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Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe (December 29, 1897 – July 14, 1943) was an American baritone, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the first major Black opera singer in the United States, and one of the first Black artists to gain regular employment on Broadway.

Early life and education

Jules Bledsoe was born Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe in Waco, Texas in 1897 or 1898, the only child of Henry L. and Jessie Cobb Bledsoe. When his parents separated in 1899, Julius went with his mother to live with the Cobb family. After graduation, he moved to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, where he served in the Civilian Chaplain Service, worked as a secretary, and promoted musical entertainment for the YMCA. He was also a member of the ROTC at Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia. After discharge from ROTC in December 1918, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, working as a freelance musician. In 1920 he began to study medicine at Columbia University but reevaluated his goals after his mother died. He decided to pursue a career as a professional musician instead, and began voice study with Claude Warford. Later he also studied under Lazar Samoiloff, Luigi Parisotti in Rome, and Mme. Bakkers in Paris.

Career

thumb|Debut Recital Program, Aeolian Hall, New York City, April 20, 1924.

Opportunities for Black singers, especially Black male singers, were nearly non-existent on the concert or operatic stage in the early 1920s. Most of the few who found any success did so by traveling to Europe to establish a professional career. Bledsoe was an exception. He was able to sign with New York City musical agent and impresario Sol Hurok, who would manage contralto Marian Anderson a decade later. With Hurok's sponsorship, Bledsoe made his professional singing debut in New York's Aeolian Hall on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1924. Over the course of his career he traveled throughout the United States and Europe performing, acting, and writing.

  • 880 St. Nicholas Avenue
  • The Garrison Apartments, 435 Convent Avenue, where in 1929 he was one of this cooperative apartment building's original shareholders and Board members

Later in his career, he lived in East Midtown at 147 East 56th Street. In 1926 Bledsoe was a soloist at concerts in Boston under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky and also created the role of Tizan in W. Franke Harling and Laurence Stallings's Deep River, a voodoo-themed opera set in 1835 in New Orleans, produced by Arthur Hopkins at the Imperial Theatre. A critic from the New York Morning Telegraph praised Bledsoe as the Deep River star who could “pick the heart right out of anybody.” In 1927, Bledsoe shared the stage with Rose McClendon, Abbie Mitchell, and Frank Wilson in Paul Green’s In Abraham’s Bosom, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1927. Bledsoe also performed the title character in Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Bledsoe was the first to perform the role of Joe in Florenz Ziegfeld's 1927 production of Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (based on the 1926 novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber). which demonstrates that it was not unique to his performance of "Ol' Man River." Bledsoe was also filmed singing "Ol' Man River" in the sound prologue to the 1929 film Show Boat.

thumb|Jules Bledsoe as Amonasro in Verdi's Aida. Paris, 1937.

In 1932, Bledsoe appeared with the Cleveland Stadium Opera Company in its production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida. He was called up with only 24 hour's notice to replace Mostyn Thomas in the role of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro. In 1933, Bledsoe also sang the role of Amonasro with Alfredo Salmaggi's Chicago Opera Company at the New York Hippodrome and with the Royal Dutch-Italian Opera Company in Amsterdam. Literary scholar Katie N. Johnson discovered Bledsoe's operatic scenario for it (retitled L'Empereur Jones in French) concealed in an undated travel journal among his papers in The Texas Collection at Baylor University, as well as nearly 30 pages of his operatic score tucked away and not indexed in a box labeled "Sheet Music" among Bledsoe's papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. Johnson notes that "Bledsoe's version was performed, though how often or where is uncertain." In the winter of 1934, Bledsoe reprised the role with the Cosmopolitan Opera Company at the New York Hippodrome, to excellent reviews. He also wrote several other songs, including "Does I Luv You," "Poor Monah," "Grandmother's Melodies," "Beside a New-Made Grave," "The Farewell," "Good Old British Blue," and "Ode to America." In 1939 he wrote a full opera called Bondage, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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Early in his career, Bledsoe recognized his own role as a Black trailblazer in theatre and music. In 1928 in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, he published an essay titled "Has the Negro a Place in the Theatre?" His conclusion is that "It is up to the few of us that have gotten past the sentinels at the gate, to fling the gates wide open for our successors." Bledsoe believed that Black artistic talent must be proven "by the excellence of the many, rather than that of the few."

Film

Between 1929 and 1930, Bledsoe appeared in three musical film Shorts: Old Man Trouble, On the Levee, and Dear Old Southland. He spent 1940 and 1941 working in Hollywood, and played the part of Kalu in Drums of the Congo. He is believed to have acted in Safari, Western Union and Santa Fe Trail, although his name did not appear in the credits. was also his lover and life-partner. They met in 1931. They later lived at 6642 Emmet Terrace in Hollywood. The Jules Bledsoe papers, 1931–1939 are held in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is one of the research centers of the New York Public Library. These papers consist of correspondence, contracts, musical compositions, legal documents, financial records, programs, broadsides, and news clippings documenting Bledsoe's professional career, particularly in Europe. The Bledsoe-Miller Community Center, a recreation facility in Waco, is jointly named for Bledsoe and Doris Miller.

Partial filmography

  • Drums of the Congo (1942)

References

  • Eileen Southern (ed.), The Music of Black Americans: A History, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company.
  • Racing the Great White Way: Black Performance, Eugene O’Neill, and the Transformation of Broadway (2023) by Katie N. Johnson
  • Jules Bledsoe at the Internet Broadway Database
  • Jules Bledsoe photo in The Texas Collection on Flickr