Gottlieb Graupner: The First White Banjo Performer?

The banjo-- America's quintessential folk instrument-- can trace its origins to the gourd-bodied, fretless plucked lutes first created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean back in the 17th century. It was originally a principal folk instrument of the New World's African Diaspora, exclusive to black vernacular musicians. It's not until the 1830s that we begin to see reports in the historical record of European American stage and circus performers adopting the African American banjo and performing with it, typically in "blackface" makeup.

Yet, as you cruise down "The Information Highway" you're very likely to come across sites claiming that the first known European American banjo performer-- as well as the progenitor of blackface minstrelsy-- was, in fact, an immigrant German classical oboist by the name of Gottlieb Graupner at the end of the 18th century. This story places Graupner on the stage of Boston's prestigious Federal Street Theatre, playing the banjo in blackface on December 30, 1799.

But did this really happen?

Well, as I put on my deerstalker cap and get out my meerschaum pipe, let's first take a look at just who Gottlieb Graupner was.

Here's what the renowned musicologist Gilbert Chase (1906-1996) had to say about the guy in his seminal work America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present (McGraw Hill Book Company, NYC. Revised second edition, 1955 / 1966):

During his sojourn in Boston, [Italian composer Filippo] Traetta joined forces with the French musician Francois Mallet (1750-1834) and the German musician Gottlieb Graupner (1767-1836) in founding a musical academy (1801), which at first was very successful. The triple partnership soon broke up, however, and Traetta departed for Charleston, leaving Graupner to carry on the enterprise. This he did with remarkable success, especially in the music-printing branch of the business, which he established in 1802. For the next twenty years or more, Graupner was to be the leading music publisher in Boston, as well as the most successful teacher.

Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner was the son of a professional oboist in Hanover, Germany, where he was born. Trained as an oboist, he went to England, where he played in the orchestra conducted by Josef Haydn. In 1795 he emigrated to America, establishing himself in Charleston, South Carolina. There he married the English singer Catherine Comerford Hillier (or Hellyer), who was enjoying a very successful career in America. After touring together for a while, they settled in Boston in 1797 and quickly became the musical luminaries of that city, in the theater and concert hall. In 1810 the Boston Gazette informed its readers the Mrs. Graupner's benefits were 'annually attended by the most brilliant and respectable circles of the community.' That was the year in which Graupner and some associates founded the Philharmonic Society, which continued its activities until 1824. He was also one of the founders, in 1815, of the famous Handel and Haydn Society. His Rudiments of the art of playing on the piano forte.... appeared in 1806 and was reissued in 1819, 1825, and 1827. We can agree with [H. Earle Johnson] the historian of music in Boston who wrote that, 'For twenty-five years, or the first quarter of the century, Graupner remained the unquestioned leader of all musical forces, and the most esteemed musical scholar of the town."

I would just like to add that Herr G. was dubbed the "Father of American Orchestral Music" by the eminent musicologist/ historian Louis C. Elson (1848-1920).

Now let's look at the tale of Herr Graupner's alleged banjo performance.

To begin with, here's Frederic V. Grunfeld's popular retelling of it in The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of Guitars and Guitarists (Da Capo Press. NYC, 1974. Originally published by Macmillan Publishing Co., 1969):

The history of a specifically American music begins precisely at the
point where the European trained musician first becomes aware of the African trained musician and makes an attempt to imitate him. A typical case in point is that of the German oboist and bass player Gottlieb Graupner, who ran a music store in Boston during the 1790s, and is generally credited with having written the first 'minstrel' song. During a visit to Charleston, South Carolina, where he had been engaged to play
an oboe concerto, Graupner happened to overhear a group of blacks singing to a banjo. Fascinated by the sound, he bought a banjo from them, learned--to their delight--how to play it, and jotted down some of their songs. After returning to Boston, he composed a vocal and banjo number, The Gay Negro Boy which was inserted in a play called Oroonoko produced at the Federal Street Theater in December, 1799.

