This is an extremely rare sheet music for a 1927 all African-American starring production. The song is I’M COMING VIRGINIA, by Will Marion Cook and Donald Heywood. The show is MISS CALICO, starring ETHEL WATERS. The show was conceived, staged and produced by EARL DANCER who was Ethel’s friend and manager.
This music is in NEAR MINT CONDITION!
To discover why this sheet music is so rare please read on. Earl Dancer was grooming this musical for Broadway for several months as the breakaway starring vehicle in singing and comedy revue sketches for the vaudevilian ETHEL WATERS. The show toured for several months in 1926 beginning in Louisiana but NEVER GOT TO BROADWAY. It was an underfunded tab show originating in New Orleans and touring before it got to New York and it fizzled out on the road, in part due to mediocre revenues and lack of advance money. Sheet music began to be issued for it by Robbins Music Corporation in New York but was quickly stopped.
The show starred Alec Lovejoy, Marshall Rogers, Lionel Monagas, Thornton Brown, George Stanton, Jimmie and Eddie White, Ida and George Hooten, Lew Keane, Margaret Beckett, The Taskiana Four, The Cocoa-Brown Skinned Maids, The Calico Girls, The Calico Syncopators, Louisa V. Jones and the Bamboo Girls.
After approximately 3 months, the show folded BEFORE reaching Broadway. It was extensively retooled and re-emerged as the Earl Dancer musical review AFRICANA, which did reach Broadway and lasted for but two months.
This sheet music is very important for the HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN THEATER and for the development of the careers of ETHEL WATERS and that forgotten impressario of black theater EARL DANCER.
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