George Washington Johnson
(c. October 1846 – January 23, 1914)
He was an American singer and pioneer sound recording artist. Johnson was the first African-American recording star of the phonograph. His most popular songs were “The Whistling Coon” and “The Laughing Song”.
Early life
Johnson was born in Virginia, either in Fluvanna County or near Wheatland in Loudoun County. His father was a slave, and he was likely freed in 1853. From an early age, Johnson was raised near Wheatland as the companion and servant of a prosperous white farmer’s son. During his time with this family, he developed his musical ability and even learned to read and write, which was illegal for a black child in Virginia before the American Civil War. Johnson later worked as a laborer, and in his late twenties, he moved to New York City. By the late 1870s, he was making his living as a street entertainer in New York, specializing in whistling.
Musical career
Sometime between January and May 1890, Johnson was recruited by two different regional phonograph distributors who were looking for recording artists for their coin-operated machines. Charles Marshall of the New York Phonograph Company and Victor Emerson of the New Jersey Phonograph Company both heard Johnson performing in Manhattan, probably at the ferry terminals on the Hudson River. Both of them invited Johnson to record his loud raggy whistling on wax phonograph cylinders for a fee of twenty cents per two-minute performance. Although Johnson could whistle all the tunes of the day, one of his first recordings for both companies was a popular vaudeville novelty song called “The Whistling Coon”. Johnson sang as well as whistled, and also was able to give a boisterous laugh in musical pitch. From this, he developed the second performance that made him famous, “The Laughing Song”. Although he recorded other material, including whistling the song “Listen to the Mockingbird” and some short minstrel show performances done with other performers, it was these two songs that Johnson would perform and record over and over for years.
In the earliest days of the recording industry, every record was a “master”. A singer with a strong voice could make three or four usable recordings at once, with as many machines running simultaneously with their recording horns pointed towards the singer’s mouth. Johnson would sometimes sing the same song over and over again in the recording studio fifty or more times a day.
By 1895, Johnson’s two tunes “The Whistling Coon” and “The Laughing Song” were the best-selling recordings in the United States. “The Laughing Song” was number one for ten weeks from April to June 1891, while “The Whistling Coon” was number one for five weeks in July and August 1891. Johnson was the first African American to appear on the pop chart, and his song on the chart was the first to have been written by an African American. The total sales of his wax cylinders between 1890 and 1895 have been estimated at 25,000 to 50,000, each one recorded individually by Johnson. Remarkably, the New Jersey record company marketed Johnson as a black man, during an era when much of American life was strongly segregated by race. “The Whistling Coon” was characterized by a light-hearted tune and lyrics which would be unacceptable today, in which a black man is compared to a baboon.
Johnson continued recording for the New York and New Jersey companies, and in 1891 also started recording for their parent company, the North American Phonograph Company. At least one of his 1891 recording sessions was held at Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Johnson also made appearances in Vaudeville. His repertory on stage was pretty much limited to his two famous songs, but this was sufficient to get him bookings on bills.
In 1894, Johnson began recording with Len Spencer, a Vaudeville star of the era, and the two would remain friends until the end of Johnson’s life. In 1895, Johnson made his first recordings on the new disc technology for the Berliner Gramophone. In addition to Berliner, Johnson recorded for Edison Records, Columbia, the Victor Talking Machine Company, the Chicago Talking Machine Company, Bettini and numerous other small cylinder and disc companies through the 1890s and up to 1909 or 1910.
In 1897, Johnson recorded two new songs, “The Laughing Coon” and “The Whistling Girl”. They remained in the Edison and Columbia catalogs for years, although neither was as popular as his two original tunes.
Later life
By 1905, Johnson’s popularity had declined. New recording technology enabled the pressing of thousands of duplicate records from a single master, and Johnson was no longer needed to record each copy individually. His friend Len Spencer, now a successful artist and booking agent, hired Johnson as an office doorman. Johnson worked for Spencer and lived in his office building for several years, then moved back to Harlem. Johnson died from pneumonia and myocarditis in 1914 at the age of 67. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York.