The source of Grunfeld's Graupner story may have been A.P. Sharpe, the editor and publisher of the venerable British magazine BMG (Banjo, Mandolin & Guitar) from 1938 until his death 30 years later. Lew Stern-- an American banjologist specializing in the history of the banjo in Britain and currently doing research on Sharpe-- generously provides us with the following rather florid account of how Herr G. came to the banjo from Sharpe's unpublished manuscript The Banjo Story:

[Preface: According to A.P., Graupner first settled in Boston after residing in Prince Edward Island "for some time" upon his emigration from England around 1791. Sharpe has him in Charleston, South Carolina for a brief engagement after he already settled in Boston. Graupner's supposed trip to Charleston is the occasion and setting for Sharpe's story below.]

The most important fact to one tracing the history of the banjo is that here [Graupner] discovered the musical inspiration to be gained from the Negro slaves who had been brought from Africa, to a land that, for many years to come, would prove to be much darker for them than their homeland. During a period when he was engaged to perform an oboe concerto between the acts of a drama which held no interest for him, Graupner left the theatre one evening, and strayed into some slave quarters nearby, from which he heard strains of an unknown (to him)instrument played as an accompaniment to Negro voices harmoniously in melody. The sound intrigued him. A musician will know what it means to hear -- suddenly and unexpectedly -- a kind of music he has never heard before. Graupner, a warm-hearted and emotional German of the old school, is said to have wept with joy when he first heard that Negro melody; not
because it was a sentimental or nostalgic air, but because, without warning, he had discovered something musical he had never heard before. After his engagement had ended, Graupner acquired a banjo and re-visited the slaves' quarters where, to their delight, he learned to play the instrument then and there. Being a trained musician, it was not difficult for him to pick up the few chords used in the rudimentary
instruments of the time. He noted down the Negroes' dialect and inflections as well as their melodies and variations. With the enthusiasm engendered by something new, no doubt, he spent some time practicing on his newly-acquired instrument and this prepared himself to present to the receptive Bostonians a self-accompanied song. This came during the performance of Thomas Southerne's [dramatizaton of Aphra Behn's novel]
'Oroonoko', subtitled 'The Royal Slave', in the Federal Street Theatre on 30th December 1799, and the song was called 'The Gay Negro Boy'.

These accounts by Grunfeld and Sharpe paint a wonderfully evocative and compelling image of a poignant cross-cultural exchange between the recent German immigrant and his enslaved African American mentors and teachers. This experience was supposedly the impetus for Graupner to share his new passion for the African American banjo with his adoring public back in Boston on December 30th, 1799.

Inspired to learn more about this momentous moment in banjo history, I searched through many different sources. To my surprise and frustration, all I could find was basically the same story repeated over and over again with no further elaboration or elucidation.

I turned to Hans Nathan's seminal work Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (University of Oklahoma Press, 1962). Nathan didn't mention Graupner or his alleged 1799 banjo performance in Boston except
for a very terse footnote to his reference to English actor/singer
Charles Dibdin's
blackface performance in Issac Bickerstaffe's and Dibdin's comic opera, The Padlock (footnote 8, page 34):

It is frequently stated that Gottlieb Graupner gave a blackface
performance in Boston in 1799, but this has been disproved by [Lillian A.] Hall, 'Some Early Black-Face Performers [and the First Minstrel Troupe', Harvard Library Notes. October, 1920], and by H. Earle Johnson, Musical Interludes in Boston (New York, 1943), 176-77.

As both Nathan and Chase referred back to H. Earle Johnson's Musical Interludes in Boston, I went to AbeBooks and bought me a copy. When it came, I excitedly ripped open the package and turned immediately to the pages 176-77 Nathan had cited.

This is what I found:

One of the most persistent legends relating to Graupner concerns the
introduction of a Negro song in blackface, alleged to have been sung by him in Boston on December 30, 1799. Unfortunately Graupner has become famous for this alleged novelty among persons who know no more about him. The fact is that Mrs. Graupner, not Mr. Graupner, sang the popular ballad 'I Sold a Guiltless Negro Boy' as this notice indicates: 'End of Act 2d. the Song of 'The Negro Boy' by Mrs. Graupner.'

