- William Wallace
Sir William Wallace (c. 1270-August 23, 1305) was a knight and Scottish patriot, who led a resistance against the English occupation of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence. He is considered the greatest hero in Scotland's history. Wallace was the inspiration for the poem "The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie" by the 15th century minstrel Blind Harry. The 1995 film "Braveheart" is based on the poem. - Henry Thomas
Henry Thomas (1874-1950s?). Henry (Ragtime Texas) Thomas was a major pre-war country blues singer and musician. Thomas, born in Big Sandy, Texas, began his musical career as an itinerant songster (minstrel), and recorded twenty-three songs from 1927 to 1929. He accompanied himself with the guitar and the quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds that sound similar to the quena used by musicians in Peru and Bolivia. - Bob Carlin
Bob Carlin (b. 1953 in New York City) is an American old-time banjo player and singer. Carlin performs primarily in the clawhammer style of banjo. He has toured the United States, Canada, and Europe performing on various historical banjos (including gourd banjos), and has explored the African roots of the banjo by working with the Malian musician Cheick Hamala Diabate and the elder African American fiddler Joe Thompson. - Frank Stokes
Frank Stokes (December 1887 or January 1888 - September 12, 1955) was a blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style. Born in White Haven, Tennessee, two miles north of the Mississippi state line, Frank Stokes was raised in Tutwiler, Mississippi, after the death of his parents. Stokes learned to play guitar as a youth in Tutwiler, and, after 1895, in Hernando, Mississippi, … - Byron G. Harlan
Byron G. Harlan was an American singer from Kansas (1861–1936), a comic minstrel singer and balladeer who often recorded with Arthur Collins. The two together were often billed as "Collins & Harlan". - Joseph Jefferson
Joseph Jefferson was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous of all American comedians. - Papa Charlie Jackson
Papa Charlie Jackson (c.1890-1938) was an early American bluesman. He played a hybrid banjo-guitar and ukulele, recording beginning in 1924. Much of his life remains a mystery, but it is probable that he was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and died in Chicago, Illinois in 1938. Originally performing in minstrel and medicine shows, Jackson was playing all around Chicago in the early 1920s. He was noted for busking at the famous Chicago Maxwell Street Market. - Robert Wilkins
Robert Timothy Wilkins was a seminal blues guitarist and vocalist. Of African American and Cherokee descent, he was born January 16, 1896, in Hernando, Mississippi, 21 miles from Memphis, Tennessee. He died May 26, 1987. Wilkins worked in Memphis during the 1920s at the same time as Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie (whom he claimed to have tutored), and Son House. He also organized a jug band to capitalize on the "jug band craze" then in vogue. - Joel Sweeney
Joel Walker Sweeney, also known as Joe Sweeney, was a musician and early blackface minstrel performer. Born to farming family in Buckingham County, Virginia, (now Appomattox) he claimed to have learned to play the banjo from local African-Americans and is the earliest documented white banjo player. In addition, he is the earliest known person to have played the banjo on stage. Aside from his important role in popularizing the instrument, … - Rory McLeod
Rory McLeod is a British folk singer-songwriter born in London. As well as singing, his performances include storytelling in the tradition of the travelling minstrel or troubadour and playing a wide range of instruments including guitar, harmonica, trombone and his own invention the 'stomping box'. - Billy Whitlock
William M. "Billy" Whitcock was an American blackface performer. He began his career in entertainment doing blackface banjo routines in circuses and dime shows, and by 1843, he was well known in New York City. He is best known for his role in forming the original minstrel troupe, the Virginia Minstrels. - Don MacLean
Don Maclean (born 11 March, 1944 in Birmingham) is an English comedian who hosted the BBC television series "Crackerjack" with Michael Aspel, Peter Glaze, and Jan Hunt in the 1970s. As a child he had attended Clifton Road School, in Balsall Heath. Maclean usually performed a live routine or routines with Glaze in front of a studio audience of children and a filmed insert with Glaze, in the style of a silent comedy film. - John Diamond
John Diamond, also known as Jack or Johnny, was an Irish-American dancer and blackface minstrel performer. Diamond entered show business at age 17 and soon came to the attention of circus promoter P. T. Barnum. In less than a year, Diamond and Barnum had a falling out, and Diamond left to perform with other blackface performers. Diamond's dance style merged elements of English, Irish, and African dance. - Francis Wilson
