Rabbit Foot Minstrels

During the first half of the 20th century, the African American Rabbit Foot Minstrels entertainers played a major role in spreading the blues through tours across the South. Founded in 1900, the company grew from Patrick Henry Chappelle’s musical comedy “A Rabbit’s Foot” into a popular tent show by 1902. After Chappelle’s death in 1911, F.S. Wolcott took over the attraction, and in 1918 he moved its headquarters to Port Gibson, where troupe members wintered, rehearsed, and remained based until 1950. By the mid-1910s tent-show entertainers were carrying blues music across the South, and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels became one of the most popular groups, presenting comedy routines, skits, song-and-dance numbers, and a marching band while adding blues to a repertoire that also included classical, ragtime, and popular music. The company worked with vaudeville-style female singers and included performers such as Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Ida Cox, Louis Jordan, Rufus Thomas, Big Joe Williams, Sid Hemphill, Willie Nix, Maxwell Street Jimmy, Jim Jackson, Bogus Ben Covington, Dwight “Gatemouth” Moore, Johnny “Daddy Stovepipe” Watson, and Leon “Pee Wee” Whittaker. The troupe emerged from the broader history of blackface minstrelsy, a theatrical form pioneered by white performers in the 1830s and 1840s, then adopted by African Americans after the Civil War; these segregated shows were first run by white managers, but by the beginning of the 20th century African Americans had begun organizing their own companies. Popular through the 1940s, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels appear to have given their final performances in 1959.

Port Gibson, Mississippi · United States