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African American
Jones, Sissieretta (1869-1933)
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Sissieretta Jones was a world-famous soprano who in June 1892, became the first African American to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Touring internationally in the late 1800s and early 1900s, she sang both classical opera and performed in musical comedies with her own troupe.
Born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner on January 5, 1869, in Portsmouth, Virginia, she was the child of Jeremiah Joyner, a pastor, and Henrietta Joyner, a singer in the church choir. After moving with her family to Rhode Island when she was six, Sissieretta began singing in the church choir, which was directed by her father. When only fourteen, she married David Richard Jones, who became her first manager. Later, she formally studied voice at the Providence Academy of Music, the New England Conservatory, and the Boston Conservatory.
Following her New York City debut on April 5, 1888 in Steinway Hall, she was nicknamed “the Black Patti” after being compared to the Italian prima donna Adelina Patti, well-known at the time. The nickname stayed with her throughout her 30-plus year career, although she preferred to be called Madame Jones. During the 1880s and 1890s, Jones performed at Madison Square Garden, Boston's Music Hall and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She first performed at the White House in February 1892 for President Benjamin Harrison and returned to appear before Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. She also appeared before the British Royal Family. Jones's international tours took her to the Caribbean, South America, Australia, India and Southern Africa as well as London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Munich, and St. Petersburg. By 1895 Jones had become the most well known and highly paid African American performer of her day.
In the 1890s, she formed Black Patti’s Troubadours, taking advantage of the popularity of black musical comedies, originally called “coon shows.” Jones sang opera selections and spirituals at the end of the show, rather than closing with the typical cakewalk. The group was one of the most popular shows on American stage, touring throughout the United States; the careers of numerous black performers were launched by their initial appearances with the Black Patti troupe.
African Americans began to see the black musical comedies as reflecting negatively on their race, and the group’s tours wound down, with a 1915 last performance at New York City’s Lafayette Theater. Jones moved back to Providence, Rhode Island and cared for her mother and her two adopted children. Her husband’s gambling and lavish misuse of their money had led Jones to divorce him in 1899. In spite of her many years of high earnings, toward the end of her life Jones needed to rely on financial assistance from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Sissieretta Jones died of cancer on June 24, 1933 at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
Sources:
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, African American Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Darryl Lyman, Great African-American Women (New York: Gramercy Books, 2000 edition); https://www.aaregistry.com.
Date:
Fri, 1869-02-26
*The birth of Sissieretta Jones is remembered on this date in 1869. She was an African-American concert and spiritual singer.
She was born Matilda S. Joyner in Portsmouth, Virginia, the daughter of a Baptist minister, Jeremiah Joyner, and Henrietta Joyner, from whom Jones apparently inherited her enchanting soprano voice. When Jones was 7, the family moved to Providence, in search of better educational and economic opportunities. At 14, she began her first formal music training at the Providence Academy of Music and at music schools in Boston. The same year, she married David Richard Jones, "a gambling man" who went on to manage his wife's career and lavishly spend their money until the couple divorced, in 1900.
In 1892, at the age of 23, Jones sang in New York's Madison Square Garden. A newspaper review of the performance compared her to famous Italian opera singer Adelina Patti, and it condescendingly tagged Jones as "the Black Patti," a nickname she disliked but was unable to shake. Early in life, her family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, and she studied voice at the Providence Academy of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Jones had many successes in her career: several of them were breakthroughs that paved the way for later artists. She sang at the Chicago World Fair in 1893, as well as Madison Square Garden and for several Presidents of the United States.
From 1895 to 1916, Jones led a troupe of singers and musicians on a tour through the United States and abroad. Called the Black Patti Troubadours, the group performed minstrel shows and musical skits. While Jones initially considered the minstrel performances demeaning, she was able to expand her repertoire by singing spirituals and opera arias for the show's finale. The show served as a training ground for hundreds of black entertainers. Jones was given many gifts from admirers, among them, a medal from President Hippolyte of Haiti, a bar of diamonds and emeralds from the citizens of St. Thomas, an emerald shamrock from the Irish people of Providence and a diamond tiara from the governor general of a West Indies island. She often wore her 17 medals across her chest during performances.
After touring for about 20 years, the Troubadours disbanded, and Jones returned to her home in Providence to care for her ailing mother and grandmother. Abroad, she sang for royalty. It was not all positive, however. Early in her career, Jones was dubbed the "Black Patti" by press: this was a dismissive (although intended as complimentary) comparison to Adelina Patti, a successful Italian soprano at that time. The name stuck. As well, she was not able to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York: this obstacle would not be overcome until 1955, by contralto Marian Anderson. She left the concert stage in 1896 for the vaudeville act, Black Patti's Troubadours. She retired in 1916.
She lived the next 18 years at her home on Wheaton Street, taking in homeless children and selling mementos from her days of glory to pay her living expenses. Classical music is full of issues of race and gender. A casual glance through a standard music history textbook will usually reveal names such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Joseph Haydn, Henry Purcell, Richard Wagner, and Franz Schubert (all white men). Often, those who were not white or male were largely ignored. One exception to this, however, was Sissieretta Jones.
Jones died of cancer in June 1933 in Rhode Island Hospital. She was buried in Grace Church Cemetery.
Reference:
SISSIERETTA JONES &BLACK OPERA SINGERS,BILL DOGGETT LECTURE UC IRVINE
Sissieretta Jones: The Black Patti—From the Carnegie Hall Archives
Pace Jubilee Singers - Steal Away And Pray - Black Patti 8011B
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