Francis Wilson (7 February 1854 - 7 October 1935) was an American actor, born in Philadelphia. He began his career in a minstrel show, but by 1878 was playing at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and the next year appeared in "M'liss" with Annie Pixley. After several years in regular comedy, he took up some opera. In 1889, leaving the New York Casino, he made his appearance as a star in "The Oolah". - Singin' Sam
Singin’ Sam aka Harry Frankel was a minstrel performer, vaudevillian and famous personality during the early days of commercial radio. He was best known as "Singin’ Sam, the Barbasol Man" for his long association as pitchman with that company. He specialized in vintage songs, and he often bragged that he never introduced a new tune in his entire career. He was nationally known for his deep voice and informal, down-home style. - Rutebeuf
Rutebeuf, or Rustebuef (ca. 1245 - 1285), French trouvere, was born in the first half of the 13th century. His name is nowhere mentioned by his contemporaries. He frequently plays in his verse on the word "Rutebeuf", which was probably a "nom de guerre", and is variously explained by him as derived from "rude boeuf" and "rude oeuvre". He was evidently of humble birth, and he was a Parisian by education and residence. - Francis Leon
Francis Leon was a blackface minstrel performer best known for his work as a female impersonator. He was largely responsible for making the prima donna a fixture of blackface minstrelsy. Leon entered minstrelsy in 1858. Only 14 at the time, he quickly rose to fame by specializing in portraying female prima donna characters, mulatto coquettes in yellow makeup and elaborate costumes. Leon's 300 dresses (which he refused to call "costumes") were a key piece of his act, … - Sam Hague
Sam Hague was a British blackface minstrel dancer and troupe owner. He was the first white owner of a minstrel troupe composed of black members, and the success he saw with this troupe inspired many other white owners to purchase black companies. Hague began his career as a performer in British and American minstrel shows. He eventually branched into troupe ownership and management, and in 1866, … - Charles Hicks
Charles Barney Hicks was an African American advance man, manager, performer, and owner of blackface minstrel troupes composed of African American performers. Hicks himself was a talented minstrel performer who could sing and play challenging roles such as the minstrel-show interlocutor or endmen. However, he was most interested in the business side of minstrelsy. Over the course of his career, he worked with most successful black minstrel troupes as manager, owner or both. - Edwin Pearce Christy
Edwin Pearce Christy (November 28, 1815 - May 21, 1862) was an American composer, singer, actor and stage producer. He is more commonly known as E. P. Christy, and was the founder of the blackface minstrel group Christy's Minstrels. - Wallace King
Wallace King was an African American blackface minstrel performer from the 19th century. He played with Callender's Georgia Minstrels, and in 1882 was second to only Billy Kersands in pay and popularity. King was a "Sweet Singing Tenor" and known for his emotional, romantic ballads. - Aşık Veysel Şatıroğlu
Aşık Veysel Şatıroğlu, also known as just Aşık Veysel, was a Turkish minstrel and highly regarded poet of the Turkish folk literature. He was born in the Sivrialan village of the Şarkışla district, Sivas, on October 25, 1894 and died on March 21, 1973. He was an ashik, a poet, songwriter, and a bağlama and saz virtuoso, the prominent representative of the Anatolian ashik tradition in the 20th century. He was blind for the most of his lifetime. - Hy Heath
Songwriter, composer and author Hy Heath (1890 - 1965) was educated in public schools and then became a comedian in musical comedy, vaudeville, minstrel and burlesque shows. His chief musical collaborators included Johnny Lange and Fred Rose. His most successful composition was 'Mule Train' which earned him an Academy Award nomination (it was featured in the 1950 film "Singing Guns"). - Adenet Le Roi
Adenet Le Roi was a French minstrel or trouvère, also known as Roi Adam, Li Rois Adenes, Adan le Menestrel, and Adam Rex Menestrallus. - P. P. Werlein
P. P. Werlein was an American music publisher based in New Orleans, Louisiana. At some point, the German-born Philip P. Werlein headed the music department at the Female Seminary of Clinton, Mississippi. However, music publishing became his main business when he entered the field in 1842 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1853, he moved operations to New Orleans, where he established a company called Ashbrand & Werlein at 93 Camp Street. - Richard Tarlton
Richard Tarlton (1530 - September 3, 1588), an English actor, was the most famous clown of his era. He was born in Condover, Shropshire. Firm information on his early life is scarce; traditions maintain that he started out as either a London apprentice, or a swineherd in Shropshire; and it is not impossible that he was both. At one time he may have been an inn-keeper, but in 1583, when he is mentioned as one of the original member of the Queen's Men, … - Lew Johnson
