A

JOLSON, AL 1866-1950

PERFORMER

The World's Greatest Entertainer

According to different sources Asa Yoelson was born in Russia or in Washington, D.C. As a boy he sang in the streets and in saloons, running away from his Orthodox Jewish home several times in attempts to break into show business. At fifteen he was performing in vaudeville. By 1906 jolson was working in blackface.

Mammy

From the mid nineteenth century through the 1920s whites and blacks in burnt cork or grease paint performed exaggerated and distorted versions of black material. These acts—in and out of minstrel shows—were extremely popular with white audiences and frequently featured blacked-up whites yearning to return to the South. This nostalgia for a way of life that the audiences had never experienced may have resulted from the familial yearnings of immigrant groups. Jolson was by far the most successful of the mammy singers. In 1912 a runway from the stage was constructed in the Winter Garden on Broadway to enable Jolson to work closer to the audience. He probably introduced his mannerism of singing on one knee in 1913. The 1921 show Bombo included four songs that became Jolson standards: "My Mammy," "Toot, Toot, Tootsie," "California Here I Come," and "April Showers." Although he was a showman who put songs across with dancing and gesturing, his records were hits. Songwriters believed that he could do more than other singers to sell a song. It is unlikely that any other performer was so closely identified with so many songs—"Avalon," "Sonny Boy," "Swanee," "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee," "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," "The Red, Red Robin."

"You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet."

Jolson made The Jazz Singer for Warner Bros, in 1927. Although it is classified as the first talking movie, the sound was restricted to Jolson's singing and some dialogue. Jolson's line "You ain't heard nothin' yet" defined his performance style, for he loved to entertain audiences. He was successful in every medium and in the 1930s had radio programs.

Comeback

Jolson's material and style began to seem old-fashioned in the swing era, but he continued to perform with or without payment. During World War II he toured the war fronts, paying his own expenses. The 1946 movie The Jolson Story, in which his singing was dubbed for actor Larry Parks, restored Jolson's popularity, and he became a television star. The successful 1949 sequel, Jolson Sings Again reinforced his reputation as the world's greatest entertainer. When he died in 1950 after returning from entertaining troops in Korea, he had been a star for forty years.