M. Sissieretta Jones
Joyner, Matilda Sissieretta 1869(?)–1933
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner 1869(?)–1933
Singer
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Widely hailed as the possessor of one of the great singing voices of her day, Sissieretta Jones enjoyed a successful career as a concert and variety performer from the late 1880s to the World War I era. “A Phenomenal Attraction...the upper notes of her voice are clear and bell-like...and her low notes are rich and sensuous with a tropical contralto qualitya...In fact, the compass and quality of her registers surpass the usual limitations and seem to combine the height and depth of both soprano and contralto,” is how the Washington Post described Jones’ voice in an undated review reprinted in Opera News.
Jones’ career had two phases. First she was a soloist, appearing in concert halls, churches, and other venues in North America and Europe. Later, she spent two decades touring the United States as the star of an all-black variety entertainment show. It is an example of the peculiar nature of race relations in America that Jones, whose extraordinary talent was almost universally acknowledged and whose concerts and variety shows drew mostly white audiences, never appeared in opera.
Jones was born in Portsmouth, Virginia as Matilda Sissieretta Joyner. The year of her birth is usually given as 1869. According to William Lichtenwanger in Notable American Women, no record of her birth has ever been found and the ages listed on her marriage and death records indicate that she was born around 1865. Jones’ father, Jeremiah Malachi Joyner, was a former slave and had been a body servant to his master until the end of the Civil War. After gaining his freedom, he became a minister in the Afro-Methodist Church. Jones’ mother, Henrietta, a former slave as well, was an accomplished amateur singer with a fine soprano voice. She grew up as an only child, her brother having died in infancy. In 1876, Jones’ father accepted an offer to become pastor of a church in Providence, Rhode Island, and the family moved north. A minister’s salary was modest and Reverend Joyner took odd jobs to help make ends meet. Providence had a thriving black community in the 1870s and the atmosphere in the city was relatively progressive in regard to racial matters. Jones attended the Meeting Street and Thayer Street schools, both of which had integrated student bodies and teaching personnel.
As a small child, Jones exhibited a love for singing. “When I was a little girl, just a wee slip of a tad, I used to go about singing. I guess I must have been a bit of a nuisance then, for my mouth was always open,” the adult Jones recalled in an interview with the Syracuse Evening Herald, excerpts of which are included in Willia Daughtry’s doctoral dissertation about Jones. During her teenage years, Jones made her first public appearance as a singer at the Pond Street Baptist Church in Providence and studied voice at the Providence Academy of Music.
In 1883, Jones married David Richard Jones, called
At a Glance…
Born Mati Ida Sissierettajoyner on January 5, 1869 in Portsmouth, VA; daughter ofJeremiahMalachi Joyner (a minister), and HenriettaJoyner.Education: Attended Providence, Rl, public grammar schools; Providence Academy of Music, c. 1884; New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA, c. 1887, also studied with private instructors. Married David Richard Jones (a former bellman and newsagent), in 1883 (divorced in 1890s). Died on June 24, 1933 in Providence, Rl.
Career: Singer.
Richard, whom Rosalyn M. Story in And So I Sing: African-American Divas of Opera and Concert says was described in contemporary accounts as a “handsome mulatto from Baltimore.” Richard Jones had worked as a hotel bellman and as a newspaper dealer. The couple is said to have had a child who died in infancy.
Began Solo Career
Marriage does not seem to have hindered Jones’ budding professional career. She is said to have attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in the mid-1880s. Lichtenwanger says that school records do not carry her name but he speculates that she may have been a private pupil with one of the conservatory’s instructors. In 1887, Jones made her professional debut in Boston at a concert to benefit the Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, whose political career was being jeopardized by a personal scandal. Her performance at the Parnell concert, before an audience of five thousand, drew a strongly positive reaction. The following year Jones made her first New York appearance in a concert at Steinway Hall.