Personal life and rumors
. In late 1894 or early 1895 a “German woman” with whom he was living died under mysterious circumstances, and Johnson was brought in for questioning but not charged. Then in 1896, he moved in with a mulatto woman named Roskin Stuart. He was nearly 50, she was about 35. He was very dark-skinned, she was light. According to later testimony, she was a real hell-raiser and he acted as something of a father figure to her. Their relationship was tumultuous. In 1898 she fell or was pushed out of a second-story window, but survived and did not file a complaint. Later she tried to shoot him but missed, and they broke up, then got back together again. In the early morning of October 12, 1899, Johnson reported finding her beaten and unconscious in their spartan apartment after an apparent night of carousing; she died a few hours later.
Johnson was arrested and charged with murder. Numerous friends, black and white, rallied to his side. Character witnesses came forward to testify, including Sam Moore, now a successful businessman, who came all the way from Virginia to support his old friend. A collection was taken and two first-rate (white) defense lawyers were hired. When the trial opened on December 20, 1899, the courtroom was packed, with reporters from the major New York newspapers in attendance (“‘Whistling Coon’ on Trial” – New York Herald, New York World, New York Times).
The prosecution’s case was entirely circumstantial and was a shambles. Its own witnesses spoke highly of Johnson and portrayed Stuart as out of control, the wrong morgue attendant was subpoenaed, neither the physician nor the coroner could testify as to the actual cause of death, and most importantly no one had seen anything. Finally, after many objections and motions for dismissal by Johnson’s attorneys, the D.A. abandoned the case. Johnson never took the stand. He emerged on the steps of the courtroom to a cheering crowd (“Whistling Coon is Free” – New York Sun).
He resumed his career without difficulty, but there were storm clouds on the horizon. All through the 1890s record companies had been working on ways to make duplicate copies, with some success, and by 1902 both disc and cylinder makers had developed methods to mass produce copies from a single original master recording. Johnson was recording his few specialties for all the major companies by this time, Victor (discs), Edison (cylinders) and Columbia (cylinders and discs), plus many minor labels. As soon as each of them had secured a suitable master recording from him they didn’t need him any more, and his income dropped precipitously. His friend Len Spencer got him work on minstrel and other novelty records, but after a dozen-year run “The Whistling Coon” was becoming yesterday’s news. In addition white artists began to successfully cover his recordings, especially the whistling numbers.
Eventually, he went to work for Spencer as a doorman at the latter’s offices, but he was drinking heavily and had to be discharged. His last recordings, remakes of his old hits, appear to have been made in 1910. Now in his mid-sixties (an advanced age for those days), he moved to a small tenement room in Harlem where he died forgotten and alone on January 23, 1914, at the age of 67. He was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens, along with twenty other destitute persons. The only obituary I have located was a short notice in the New York Age, a black newspaper dedicated to improving the lot of African Americans, which seemed to consider him an embarrassing relic of another era.
As Lost Sounds concludes, “George W. Johnson was, for most of his life, a happy, easygoing man with a ready laugh who wanted nothing more than to get by in a hostile world. He made many friends and brought pleasure to millions more. He probably never thought of himself as a pioneer, but as the first black recording artist he made history. Perhaps today, so long after his death in obscurity, his achievements will at last be remembered.”
False rumors have circulated that Johnson died either in a racially motivated lynching or alternatively that he was hanged after he committed murder. While neither story is true, Johnson did have an ‘eventful’ personal life. There is no evidence that he ever legally married or had any children, but Johnson did have at least two ‘common-law wives’, both of whom died while living with him. The first, an unnamed “German woman”, was found dead in their apartment on West 39th Street in late 1894 or early 1895. No charges were filed. The second, Roskin Stuart, was found beaten and unconscious in their apartment on West 41st Street on October 12, 1899. Stuart was taken to the hospital and died a few hours later. Johnson was tried for first-degree murder and found not guilty.
Honors
In 2013 the Maple Grove Historical Preservation Society began a campaign to honor Johnson, and received a grant from the MusiCares Foundation to erect a plaque on his grave site. On April 12, 2014, a century after his death, the singer was finally recognized in a ceremony including displays, presentations and a performance by actor Larry Marshall who impersonated Johnson.
Also in 2013, his c. 1896 recording of “The Laughing Song” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry