Jules Bledsoe

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Jules Bledsoe (1898 - 1943) was a renowned baritone and the first African American artist to gain regular employment on Broadway.

After graduating from Bishop College in Texas, he studied at Virginia Union College and Columbia University. He debuted in New York's Aeolian Hall in 1924 which resulted in him obtaining management from impresario Sol Hurok.

Bledsoe performed in Frank Harling's opera Deep River in 1926 and he created the role of Joe in Jerome Kern's Show Boat in 1927, after Paul Robeson was unable to appear in it because of scheduling conflicts. (Robeson first played the role five months after the Broadway opening, in the 1928 London production.)

In Verdi's opera with the Chicago Opera Aida Bledsoe sang the role of Amonasro. In Louis Gruenberg's The Emperor Jones, he played the title character. Both aforementioned productions were at the Hippodrome. In a Holland production, he sang the title character in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Bledsoe toured the concert circuit and was a member of the Roxy Theatre's music staff as a part of Roxy's Gang. The 1935 BBC program "Songs of the Negro" was programmed by Bledsoe who then sang in Blackbirds of 1936, a London production.

Bledsoe did make a recording of Ol' Man River, which he sang in the first production of Show Boat, and it is occasionally played on the NPR musical theatre program, A Night on the Town. His rendition of the song, especially in comparison to those made famous by Paul Robeson, William Warfield, Bruce Hubbard (on the 1988 3-disc EMI album), and Michel Bell (in the Harold Prince revival of the show), is somewhat exaggeratedly melodramatic in the manner of early twentieth-century acting, and Bledsoe rolls all of his "r"'s, as a baritone might when singing his solos in an oratorio. A recently released album of vintage spiritual recordings features Bledsoe singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in that same exaggerately melodramatic style,[1] which demonstrates that it was not unique to his performance of Ol' Man River.

Bledsoe was also actually filmed singing Ol' Man River - his rendition of it was included in the sound prologue to the otherwise part-talkie 1929 film version of Show Boat.

[edit] References

• The Music of Black Americans: A History. Eileen Southern. W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition. ISBN 0-393-97141-4