Later in 1888, Jones sang at Wallack’s Theater on Broadway, becoming the first African-American to appear on stage at the prestigious theater. The attention she received at this performance led to her joining a troupe of black musicians on a tour of the West Indies. The West Indian tour lasted eight months and was a triumph. In Jamaica, Haiti, and other countries, Jones was greeted by enthusiastic crowds and presented with jewel encrusted honors from local governments and admirers. Returning to the United States, she appeared with baritone Louis Brown in several East Coast cities and briefly returned to Providence for further study of voice. In the winter of 1890-1891, she made another tour of the West Indies.
Renamed the “Black Patti”
It was during her early concert years that Jones was dubbed the “Black Patti” by the New York Clipper, a theatrical newspaper. The moniker alluded to Adelina Patti, the Italian-American soprano and star of the Metropolitan Opera. Jones’ managers and promoters repeated the “Black Patti” description in advertisements and it became strongly identified with her for the remainder of her career. Although Jones adamantly disapproved of the nickname at the beginning, she then used it to her advantage in the later years. According to Daughtry, instead of finding the comparison to another artist pointless and the “black” qualification condescending, Jones used it “as a weapon-a kind of boomer-ang-which drew the predominately white audience to heran audience which expected to find a freak, a comical, awkward, unusually strange creature before it, but which found instead an artist who exhibited the same training known to the white singer of her time as well as a decorum which gave new dignity and finesse to the Negro image on the concert stage.”
In February 1892, Jones performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison and his luncheon guests in the Blue Room. Her vocal selections, typical of her concert repertoire at the time, were the popular songs “Home, Sweet Home,” “Swanee River,” and the cavatina from Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable. Enchanted by Jones’ talent, the First Lady, Caroline Harrison, presented the singer with a bouquet of White House-grown orchids. In later years, she returned to Washington to sing for Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. African-American performers at the Executive Mansion were rare but not unprecedented. According to Elise K. Kirk in Opera News, singer Marie Selika performed at the Rutherford B. Hayes White House in 1878, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers performed for President Chester Alan Arthur in 1882. However, it was not until 1901, when Booker T. Washington lunched with Theodore Roosevelt, that an African-American was invited to the White House as a sit-down guest.
Became a Sought After Star
True notoriety came to Jones in April 1892 when she was selected to be the star attraction at theGrand Negro Jubilee at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The Jubilee was a three-day extravaganza featuring hundreds of black singers and dancers, and a military band. Jones sang popular songs and opera selections, including the “Siempre libera” aria from La Traviata. She was said to have been the highlight of the show. Offers for bookings increased so dramatically after this appearance that it was hard for Jones to fully absorb what had happened. “I woke up famous after singing at the Garden, and didn’t know it, “she said in an article quoted by Story.
In June 1892, Jones signed a contract with Major J.B. Pond, a high-powered promoter and manager of entertainers and lecturers whose clients included novelist Mark Twain and clergyman Henry Ward Beecher. Pond built a program around her, featuring classical and popular music. According to Story, the program became “something of a forum for the best black talent of the day.” Among the performers who appeared with Jones were poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Joseph Douglass, a violinist and grandson of Frederick Douglass. She sometimes sang with accompaniment by black pianist Alberta Wilson, giving audiences a chance to marvel at two accomplished African-American women musicians holding forth on a concert hall stage.
In 1893, under the management of Pond, Jones earned two-thousand dollars for a one-week engagement at the Pittsburgh Exposition. It was said to be the highest salary paid to a black performer up to that time. Also in 1893, she performed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago where she was a top box-office draw.
Management problems began to plague Jones’ career beginning in 1893. The details are vague. It is possible that she found Pond’s management style exploitative and more focused on making quick money than in fostering a long-term concert career. Other troubles are said to have stemmed when Jones’ husband, Richard, booked engagements for his wife without the permission of Pond. Her marriage was troubled due to Richard Jones’ penchant for gambling and drink, and his inability to hold a job. The couple divorced sometime between 1893 and 1898.
