The Darktown Strutters' Ball

Like many a Canadian musician of his day, black composer-lyricist Shelton Brooks left his native Amherstburg, Ontario, to pursue a career in the U.S.A. His two biggest hits were "Some of These Days," written in 1910, and "The Darktown Strutters' Ball," composed eight years later. Bother numbers became closely identified with Sophie Tucker*, whose success with the later song was so great at Reisenweber's famous New York cabaret that the room in which she sang was renamed the Sophie Tucker Room.

Before the movies and radio, most Americans had to entertain themselves or wait for the arrival in town of lecturers, circuses, or the traveling stage revues known as vaudeville. Dozens of prominent American entertainers got their starts in vaudeville -- W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Buster Keaton, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Al Jolson, and the Three Stooges, to name just a few -- and the medium demanded a steady supply of new songs. Late in the 19th century, music publishing became a big business in the United States, with many firms clustered in New York City, on a street that became known as Tin Pan Alley.

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*Tucker, Sophie , originally Sophie Abuza
(1884–1966)
Singer, born in Russia. She was born while her mother, a Russian Jew, was travelling to the USA, where she became a child performer. In New York she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies (1909), and went on to establish a successful stage career in burlesque, vaudeville, nightclubs, and the English music-hall. Her flamboyant style earned her billing as ‘the last of the red hot mamas’, and she is remembered for her theme song ‘Some One of These Days’.