Prior to the December 30th performance, the Federal Street Theatre had offered the same bill seven days earlier. On December 21, 1799 Benjamin Russell's Columbian Centinel, published a notice for what would be the play Oroonoko's first performance in Boston on December 23. This notice is nearly identical to the one Johnson cited above, from an unidentified source, for the fabled performance seven days later.

Amazingly enough, there's currently an eBay auction offering an original edition of the Columbian Centinel of December 21, 1799 in which you can clearly see the notice announcing the upcoming December 23 performance:

Federal Street Theatre

The Pantomime of GIL BLASS, never performed in Boston.

ON MONDAY Evening, Dec. 23,

will be presented

the Tragedy of OROONOKO,

Or The ROYAL SLAVE

[cast list]

End of act 2d. the Song of the Negro Boy, by Mrs Graupner.

Compare this to Johnson's citation above. The wording is practically the same. Clearly, as Johnson states, it was Mrs. Graupner who appeared on stage to sing the featured number in these performances, and not Mr. Graupner.

Mrs. Graupner was the highly acclaimed English diva Catherine Comerford Hillier (Hellyer) (1773-1821), the star singer of Boston's Federal Street Theatre company. She was Graupner's first wife and principal musical partner until her death in 1821 at the age of 48.

In a recent cyber discussion on the subject, pioneering banjo historian Bob Winans had this to say on the subject:

In the early 1980s I undertook a project that required me to go through
all extant 18th-century newspapers....These projects included gathering information about black musicians from runaway slave ads and noting down anecdotes, poems/songs, theater ads, and other ephemera on topics of interest to me, especially material having to do with images of and attitudes toward African Americans, and any thing that seemed to point in the direction of the minstrel show of the 19th century.

I perused theater ads to keep track of plays that involved black characters and entre'acte material that involved impersonations of blacks or other black-related material (songs, etc.). And as I went through newspaper from the end of the century, I was particularly interested in seeing for myself the ad that supposedly documented Mr. Graupner's historic banjo playing. I specifically did not keep in mind the specific date of the supposed ad, wanting to just stumble onto it on my own. I did run across the ad noting Mrs. Graupner's singing of "The Negro Boy," as Shlomo quotes it from Earle Johnson, but not any ad about Mr. Graupner singing and playing the banjo.

(I will specify here that Mrs. Graupner's singing of "The Negro Boy" certainly does not eliminate the possibility that Mr. Graupner did a similar thing that included his playing the banjo.)

Since the Graupner issue was not uppermost in my mind, I did not come back to consideration of it until long after I had finished my research with the newspapers. My memory told me that I had not come across an ad that would verify the Mr. Graupner/banjo story, but my memory is less than trustworthy, and the attractiveness of the idea that a white man might have played a banjo on stage that early was so strong that I went back through my notes from Boston newspapers from late 1799 and early 1800 to check it out. Nothing.

I should point out that H. Earle Johnson was something of a Graupner geek, totally into what he referred to as
"Grauperiana." A considerable amount of his 366 page classic book is devoted to the lives and musical careers of Mr. and Mrs. G. making it the only authoritative biographical source on the couple.

For much of his research, Johnson drew extensively on the only known biographical work on Herr G.-- an unpublished manuscript by his granddaughter, Catherine Graupner Stone, circa 1906-- as well as primary period sources like newspapers, theater programs and concert bills. From the considerable amount of extant documentation Johnson unearthed, it's evident that Graupner never performed as a vocalist... let alone, a vocal soloist. In every documented performance, his wife or someone else was the vocalist, with Graupner accompanying, typically on the oboe.

Likewise, there's not a single reference to Herr G. ever having played banjo or even that he had ever come in contact with the instrument.

As for Sharpe's chronology of Graupner's life, there some major errors. Whereas Sharpe has Graupner leaving England sometime in 1791, according to Johnson, Graupner "arrived in London before 1791. John Sullivan
Dwight [cited in Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (1880-81)]states that Graupner played in the orchestra directed by Josef Haydn which introduced the 'Salomon' Symphonies in 1791-1792; a very likely matter, since Haydn was at a London concert on March 2, 1791, with thirty-five or forty performers, and left in June, 1792."

