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What makes Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, and Slappy White black comedians? Why do black musicians from Louis Armstrong to Dizzy Gillespie to NWA combine antics and clowning with their serious artistry? How is it that O. J. Simpson and Tupac Shakur, and to a lesser extent Michael Jackson, draw at least as much sympathy from the black community as John Henry and Joe Louis? Why are rap music and the hip-hop lifestyle so prominent in popular culture today?
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One of the most important figures in the black folk tradition is the trickster. Such figures appear in many cultures around the world, of course—think of the Norse Loki and the Native American Coyote, for example—and the black trickster may owe something to specifically African traditions, but in the context of North American slavery he developed a life of his own, a special prominence. His character exhibited a dialectic, combining apparent opposites. He could sing both sacred and profane music, gospel and blues, sometimes combining them in ways that defied convention. His ethic was somehow good but also bad, combining the hero and the villain.
At one level the trickster was (and is) simply a survivor. Belonging to an oppressed group in America, where can one find recognition? Among other places, in the entertainment world. It's a place for a double life. African Americans were considered exotic, comical, different. So they often learned how to please the crowd with exaggerated frolics and expected caricatures. Under the surface, though, many of them developed a level of freedom—freedom simply to exist, and freedom for artistic development.
The greatest of the early 20th century black comedians was Bert Williams. Born in Nassau, in 1874, Egbert Austin Williams spent most of his life on the stage. He could sing, he could dance, and he was a marvelous banjo-player. In addition, he told stories. One of his best known tales was "You Can't Do Nothing Till Martin Gets Here," a wild story of a black preacher in a haunted house full of cats. The way he told it, however, had less to do with the stand-up comedian than with the raconteur of ghost stories. He longed to be taken seriously, and he constructed his narratives with extraordinary imagery and timing. Perhaps his most famous song was "Nobody," written with his friend Alex Rogers and published in 1905. For the rest of his life, Williams was not allowed to leave the stage without performing it. The song was a story, which he spoke, and the timing was excruciating. Try as he might to catch up with a slide trombone, he couldn't, and the delay was tragic. Although the band behind him played in a slow ragtime style, the song was mournful:
When life seems full of clouds and rain,
And I am full of nothin' and pain,
Who soothes my thumpin', bumpin' brain?
Nobody.
When winter comes with snow and sleet,
And me with hunger and cold feet,
Who says, "Here's twenty-five cents, go
get somethin' to eat?"
 Nobody.
It is almost impossible to imagine the poignancy of this song without hearing it live. Fortunately, we can do this, or almost, thanks to the extraordinary perseverance of Archeophone Records, in St. Joseph, Illinois, who have found and republished Williams' very rare Victor Monarch recordings, beginning in 1901 and ending with his final releases in 1922, the year of his death at the age of forty-six. [1]
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