(b New York, 20 May 1808; d New York, 19 Sept 1860). American minstrel performer. He trained to be a woodcarver, and occasionally performed small parts at the Park Theatre in New York. He then became an itinerant player, and it was probably in Louisville in 1828 that he created his famous ‘Jim Crow’ act, the first solo act by a blackface performer (see illustration). His first performance as Jim Crow was an instant sensation, and Rice rose from obscurity to ever increasing success in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York (in 1832) and even London (1836). Rice’s popularity was unprecedented, and Jim Crow was the first American song to become an international hit. The tune resembles Irish and English tunes, but the lyrics are purely American; many verses are crude attempts at satirical and topical humour. Jim Crow was the first example of what became a stock character in minstrelsy, that of the southern plantation field hand, who was not only naive and fun-loving, but also boastful, like the frontiersman or river boatman. Dance was an essential part of the act, and it has been claimed to be the first clear use of African American dance on the popular stage. Rice also added other blackface songs to his repertory, such as Clare de Kitchen and Long Time Ago.
Rice created a new genre of popular entertainment, the ‘Ethiopian opera’, which consisted of blackface farces interspersed with songs. His first, in 1833, was Long Island Juba, or Love by the Bushel. He wrote and performed in numerous others. These pieces were the precursors of the minstrel sketches, which became central to the fully developed minstrel show of the 1840s and later. Although Rice was one of the first (with George Washington Dixon) to show the potential of black face entertainment and is often called ‘the father of American minstrelsy’, he rarely performed in minstrel shows, preferring to continue performing his songs and farces as entr’actes and afterpieces. His popularity gradually declined in the 1850s, his performances became sporadic and he died in financial distress.
E. Le Roy Rice: Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from ‘Daddy’ Rice to Date (New York, 1911)
G.C.D. Odell: Annals of the New York Stage, iii–vi (New York, 1928–31)
C. Wittke: Tambo and Bones: a History of the American Minstrelsy Stage (Durham, NC, 1930)
H. Nathan: Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman, OK, 1962/R)
R.C. Toll: Blacking up: the Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1974)
C. Hamm: Yesterdays’ Popular Song in America (New York, 1979)
ROBERT B. WINANS