He goes on to say that "Graupner's stay in England lasted no more than four or five years, and at no time did he attain sufficient permanency of address to warrant inclusion in the city directories. His employment
was for the most part with the theatrical orchestras...."

Johnson gives us clear evidence refuting Sharpe's contention that Graupner headed straight to Boston from PEI:

[John Sullivan] Dwight writes... that Graupner arrived at Prince Edward Island but found his way immediately to Charlston, South Carolina, where he speedily became a member of the City Theatre orchestra. The cultivation of music in this
charming and enlightened city was not confined to the theater but gave scope to the presentation of concerts and balls, and in one of these we find the following entry to denote a first recorded solo appearance in this country:

Concert on the Hautboy, by Mr. Graupner....

The concert was given by Messrs. Petit and Villars on March 21, 1795, for their benefit [cited in Sonneck, Early Concert Life in America, p. 33.], and was of full measure running over; Mr. Graupner was given a favorable place, as a second item in Act II.

Meanwhile, Catherine Comerford Hillier (Hellyer)-- the future Mrs. G.-- did actually land in Boston first when she came over "the pond" from her native England. According to Johnson: "Mrs. Hellyer made her American debut in Boston at the Federal Street Theatre on December 15, 1794, the opening night of the second season at that playhouse."

In the Fall of 1795, Catherine and most of the Boston company headed south to Charleston to join the City Theatre. There Catherine met and fell in love with Gottfried, who was in the City Theatre pit orchestra. Johnson says that Graupner "had made a name for himself [in the City Theatre
orchestra] as oboist and occasional conductor before the new recruits
from the north arrived, including Mrs. Hellyer."

Johnson goes on to say that "Mr. and Mrs. Graupner were married in Charleston on April 6, 1796 during the City Theatre engagement." The newlyweds left Charleston for a brief tour before eventually settling in Boston in January 1797. Apparently Graupner never returned to Charleston.

Finally, the question that presents itself is who, then, was the original source
of the Graupner Banjo Myth?

One name stands out: Charley White.

In 1889, Charles T. White (1821-1891), an old veteran "blackface" minstrel performer/promoter, sat down with writer Laurence Hutton (1843-1904) to talk about the origins of blackface minstrelsy. This interview was for an article on the subject that Hutton was doing for Harper's Magazine (he was the literary editor of Harper's from 1886 to 1898).

Leading American musicologist John Tasker Howard (1890-1964) in his most famous work, Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It (Thomas Y. Cromwell Company. New York, 1929, 1930, 1931, and 1939. Third Edition, 1946), found a contemporary reference to Hutton's fateful 1889 interview with White:

Aside from his more serious achievements it is possible that Graupner was also the originator of one of our lighter musical diversions-- the minstrel songs that were so popular in the middle and later nineteenth century. A New York newspaper in 1889 offered the following information and surmises:

The Beginning of Negro Minstrelsy-- the Banjo-Opera a Generation Ago-- In the current number of Harper's Magazine, Mr. Lawrence [sic] Hutton essays to trace the history of Negro minstrelsy in America, and succeeds in bringing together a large number of interesting facts in connection with early music and theatricals. In one respect the most surprising of these facts is one stated on the authority of Mr. Charles White, an old Ethiopian comedian, which credits a Mr. Graupner with being the father of Negro song. This Graupner is said to have sung "The Gay Negro Boy," in character, accompanying himself on the banjo, at the end of the second act of "Oroonoko," on December 30th, 1799, at the Federal Street Theatre, Boston. This was Gottlieb Graupner, a hautboist [oboist].... In Boston, he led the orchestra of the old Federal Street Theatre, kept a music shop, played the oboe, the double-bass, and nearly every other other instrument; gave lessons in music, organized the Philharmonic Society, and joined in the first call for the organization of the Handel & Haydn Society in March 1815.... Mr. Graupner's sojourn in Charleston suggests where he, a German, became acquainted with the banjo, and also offers evidence on the question mooted by Mr. Hutton, whether or not the banjo was common among the slaves of the south.

