Blackface Minstrelsy 161entertainment featuring songs, dancing, and skits soon
set the standard for what would become the fully realized
minstrel show.
Th e variety of performance proved instantly popular
with audiences. Previously, blackface shows had involved
one man off ering dances and songs, perhaps with an ad-
ditional player providing music on the banjo or fi ddle. But
the Virginia Minstrels off ered an evening of three-fold en-
tertainment. For the fi rst part of the show, the entire troupe
sat in chairs arranged on the stage in a semicircle to play,
sing, joke, and interact with each other and the audience. In
addition to serving as part of the ensemble, each member
of the troupe played a particular role. Th e “interlocutor,”
sitting at the center of the troupe, played banjo or fi ddle
and served as the comically pompous master of ceremo-
nies and straight man to the more impish members of the
team. Although he acted as the butt of many of the jokes,
the actor who played the part actually served the central
function of reading the reactions and energy of each au-
dience so that he could best set up the largely improvised
jokes and set the pacing of the show. To his side sat the bal-
ladeer—generally the most skilled musician of the troupe,
who commonly sang lead and amazed the audience with
his banjo virtuosity. In the outside chairs sat the end men
(commonly named “Tambo” and “Bones”), who played
percussion and served as the main jokesters of the troupe.
Turning jokes and riddles against the interlocutor and each
other, as well as improvising exchanges with the audience,
these two players mugged and contorted to the music to
assure that the performance generated a particularly high
grade of frenetic energy.
Th e second part of the show (known as “the olio”)
consisted of variety acts, including acrobatics, individual
song and dance routines, novelty acts (commonly featuring
magicians, circus players, and drag queens), instrumental
solos, and—the most central feature—the stump speech.
Always a crowd favorite, the stump speech presented the
interlocutor in the comic guise of a preacher, lawyer, mock
politician, or quack doctor who in attempting to sound
learned would off er a sermon, speech, or lecture riddled
with malapropisms and inaccuracies.
Th e third and fi nal part of the show off ered a one-
act skit, generally set on a Southern plantation. Here the
troupe might off er a parody of a popular play, historical
event, or opera. Oft en featuring elaborate sets, props, and
costumes, the fi nal act gave each member of the troupe theindividual pages of minstrel song lyrics that were sold on
the streets for pennies per page) and later in sheet music
(rough transcriptions of minstrel songs arranged for those
able to play the tunes on the piano in their homes). It was
in the form of sheet music, removed from the antics of the
minstrel hall, that many Americans learned what to make
of the images and messages of the blackface tradition.
Within a few years, blackface minstrelsy began to suf-
fer from its initial notoriety and from its increasingly bawdy
reputation. Th e narrowing of the audience for live perfor-
mances and the increasing availability of minstrel sheet
music weakened a medium that only a few years earlier had
been a vibrant force. But it was the waning of the popular-
ity of one-man minstrel shows that inspired the next shift
in the evolution of minstrel performance. In the winter of
1842, a season where a weakened economy was having an
ill eff ect on ticket sales, four individual performers decided
to pool their resources and perform as a group. It was in
this way that Dan Emmett, Billy Whitlock, Dick Pelham,
and Frank Brower formed the Virginia Minstrels, the fi rst
minstrel troupe. Th eir idea for off ering a full evening’s
Music cover illustrated with caricatures of six minstrels in two
scenes, 1 830– 1 860. (Library of Congress)