Four By Herb Jeffries (With Toni Harper) – Post-War Pop – 1949 – Past Daily Nights At The Round Table

Herb Jeffries – The Bronze Buckaroo

Taking a brief break from our usual sessions tonight and jumping into something different. Four sides from Herb Jeffries tonight, two featuring a duet with Toni Harper; Peppermint Stick and You’re Too Tall – and two by Jeffries solo; Pagan Love Song and Twilight, bot recorded for Columbia records around June of 1949.

Herb Jeffries was an American actor of film and television and popular music and jazz singer-songwriter, known for his baritone voice. He starred in several low-budget “race” Western feature films aimed at black audiences,^[4] Harlem on the Prairie (1937), Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938), Rhythm Rodeo (1938), The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) and Harlem Rides the Range (1939). He also acted in several other films and television shows. During his acting career he was usually billed as Herbert Jeffrey (sometimes “Herbert Jeffries” or “Herbert Jeffries, Sensational Singing Cowboy“).

Firm evidence of Jeffries’s race and age is hard to come by, but census documents from 1920 described him as mulatto and listed his father as a black man named Howard Jeffrey. Jeffries himself, late in life, said that Howard Jeffrey was his stepfather, and his biological father was Domenico Balentino, a Sicilian who died in World War I. Jeffries once described himself in an interview as “three-eighths Negro”, claiming pride in an African-American heritage during a period when many light-skinned black performers were attempting “to pass” as all-white in an effort to broaden their commercial appeal. In marked contrast, Jeffries used make-up to darken his skin in order to pursue a career in jazz and to be seen as employable by the leading all-black musical ensembles of the day.

Raised in Detroit, Jeffries grew up “a ghetto baby” in a mixed neighborhood without encountering severe racism as a child. In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, he dropped out of high school to earn a living as a singer. He showed great interest in singing during his formative teenage years and was often found hanging out with the Howard Buntz Orchestra at various Detroit ballrooms. Intensely musical from boyhood, he began performing in a local speakeasy, where he caught the attention of Louis Armstrong, who gave the teenager a note of recommendation for Erskine Tate at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago. Knowing that Tate fronted an all-black band, Jeffries claimed to be a Creole and was offered a position as a featured singer three nights a week. Later he toured with Earl “Fatha” Hines‘s Orchestra in the Deep South.

In 1945, Jeffries had a hit on the Billboard R&B chart with “Left A Good Deal In Mobile” (No. 2), on which he was accompanied by pianist Joe Liggins and his band Honeydrippers. Then, he moved to Europe and performed there for many years, including at nightclubs he owned. He was back in America by the 1950s, recording jazz records again, including 1957 collection of ballads, Say It Isn’t So.

Toni Harper, also known as Toni Dunlap, was an American former child singer who retired from performing at the age of 29. After learning dance under Maceo Anderson, Harper was cast by the choreographer Nick Castle in Christmas Follies, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in 1945.

Harper performed at the third annual Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on September 7, 1947. Woody Herman, The Valdez Orchestra, The Blenders, T-Bone Walker, Slim Gaillard, The Honeydrippers, Sarah Vaughan and the Three Blazers also performed that same day. She came back to perform for the eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 1, 1952. Also featured that day were Roy Brown and His Mighty Men, Anna Mae Winburn and Her Sweethearts, Jerry Wallace, Louis Jordan, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Josephine Baker.

Harper recorded “Candy Store Blues” in 1946, which became a platinum record, appeared twice on Toast of the Town (later The Ed Sullivan Show) in 1949, and made her third and final appearance on the show in 1950. She left performing until the mid-1950s when she re-emerged as a Jazz singer, establishing a successful career working with Oscar Peterson and Cannonball Adderley.

This set of tracks were done for Columbia during the period between 1947 and 1949 (there’s no exact date of release but records show surrounding catalog numbers were released during the 1949 period). They, for the most part, reflected the atmosphere with Pop Music at the time.

Aside from the artists, it’s the period of popular music in America that we’re looking at here. This was during the time, right after World War 2, where popular Music in general was floundering – that it really wasn’t until the 1950s that Rock emerged and Popular music for the most part was looking for its voice. Production was elaborate and during this period when Mitch Miller was head of the Music Division for Columbia, the gimmick song was a regular staple. During Miller’s tenure, Rock was ignored almost entirely. This was also during a period of time many artists were experiencing career lulls and often chose less-that-desirable material at the insistence of the A&R Department. Case in point: Frank Sinatra pairing with the early TV sex-bomb Dagmar for the cringey tune “Mama Will Bark” gives you some idea where Pop music was living at the time.

Although these four tracks aren’t as insipid of some examples, they’re a far cry from what Jeffries and Harper was doing only a few years earlier and what Harper would do a few years later. But in this case, the tracks he recorded were intended only for the Black audience and Popular Music was highly segregated until the mid-1950s where sales figures dictated race relations. The Harper/Jeffries tracks are truly awful and cast more than a few pained expressions while listening to them. But don’t forget, this was the state of Pop Music at the time.

I recently dug up a bunch of these tracks and am finding a fascinating set of discoveries where Popular Music was at during this period and how little of it is actually investigated. I hope to be adding more as the days and months past.

Knowing where things came from and how they got there is always handy to know – especially where Pop Culture is concerned.