James Bland
James Allen Bland was a notable African American musician and songwriter born in Flushing, New York, who became a prominent figure in the minstrel show circuit during the late 19th century. After moving to Washington, D.C., he developed his musical talents largely through self-instruction and performances in local venues. Bland initially pursued a law degree at Howard University but left to join various minstrel troupes, including the Georgia Minstrels, which was one of the first all-black minstrel companies. His performances, characterized by the use of blackface, aimed to provide authentic representations of African American culture, drawing large audiences.
Bland achieved considerable success in Europe, particularly in England, where he performed for notable figures such as Queen Victoria. He composed numerous songs, with four of his works, including "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" and "Oh Dem Golden Slippers," gaining enduring recognition. Despite his earlier success, Bland faced financial decline later in life, struggling as minstrel shows gave way to vaudeville. He passed away in 1911, leaving behind a complex legacy encapsulating both his artistic contributions and the challenges faced by African American performers of his time. His final resting place was marked decades later with a headstone acknowledging his prolific songwriting career.
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Subject Terms
James Bland
Musician and entertainer
- Born: October 22, 1854
- Birthplace: Flushing, Long Island, New York
- Died: May 5, 1911
- Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A noted composer and minstrel, Bland was inspired by spirituals and work songs to create his own, distinctive musical style. The minstrel show, which also influenced other important composers, played an important role not only in Bland’s career as an entertainer, but also as an influence upon his musical compositions.
Early Life
James Allen Bland was born in Flushing on New York’s Long Island to Allen M. Bland and Lidia (Cromwell) Bland. He was one of eight siblings. Little information is available regarding Bland’s early life.
Bland’s father was educated at Oberlin College in Ohio. In the first decade of Bland’s life, the family moved from Flushing to Philadelphia and then to Washington, D.C., when his father became the first African American to be appointed a United States patent examiner. It appears that Bland’s early musical education came largely from self-instruction and what he could pick up listening to street musicians perform. He received an eight-dollar banjo as a gift and learned to play it well enough to entertain guests at the local hotels and establishments, earning a professional income by the time he was fourteen.
Bland also might have worked briefly as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives, which would have afforded him access to many notable homes and gatherings in which he could have performed as an entertainer. He attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., to study law, but switched to liberal arts. Historians disagree over whether he earned a degree.
Life’s Work
Bland’s ambition was to perform onstage, and he left college to perform with minstrel troupes such as the Original Black Diamonds and the Bohee Minstrels before becoming a member of the celebrated Georgia Minstrels, with whom he toured the United States. The Georgia Minstrels were important as an all-black minstrel troupe that followed the successful model of all-white troupes such as the Virginia Minstrels. Like the white performers, Bland and his colleagues used burnt cork to blacken their faces, then caricatured the ways of post-Civil War African Americans. The performers stated that because they were African Americans themselves, they gave more authentic renditions of and insights into black culture than the white imitators could, and they drew large audiences from this claim. Later, the troupe was taken over by Jack Haverly and renamed Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels. Bland and the troupe toured England, opening at Her Majesty’s Theater in London on July 30, 1881.
When Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels returned to America in 1882, Bland remained in London. He spent the majority of his professional years in Europe, residing principally in England, where he performed for Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales and toured Germany and Scotland, possibly earning as much as ten thousand dollars annually. British and German audiences found the comedy of his minstrel show highly entertaining, and Bland performed many solo shows—which he was said to prefer to ensemble routines—to sell-out crowds. German reviewers of the time placed Bland among the three most influential and important American musicians, along with John Philip Sousa and Stephen Foster.
Bland returned to the United States in either 1890 or 1901, according to various reports. During the early twentieth century, he was paid $250 for a musical he composed titled The Sporting Girl that never achieved success. Ultimately, at the time of his death in 1911 from tuberculosis, Bland was destitute.
Contributing to Bland’s steep financial decline was the fact that, by 1900, minstrel shows had been almost completely supplanted by vaudeville, which featured different (and generally less racist) types of variety acts. Additionally, Bland apparently let his professional contacts and friendships lapse, leaving him unable to build a new performing career upon his return to the United States.
Bland was buried in an unmarked grave outside Philadelphia in the suburb of Merion. In 1939, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) initiated an effort to locate his grave. Bland’s sister helped with this effort. After his burial site was identified, a commemorative headstone was placed there. The headstone maintains that Bland composed more than seven hundred songs. This number is also disputed; the Library of Congress attributes fifty-three songs to Bland but holds in its archives only thirty-eight of them.
Significance
Bland was a popular and successful performer in the United States and Europe. His significance lies almost entirely with four of his many songs: “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” (1878), “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” (1879)—which was chosen as the theme song for Philadelphia’s annual New Years Day Mummers parade in 1903 and adapted during the 1970’s as an advertising jingle for Golden Grahams cereal (“Oh Those Golden Grahams”)—De Golden Wedding (1880), and In the Evening by the Moonlight (1880). His minstrel act and its music took inspiration from the African American work songs and spirituals to which Bland was exposed in his youth.
Bibliography
Ewen, David. Great Men of American Popular Song. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Includes a chapter on Bland that describes the style of his music and how it was received.
Haskins, Jim, et al. “James Bland.” In Black Stars of Civil War Times. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2003. Accessible biography aimed at younger readers. Includes a useful sidebar describing minstrelsy.
Miller, Kelly. “The Negro ’Stephen Foster.’” Etude (July, 1939): 431-432, 472. This first published biographical sketch of Bland compares him to the famous composer Stephen Foster.
Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Contains a brief, laudatory chapter on Bland and his contributions to American music and culture.
Studwell, William E., and Bruce R. Schueneman. State Songs of the United States: An Annotated Anthology. New York: Haworth Press, 1997. A useful resource because it includes the Virginia state song’s text and also the music.