In the mid-1890s, Jones broke with Pond and under new management participated in a charity concert at Madison Square Garden to benefit the New York Herald’s Free Clothing Fund. The concert was conducted by the renown Hungarian composer Antonin Dvorak. Dvorak, then director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, was an admirer of African-American people and culture. Strains of black folk music can be heard in Dvorak’s famous“Symphony No. 9: From the New World.” At the Free Clothing Fund benefit, Jones sang the soprano solo from Rossini’s Stabat Mater with an all black male choir singing the chorus. “Mme. Jones was an enormous success with the audience. To those who heard her for the first time she came in the light of a revelation, singing high C’s with as little apparent effort as her namesake, the white Patti,” wrote a reviewer in the New York Herald. Jones then performed in England, France, and Germany. In London, she participated in a Royal Command performance for the Prince of Wales (future King Edward VII) at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.
Began Second Phase of Career
In 1896, Black Patti’s Troubadours were formed under the auspices of New York theatrical managers Voelkel and Nolan. As the name suggests, Jones was the main attraction of this travelling show, which also offered comedians, dancers, acrobats, jugglers, and other variety entertainments. Her appearances in the Troubadours came in what were called “Operatic Kaleidoscopes,” which offered scenes from famous operas, such as La Boehme, Rigoletto, andCarmen, sung with full costumes and scenery.
Jones’ greatest dream was to sing in a full-scale opera. Many critics agreed that her voice and dramatic flair were well-suited to opera. “The thought was irresistible that she would make a superb Aida, whom her appearance, as well as her voice, suggested,” wrote a writer for thePhiladelphia Times, quoted by Story. A few offers were made in regard to opera after her initial rise to fame in the early 1890s but nothing ever materialized. Undoubtedly, Jones’ race was the reason she never appeared with prestigious opera companies, such as the Metropolitan. It was not until the 1950s that black singers appeared with major American opera companies. However, Denis Mercier points out in Notable Black American Women that all-black opera performances began to be done after the turn of the century and it is unclear why Jones never participated in any of these productions.
Black Patti’s Troubadours travelled across the United States and were popular with both white and black audiences. A writer for the Detroit Evening News, in an article quoted by Story, said that“without exception the Black Patti Troubadours company is the best colored theatrical organization that has visited this city. Every member of it seems to be a star.”
Despite its success, Jones was not entirely happy as leader of the Troubadours. She felt the company was essentially a minstrel show and not the proper showcase for her serious “Operatic Kaleidoscopes.” The appeal of Black Pattïs Troubadours reached its peak in the first decade of the twentieth century, then began to wane along with a general decline of minstrelsy. In 1916, the company gave its final performance at the Gibson Theatre in New York City.
Jones career came to an end with the demise of the Troubadours. Aside from a concert at Chicago’s Grand Theatre, she made no further professional appearances. Returning to Providence, she looked after her elderly mother, took in two boys who were wards of the state, and occasionally sang at local churches. To gain income, she sold off most of the possessions she had accumulated during her career, and in her last years received public assistance. She died of cancer on June 24, 1933, with only the generosity of friends preventing burial in the city’s“potter’s field.”
Although commercial phonographic technology was in place during most of Jones’ starring career, there are no known recordings of her voice. A record company called “Black Patti,”capitalizing on the prestige still attached to the name in some quarters, especially in the African-American community, operated briefly in Chicago in the late 1920s, recording mostly jazz, blues, and spirituals. There is no evidence the company ever asked Jones to record.
