The Charleston: A Song History

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James P. Johnson (1894–1955), born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was one of the founders of stride piano, known for pieces such as "Carolina Shout," and his piano rolls came before his phonograph records of his own compositions.[1] In 1923 he wrote the music, with lyrics by Cecil Mack, for Runnin' Wild, a musical produced by George White with a book by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles, which opened at the New Colonial Theatre in New York on October 29, 1923, and ran for 228 performances.[2] "Charleston" was the last number of the first act, performed by Elisabeth Welch as Ruth Little together with the chorus.[2][3] English Heritage, which honors Welch with a blue plaque in London, credits her with introducing the Charleston to Broadway audiences that year.[4] It was not the first stage Charleston: Maceo Pinkard's "The Charleston Dance" had been heard in the 1922 musical Liza, and Johnson remembered seeing the dance in a show as early as 1913.[3]

Old photograph of a man in a hat and two young women dancing on a terrace in front of the U.S. Capitol dome

Charleston congressman shows them how!, photographic print, c1926. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song's history.

Britannica places the dance's roots in Black folk dancing of the South, noting a mention by 1903 and a particular link to Charleston, South Carolina, while Robert Rawlins, in an essay for the Library of Congress, traces its step to the city's dockworkers in the early 1900s.[5][3] After Runnin' Wild, the dance swept the country, and Rawlins calls Johnson's tune "the theme song of the Roaring Twenties."[5][3] Arthur Gibbs and His Gang recorded it for Victor in New York on October 10, 1923, weeks before the show reached Broadway, as a fox-trot medley with the show's "Open Your Heart," and Victor 19165 came out that November with Johnson and Mack's "Old-Fashioned Love" on the other side.[2][6][7] Paul Whiteman's orchestra recorded it for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on May 7, 1925.[8] More than a dozen recordings appeared in 1925 alone, mostly without Mack's lyrics, and the California Ramblers' version for Edison, made on April 2, 1925, under the name Golden Gate Orchestra, was added to the National Recording Registry in 2004.[3]

The song itself, published in 1923, entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.[9] Dana Gruber includes it in Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer, a book of songs from the ragtime and jazz era arranged for solo chromatic dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[10]

Our book that contains the song "The Charleston"

Sources

  1. Britannica: "James P. Johnson".
  2. Internet Broadway Database: "Runnin' Wild".
  3. Library of Congress: "Charleston, The Golden Gate Orchestra (1925)" (essay by Robert Rawlins).
  4. English Heritage: "Elisabeth Welch (1904-2003)".
  5. Britannica: "Charleston".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-28729. Charleston / Arthur Gibbs and his Gang".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor 19165".
  8. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-32576. Charleston / Paul Whiteman Orchestra".
  9. Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: "Public Domain Day 2019".
  10. Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Speakeasy And Tin Pan Alley Tunes For Chromatic Dulcimer".
  11. Image: Charleston congressman shows them how!, photographic print, c1926. Library of Congress.

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