco, Texas. His papers, including sheet music, photographs, and correspondence, are housed in The Texas Collection at Baylor University. The Jules Bledsoe papers, 1931-1939 are held in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is one of the research centers of the New York Public Library. These papers consist of correspondence, contracts, musical compositions, legal documents, financial records, programs, broadsides, and news clippings documenting Bledsoe's professional career, particularly in Europe. The Bledsoe-Miller Community Center, a recreation facility in Waco, is jointly named for Bledsoe and Doris Miller.

Partial filmography

• Drums of the Congo (1942)

References

• Eileen Southern (ed.), The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd edition, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97141-4

External links

• Jules Bledsoe at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jules Bledsoe at IMDb
• Jules Bledsoe photo in The Texas Collection on Flickr
• Jules Bledsoe at Find a Grave