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Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, known as Sissieretta Jones, (January 5, 1868 or 1869[1] – June 24, 1933[2]) was an African-American soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Jones' repertoire included grand opera, light opera, and popular music.[3]
Biography[edit]
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States, to Jeremiah Malachi Joyner, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, and Henrietta Beale.[2]By 1876 her family moved to Providence, Rhode Island,[4] where she began singing at an early age in her father's Pond Street Baptist Church.[2]
In 1883, Joyner began the formal study of music at the Providence Academy of Music. The same year she married David Richard Jones, a news dealer and hotel bellman. In the late 1880s, Jones was accepted at the New England Conservatory of Music.[1] In 1887, she performed at Boston's Music Hall before an audience of 5,000.[2]
Jones made her New York debut on April 5, 1888, at Steinway Hall.[1] During a performance at Wallack's Theater in New York, Jones came to the attention of Adelina Patti's manager, who recommended that Jones tour the West Indies with the Fisk Jubilee Singers.[2] Jones made successful tours of the Caribbean in 1888 and 1892.[1]
In February 1892, Jones performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison.[2] She eventually sang for four consecutive presidents — Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt — and the British royal family.[1][2][3]
Jones performed at the Grand Negro Jubilee at New York's Madison Square Garden in April 1892 before an audience of 75,000. She sang the song "Swanee River" and selections from La traviata.[3] She was so popular that she was invited to perform at thePittsburgh Exposition (1892) and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893).[4]
In June 1892, Jones became the first African-American to sing at the Music Hall in New York (renamed Carnegie Hall the following year).[1][6] Among the selections in her program were Charles Gounod's "Ave Maria" and Giuseppe Verdi's "Sempre libera" (from La traviata).[1] The New York Echo wrote of her performance at the Music Hall: "If Mme Jones is not the equal of Adelina Patti, she at least can come nearer it than anything the American public has heard. Her notes are as clear as a mockingbird's and her annunciation perfect."[1] On 8 June 1892, her career elevated beyond primary ethnic communities, and was furthered when she received a contract, with the possibility of a two-year extension, for $150 per week (plus expenses) with Mayor James B. Pond, who had meaningful affiliations to many authors and musicians.[7] The company Troubadours made an important statement about the capabilities of black performers, that besides minstrelsy, there were other areas of genre and style.[7]
In 1893, Jones met composer Antonín Dvořák, and in January 1894 she performed parts of his Symphony No. 9 at Madison Square Garden. Dvořák wrote a solo part for Jones.[1]
Jones met with international success. Besides the United States and the West Indies, Jones toured in South America, Australia, India, and southern Africa.[1] During a European tour in 1895 and 1896, Jones performed in London, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Milan, and Saint Petersburg.[8]
In 1896, Jones returned to Providence to care for her mother, who had become ill.[1] Jones found that access to most American classical concert halls was limited by racism. She formed the Black Patti Troubadours (later renamed the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company), a musical and acrobatic act made up of 40 jugglers, comedians, dancers and a chorus of 40 trained singers.[2] TheIndianapolis Freeman reviewed the “Black Patti Troubadours” with the following: “The rendition which she and the entire company give of this reportorial opera selection is said to be incomparably grand. Not only is the solo singing of the highest order, but the choruses are rendered with a spirit and musical finish which never fail to excite genuine enthusiasm.[9]
The revue paired Jones with rising vaudeville composers Bob Cole and Billy Johnson. The show consisted of a musical skit, followed by a series of short songs and acrobatic performances. During the final third of each show, Jones performed arias and operatic excerpts.[8] The revue provided Jones with a comfortable income, reportedly in excess of $20,000 per year. She led the company with reassurance of a forty-week season that would give her a sustainable income, guaranteed lodging in a well-appointed and stylish Pullman car, and the ability to sing opera and operetta excerpts in the final section of the show.[7] This allowed Jones to be the highest paid African American performer of her time.[7] Jones sung passionately and pursued her career choice of opera and different repertory regardless to her lack of audience attendance.[7] For more than two decades, Jones remained the star of the Famous Troubadours, while they graciously toured every season and established their popularity in the principal cities of the United States and Canada.[10] Although their eventual fame and international tours collected many audiences, they began with a “free-for-all” variety production with plenty of “low” comedy, song and dance, and no pretense of a coherent story line.[11]