(A quick footnote: The above newspaper quotation's reference to the question of "whether or not the banjo was common among the slaves of the south" may have been an allusion to the famous contention by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)-- the author of the highly controversial Uncle Remus tales-- that the idea of the banjo being the iconic instrument of African Americans of the South was more of a product of Northern minstrelsy than Southern reality. As Harris put it in his article Plantation Music in the December 15, 1883 issue of The Critic, the native Georgian had "never seen a banjo... in the hands of a plantation Negro". Three years later, George Washington Cable (1844-1925) of New Orleans challenged Harris' assertion in his piece on African American dancing in New Orleans' Congo Square, The Dance in the Place Congo [Century Magazine, February 1886]: "The banjo is not the favorite musical instrument of the Negroes of the Southern States of America. Uncle Remus says truly that this is the fiddle; but for the true African dance... there was wanted the dark inspiration of African drums and the banjo's thrump and strum.")

Hutton further elaborated on Charley's assertion that Graupner was the original blackface minstrel banjoist in the chapter on minstrelsy in his classic history of American theater Curiosities of the American Stage (Harper & Brothers. New York, 1891):

Scattered throughout the theatrical literature of the early part of the
[19th] century are to be found many different accounts of the rise and progress of the African on stage, each author having his own particular 'Father of Negro Song'. Charles White, an old Ethiopian comedian and manager, gives the credit to Gottlieb Graupner, who appeared in Boston in 1799, basing his statement upon a copy of Russell's Boston Gazette of the 30th of December of that year, which contains an advertisement of a performance to be given on the date of publication at the Federal Street Theatre. At the end of the second act of Oroonoko, according to Mr. White, Mr. Graupner, in character, sang 'The Gay Negro Boy', accompanying the air on the banjo; and although the house was draped in mourning for General Washington, such was the enthusiasm of the audience that the performer had to bring his little bench from the wings again and again to sing his song. W.W. Clapp, Jr., in his History of the Boston Stage, says that the news of the death of Washington was received in that city on the 24th of December, and that the theatre remained 'closed for a week'; and was reopened with 'A Monody', in which 'Mrs. Barrett, in the character of the Genius of America, appeared weeping over the Tomb of her Beloved Hero'; but there is no mention, then or later, of Mr. Graupner or of 'The Gay Negro Boy'.

So who was Charley White?

The guy was a blackface minstrel performer and promoter who also led his own minstrel companies-- primarily under the name White's Serenaders-- from 1848 to 1855. He had a hit song back in 1855, Old Bob Ridley.

Hutton gives us a little more background on White:

Mr. White, according to a biographical sketch published in the New York Clipper, was born in 1821. He played the accordion-- when he was too young to held responsible for the offense-- at Thalian Hall, in Grand Street, New York, as long ago as 1843, and the next year organized what he called 'The Kitchen Minstrels' on the second floor of the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street.... Mr. White... was prominently before the public for many years as manager and performer: he was associate with the 'Virginia Serenaders', with 'The Ethiopian Operatic Brothers'(Operatic Brother Barney Williams playing the tambourine at one end of the line); with 'The Sable Sisters and Ethiopian Minstrels; with 'The
New York Minstrels', etc. He introduced 'Dan' Bryant to the public, and has done other good services in contributing to the healthful, harmless amusement of his fellow-men.

Taking all this into consideration, it's pretty apparent that Ol' Charley had either inadvertently misremembered or intentionally distorted what he had read in that "copy of Russell's Boston Gazette" dated December 30th, 1799. How else could the "s" at the end of "Mrs" somehow fall off to become "Mr."?

As for the bit about Mr. Graupner playing the banjo in blackface, this was purely an invention hatched in White's fertile imagination. As I pointed out earlier, the period newspaper notice that was supposed to be the source of Charley's claim certainly didn't make any reference to the song in question at the "end of act 2d." being performed "in character" (i.e. blackface makeup). Needless to say, there's also no mention whatsoever to a banjo performance, whether by Graupner or anyone else.

I suspect that ol' Charley came up with this little fabrication just to "fill out" his Graupner story to make it more relevant and applicable to the contemporary black face minstrel experience of his own day and age. After all, Charley was a showman and entertainer, not a historian.

And thus a myth was born....