Lew Johnson was an African American owner and business manager of blackface minstrel troupes composed of African American performers. His career began in the mid-1860s and spanned 25 years. Johnson is the only black minstrel-troupe owner to have enjoyed any consistent success (others, such as Charles Hicks, were constantly fluctuating between success to failure). This was due to his keeping well away from the lucrative markets dominated by white owners. - George B. Wooldridge
George B. Wooldridge was the business manager of the first blackface minstrel troupe, the Virginia Minstrels, in the mid-19th century. He sometimes went by the name Tom Quick. - Ambroise
Ambroise (flourished c. 1190) was a Norman poet and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called "L'Estoire de la guerre sainte", which describes in rhyming French verse the adventures of Richard Coeur de Lion as a crusader. The poem is known to us only through one Vatican manuscript, and long escaped the notice of historians. The credit for detecting its value belongs to Gaston Paris, … - Rainerius
Saint Rainerius (Raynerius, Rainerius, Rainier, Rainieri, Ranieri, Raniero, Regnier) (c. 1117 - c. 1160) is the patron saint of Pisa. Born Rainerius Scacceri to a prosperous merchant of Pisa (his parents were named Gandulfo Scacceri and Mingarda Buzzaccherini), he was a traveling minstrel as a youth. Upon meeting a holy man during his travels, however, he was so impressed that he became a devoted Christian. - Giorgetto Giugiaro
Giorgetto Giugiaro (August 7, 1938) is an Italian automobile designer. He was born in Garessio, province of Cuneo (Piedmont). He initiated the "folded paper" era of the 1970s where the cars were designed with straight lines and sharp edges. As well as a number of supercars, he is responsible for the design of some of the most popular everyday vehicles driven today. Giugiaro was the winner of the award of Car Designer of the Century in 1999. - Bob Height
Bob Height was an African American blackface minstrel performer. He was a standout talent in the companies with which he performed, although frustrations eventually drove him to pursue a career in Europe. Later writers have compared him to his contemporary, Bert Williams. Height joined with Charles Hicks in the late 1860s to form Hicks and Height's Georgia Minstrels. This company proved quite popular among African Americans, particularly in the Washington, D.C. area. - Ostap Veresai
Ostap Mykytovych Veresai (1803-1890) was a renowned minstrel and kobzar from Poltava province, Ukraine. He, like no other, helped in the popularity of kobzar art not only in his country, but also outside its borders. - John T. Ford
John Thomson Ford was a 19th-century American theatre manager. Today, he is most famous for operating Ford's Theatre at the time of the Abraham Lincoln assassination. Ford, born in Baltimore, was the son of Elias and Anna ("née" Greanor) Ford. His ancestors were early Maryland settlers and some of them took part in the American Revolution. For a few years he attended public school in Baltimore and then became a clerk in his uncle’s tobacco factory in Richmond, … - Chancellor Olcott
Chancellor "Chauncey" Olcott (July 21, 1858 - March 18, 1932) was an American stage actor and songwriter. Born in Buffalo, New York, in the early years of his career Olcott sang in minstrel shows and Lillian Russell played a major role in helping make him a Broadway star. Amongst his songwriting accomplishments, Olcott wrote and composed the song "My Wild Irish Rose" for his production of "A Romance of Athlone" in 1899. - William Locke Brockman
William Locke Brockman was an early settler in Western Australia, who became a leading pastoralist and stock breeder, and a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council. Born in Kent, England in 1802, William Locke Brockman was a member of the Brockman family, a prominent Kent family with a history dating back to the 14th century. Little is known of his early life, except that he was a farmer with land in the Romney Marsh area. - Edmund Kerchever Chambers
Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume history of Elizabathen theater, published in 1923, remains a standard resource for scholars of the period's drama. Chambers was born in West Ilsley, Berkshire; his father was a curate and his mother was the daughter of a Victorian theologian. He was educated at Marlborough College before matriculating at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. - Telly Courthouse Minstrel
- Rocky Minstrel
- Wandering Minstrel
I am as uncomplicated as possible, and that isn't very. I am an adventurer--I like to try new things and go new places. I am an empath--I feel what others are feeling, not always accurately but surprisingly frequently so, and often when I would rather not. I am a performing artist first and creative artist second, but even though these things are probably the most important in my life, they often take a back burner to other things I have going.
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