Several members of the troupe, such as Bert Williams, went on to become famous.[1] April 1908, at the Avenue Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, an audience made up mostly of whites (segregated seating was still prevalent), accepted Madam ‘Patti’ after singing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ with much respect and admiration, and marked “the first time that a colored performer received a bouquet at the theatre in this city”.[11] For almost ten years, racial segregation had kept Jones from the mainstream opera platform, but by singing selections from operas within the context of a hard-traveling minstrel and variety show, she was still able to utilize her gifted voice, that people of all races loved.[11] The Black Patti Troubadours reveled in vernacular music and dance.[11]
Jones retired from performing in 1915. For more than two decades, Jones remained the star of the Famous Troubadours, while they graciously toured every season and established their popularity in the principal cities of the United States and Canada.[11] She devoted the remainder of her life to her church and to caring for her mother. Jones was forced to sell most of her property to survive.[1][2] She died penniless on June 24, 1933.[2]
In 2013 Jones was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.[12]
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Matilda Sissieretta Jones, née Joyner, byname Black Patti, or Madame Jones (born Jan. 5, 1869, Portsmouth, Va., U.S.—died June 24, 1933, Providence, R.I.), opera singer who was considered the greatest black American in her field in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Jones early revealed her talent as a singer, and for a time she studied at the Providence (R.I.) Academy of Music. She may have undertaken further studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1886 or 1887, but that information, like much of her early and late life, is obscure. In 1888 she made her singingdebut in New York City and toured the West Indies as a featured artist with the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. Her rich, powerful soprano voice led one critic to dub her “the Black Patti” (after Adelina Patti, the foremost opera diva of the day). Jones disliked the epithet.
Until 1896 Jones sang in concert, opera, and vaudeville halls in solo recitals or with such groups as the Patrick Gilmore band. She appeared at a “Grand African Jubilee” at Madison Square Garden in April 1892, sang for President Benjamin Harrison at the White House in that year, and appeared at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicagoin 1893. Her tours took her to Canada, England, and continental Europe. She included much spiritual and ballad material in her repertoire, but she preferred selections from grand and light opera.
From 1896 to 1916 Jones toured continually with a troupe called, to her distaste, the Black Patti Troubadors, a motley group whose performances included blackface minstrel songs and “coon” songs and featured acrobats and comedians. Madame Jones, as she preferred to be known, restricted herself to operatic selections, which over the years grew to include costumes and scenery. Performing almost exclusively for white audiences who saw her as an oddity, she was nonetheless widely acclaimed the premier African-American singer of her time. After the breakup of the Black Patti Troubadors in 1916, she lived in obscurity until her death.
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Matilda Sissieretta Jones, née Joyner, byname Black Patti, or Madame Jones (b. January 5, 1869, Portsmouth, Virginia — d. June 24, 1933, Providence, Rhode Island), was an opera singer who was considered the greatest black American in her field in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Jones early revealed her talent as a singer, and for a time she studied at the Providence (Rhode Island) Academy of Music. She may have undertaken further studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1886 or 1887, but that information, like much of her early and late life, is obscure. In 1888 she made her singing debut in New York City and toured the West Indies as a featured artist with the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. Her rich, powerful soprano voice led one critic to dub her “the Black Patti” (after Adelina Patti, the foremost opera diva of the day). Jones disliked the epithet.
Until 1896 Jones sang in concert, opera, and vaudeville halls in solo recitals or with such groups as the Patrick Gilmore band. She appeared at a “Grand African Jubilee” at Madison Square Garden in April 1892, sang for President Benjamin Harrison at the White House in that year, and appeared at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Her tours took her to Canada, England, and continental Europe. She included much spiritual and ballad material in her repertoire, but she preferred selections from grand and light opera.
From 1896 to 1916 Jones toured continually with a troupe called, to her distaste, the Black Patti Troubadors, a motley group whose performances included blackface minstrel songs and “coon” songs and featured acrobats and comedians. Madame Jones, as she preferred to be known, restricted herself to operatic selections, which over the years grew to include costumes and scenery. Performing almost exclusively for white audiences who saw her as an oddity, she was nonetheless widely acclaimed the premier African-American singer of her time. After the breakup of the Black Patti Troubadors in 1916, she lived in obscurity until her death.
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