Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (A Dazzling and Unique Book for History Lovers, Broadway Fans, and Pop Culture Connoisseurs)

It is truly delightful to read this book. I love history and black history.

A very good history of early Black performers, songwriters, and musicians. A good companion volume to the Eubie Blake biography: Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm and Race.

With Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way, author Caseen Gaines has put together a remarkable history book, one that should appeal to all history buffs and especially to theater enthusiasts. In 1921, Broadway theater history was made with the first successful all Black musical comedy. Created by composer Eubie Blake, lyricist Nobel Sissle, and comedy team/writers Fluornoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, the show Shuffle Along featured an all-Black cast with all-Black creators. The show became a sensation with both white and Black audiences. This book chronicles the trials the men went through to first, get their show on the boards, and second, keep it running. Almost closing on the road during its tryout period because of money woes, the show came to New York City and took the city by storm. Tracing the lives of Blake and Sissle, primarily, from prior to their collaboration, through World War I, and on to the show’s Broadway success, the book also follows the aftermath. Several other productions were mounted or planned in the ensuing years, but they either failed or never d came to fruition. The duo created other shows, both separately and together, but, as the book chronicles, nothing was ever as successful as Shuffle Along. And sadly, that show is largely not remembered today. Its jokes are dated and racist—a product of their period—and thus no one has attempted to remount the show in our era. Footnotes can at least remedy the show’s lack of position in history, but sadly nothing can be done, apparently, to recreate the show itself. In 2015, director/author George C. Wolfe created a show that detailed the creation of Shuffle Along, featuring a stellar cast of Black Broadway stars portraying Blake, Sissle, Miller, Lyles, and the star of Shuffle Along, Lottie Gee. Sadly, that show did not survive past one hundred performances because the luminous Audra McDonald, playing Gee, found herself pregnant, and when she left the show, it didn’t survive with her replacement. That is sad indeed, for the newer show at least preserved many of the songs from the original, coupled with the exuberant tap dancing ensemble numbers. Footnotes is quite an achievement for Gaines, preserving a story that needed to be told.

I majored in theatre in college and I hardly knew anything that was in this book. I got out my old textbook after receiving Footnotes. That book mentioned Shuffle Along in passing on a few pages out of 800, but did not give the impression that the show was as significant as it was. Footnotes corrects the relegation of Shuffle Along to a minor event and puts the focus squarely on this show and the people who made it such a significant milestone at the time. But it does not read like a textbook. Caseen Gaines is able to make the reader invest in Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles from the startling opening lines. Lesser writers make history feel irrelevant and static, removed from the concerns of the present time. Gaines makes you really care about these people and their creation, eliminating the time barrier between then and now and making this story feel vital, present and alive while you are reading it. It should be hard to make the audience care about a show no one alive now was around to see, but Gaines does with that seeming ease. The book is extensively researched and maintains academic rigor without sacrificing easy readability and pure emotion.Gaines named the book Footnotes because the success described a hundred years ago has been relegated to such now in the world's collective memory. But this book should hopefully help render its title inaccurate. It is an inspiring story of creative humans working together to create powerful theatre which is now coming out at a time when theatre has been shut down for the longest intermission ever. It also serves as a reminder of how powerful theatre can be and why it is so important for theatre to represent and reflect all cultures. No one who works in theatre or cares about it should miss this book. I don't have a bad word to say about it. Absolutely recommended!

I just finished reading Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote The Rules of The Great White Way by Caseen Gaines.It is superb.This impressively deep dive into an all but forgotten key development in our culture comes alive in his hands. From the meticulous research to the extraordinarily careful re-creation of the moments and scenes, to the deft use of quotes from the major players and reviewers at the time, not only does Gaines show us the history of this show and these four legendary artists, he simultaneously uses the microcosm of the theater world to reflect the monstrosity of racism in America. Through it all he demonstrates rather than pontificates, showing exactly how Black lives matter and why they should never be relegated to mere footnotes.Bravo.Highly recommended.

This is the detailed, insightful and at times genuinely exciting book this subject deserves. Gainesville puts Shuffle Along and its participants in the fill context of their time -- so different from ours and in some regrettable ways so similar. The author manages to tell the story of this musical in such a way that it provides an overview into black theater's development through the 20th century -- and no less than August Wilson offers valuable insights in the final chapter. One of the best books ever written about any stage or screen musical, and a great read.

It is amazing how Caseen Gaines is able to uncover history from and around the early black musical Shuffle Along. It is a great help in understanding the past in American entertainment.