I was reading the Wikientry for the George Mitchell Black and White Minstrels. It is- certainly interesting - to know that the BBC was running a blackface show past The Punk Rock Year. Do any Commonwealthers here gave memories of this (or any other similar) show when they were current? I saw that the live version hung on into the Eighties, having its last show in 1987 or so at Butlins' Holiday Camp! Could I make this up, folks?! No, don't answer that!!!!!!!!!!!
Never watched it when it was on, a demonstration of good taste by my parents and grandparents, allegedly the BBC valued it so highly that they kept every episode of the show at the same time they were wiping and skipping episodes of Doctor Who, Top Of the Pops and other far more worthy programmes, very sad if true, the LPs still show up frequently though there is zero market for them. On an unrelated note there are also a couple of LPs recorded at Butlins, not of the Black & White Minstrels, one of which was released on a Reggae label, you really can't make it up.
...So albums of what recorded at Butlins on a reggae label? From what little I know/can try to reconstruct about minstrel shows/burlesque , I suppose the B&Ws may have been, suitably for not being America-rooted, a version of burlesque that more heavily emphasised nostalgia for old pop music (certainly including that which traded on the " That's good old Dixie! " imagery), but was more a musical performance and less dealing in the " Hello Mr. Intercolucotor! " routines and " Weren't we happy.back on the I'm plantation!! " stuff that I suppose is really a contributing reason for the strong animus against blackface%minstrel these days.
The black and white minstrels were, like Butlins, amazingly popular back in the day over here. Quite why is a mystery....Something our parents generation loved though....
The TV show was know as The Black & White Minstrel show, whilst the act release albums until the title The George Mitchell Minstrels, presumably due to rights issues. They were hideously popular, with three albums topping the album charts during the early 1960s. The show was originally taken off the air in the late 1960s, to be replaced with a similar show with the cast not wearing blackface, but for some reason it was soon reinstated. I recall seeing the series during the mid 1970s, and despising it, other than section featuring a guest comedy performer. By then the series was clearly on the way out, with blackface appearing less frequently, and the show shifted to mid-weeks. Comedy group The Goodies sent the sh0w up rotten in one late 1977 epsiode of their comedy show, and the series was dropped for good soon afterwards.
This is absolutely shocking to me. I grew up in the American south and it would have been completely unacceptable to put on this kind of program in 1978. I’m happy to see the market for this material has evaporated. It shows us that progress is being made.
I thought ITV had some show a bit like that once as well, though maybe that was in the mid-late '50s when ITV was just starting. It's so weird that the tv people were claiming 'blacking up' had nothing to do with race. I imagine Bob Marley being in England then and turning on the telly and seeing that show, or Jimi Hendrix, Dorris Henderson, Phil Lynott... checking the calendar year and shaking their heads!
The Butlin's staff were called redcoats and the Pama label LP is a live recording of the sort of entertainment the redcoats provided in the late sixties, probably as dated now as the Black and White Minstrels, I guess it ended up on Pama as a cheap cash in, the same year they also released a recording of Prince Charles' investiture other than that it's a Reggae label with a small amount of Soul releases.
...Someone put a very great number of complete cuts from the various Black & White/Mitchell Minstrels up on YT (don't link - Generally the case with me. so),79 or so - Much if not all of them I'd think. A notable thing about them is that the vocals are sung in quite a , proper " manner. I don"t know whether the Brita would consider the accents more English or Mudatlantic, but very " proper " - They could vocally pass as any such chorus played on American radio back in our parent's generation when such choruses were a major motion of " adult " pop music, no one affects a country black American accent, which I thought was in general a part of doing a minstrel performance- Perhaps more for the comedy part that singing? We get versions, too, of material you would hardly associate with minstrel shows " the good ol' South/days ", as you'll see.
