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In 1893, Williams teamed up with George Walker, and began what would become the best black comedy act on Broadway. They made the Cakewalk an internationally famous dance. Though the titles and plots make us wince today, Williams and Walker were pioneers in artistic and racial advancement. A large part of their vision involved reclaiming black entertainment from its white imitators. Minstrel shows were very popular at the time, involving white actors who painted their faces black, and billed themselves as "coons." Williams and Walker believed this art form "belonged to us by the laws of nature," and so they created an act to be called Two Real Coons. They helped young talent to develop onstage, the place where the "character of the African race can be studied from a real artistic point of view." [2] This meant staging plays such as In Dahomey, with a nostalgic trip "home" to Africa.
Walker, alas, became seriously ill with a disease then known as "paresis," which gradually paralyzed him until he was no longer able to perform with Williams, who reluctantly branched out on his own. Known as the "personification of comic woe," Williams sang the blues before Ma Rainey. He loved to mock ridiculous pastors and their preaching, as well as the black church community, though underneath he had a deep affection for both. Jelly Roll Morton celebrated him, as did Perry Como and Ben Vereen. He was the supreme example of "signifying," in the long and still vital tradition traced by Henry Louis Gates, speaking a double language: to white people, he delivered the required stereotype and got lots of laughter; to blacks, he made coded in-jokes which signified, "We shall overcome someday." [3]
Another one of Bert Williams' admirers was Duke Ellington, who liked to perform arrangements of some of the "Elder Eatmore" sermons. This most urbane trickster found many ways to become clandestinely creative. In a famous example from the history of early jazz, it is known that Ellington accepted the otherwise humiliating genre of "jungle music" during his stint at the Cotton Club (1927-31) while he simultaneously developed his extraordinary artistic skills in the jazz medium, using the club as a sort of laboratory for musical experimentation. He too was signifying.
One of the defining trickster characters to emerge early in the African American experience was the so-called "bad nigger." On the surface, he was a threat to the surrounding legitimate society, because he was free to defy his oppressors with unruly behavior. Yet, as John Roberts argues in Trickster to Badman, the "bad nigger" is not a bad person in any traditional sense. His goal is neither destructive nor deviant. He is a hero because he is able to challenge the solidarity required for white dominance to succeed. He finds a wedge to pry open the paternalism of his oppressors. [4]
By the 1890s, at the height of the Reconstruction era, the "badman" was a fixture in black popular culture. He could trick the sheriff and outwit the judge. He could manipulate his adjudicators and defy their laws. Singers and storytellers attributed near supernatural powers to this trickster, making him into a conjuror of freedom. One of the most emulated of such heroes was Railroad Bill, a character who seduced another man's wife. Minstrels who sang about him would often personalize the story, having Railroad Bill trying to steal away their own woman. Will Bennett sang a blues about Bill seducing his wife, justifying Bennett's declared promise to go on a rampage of revenge against everyone that ever betrayed him. Here, the singer out-tricks the trickster.
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