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During Bert Williams' lifetime, few performers - black or white - risked comparison to the master by attempting an outright Williams imitation on record. Among white performers, Arthur Collins was often called upon to cover Williams' hits for Edison, Victor, and a host of minor brands, but he wisely avoided outright mimicking of Williams. One notable exception is his 1909 recording of "That's a-Plenty” (Columbia A724). Williams is credited as composer of this piece - not to be confused with the later jazz standard of the same title - but he did not record it. Collins performed the song in Williams' deadpan manner but retained his own inimitable style to some extent.

Eddie Morton performed a similar feat on his 1910 recording of "If I Could See as Far Ahead as I Can See Behind” (Columbia A977). Ernest Hare also occasionally recorded credible Williams imitations; his 1921 Gennett recording of "Oh, Brother! What a Feeling” (Connorized 3026), a tongue-in-cheek ode to seasickness, is a particularly good example. White movie actor Jay C. Flippen began his career as a Williams understudy and made several 1924 Columbia sides in the Williams manner before switching to his more familiar crooning style.

Edison encountered particular problems in recruiting a Williams imitator. True to form, the company recruited two unknowns of no discernable talent - Guy Turner and Duke Rogers - to cover Williams' hits. Neither was recalled for a second session. Years ago, Hobbies columnist Jim Walsh stirred up a hornet's nest by suggesting that Rogers might have been a pseudonym for Williams, but a single playing of Rogers' turbid "Save a Little Dram for Me" (Edsion disc 50976, also dubbed to Blue Amberol cylinder 4565) will dispel any such suspicion. A photo of Rogers in the Edison archives proves that he was white.

Black Williams imitators are rare on record before 1922. Opal Cooper had a hit with his Williamsesque delivery of "Beans! Beans! Beans!” (Pathé 20209) in 1918, but the performance was a departure from Cooper's normal vocal style. Shelton Brooks was already well established at the time of Williams' sudden death on March 4, 1922, but two other black performers - Ham Tree Harrington and Eddie Hunter - rushed to fill the vacuum.

Shelton Brooks
Shelton Brooks, with his prodigious skill as a songwriter and two successful decades on stage, is an undeservedly forgotten pioneer in black entertainment. Born in Amherstburg, Ontario (not Amesburg, as cited in the Complete Entertainment Discography) in 1886, Brooks left school in the early 1900s to play piano in Detroit cafés. His first break as a songwriter came when Sophie Tucker introduced his composition, "Some of these Days,” which she recorded in 1911 (Amberol 691). Over the next decade, Brooks wrote a string of hits that included "There'll Come a Time” (1911), "Ruff Johnson's Harmony Band” (1914), "The Darktown Strutter's Ball” (1916), "Walkin' the Dog” (1917), and "Saturday” (1921). By 1915, Brooks was touring successfully on the Keith and Orpheum vaudeville circuits as a Williams mimic.

In 1922 Brooks served as the master of ceremonies in Plantation Revue with Florence Mills (opened July 17, 1922). A European tour (including a royal command performance before George V) with Lew Leslie's Blackbirds followed in 1923, but in November of that year Brooks returned to the United States. He co-starred with Ham Tree Harrington and Florence Mills in the Broadway production of Dixie to Broadway (opened October 29, 1924). A review of the show in The Messenger for January 1925 predicted that Brooks was "in a fair way to surpass the late Bert Williams, if he can find a producer who can keep him at work and give him his head.”

Apparently, Brooks didn't find that producer, and he began to fade from public notice after his last Okeh records were issued in late 1926. There were more vaudeville appearances, including a 1928 tour with band leader Ollie Powers, but in 1931 Brooks made his final appearance in a Broadway musical, a long-running production of Brown Buddies (opened October 7, 1930), with Bill Robinson, Adelaide Hall, and Ada Brown. He died in 1975.

Okeh released 27 sides by Brooks from early 1921 through late 1926 that ran the gamut from comic routines to Williams-style recitations of his own songs and included one race-series release (Okeh 8062) with blues singer Sara Martin. His first record, "Lost Your Mind” / "Murder in the First Degree” (Okeh 4340, issued July 1921) showed Brooks as a credible Williams imitator. His last, "You Sure Are One Sick Man” / "When You're Really Blue” (Okeh 40697, electrically recorded with his own piano accompaniment on September 23, 1926) showed him still clinging to the Williams manner on the former side, while moving toward a more blues-influenced style on the latter. A final Okeh session in June 1928 produced only two rejected takes.

In March 1922, the Chicago Defender announced that Brooks and several other popular black stars would make Echo records as soon as their current contracts expired. But no Echo records, by Brooks or anyone else, have ever surfaced.

Ham Tree Harrington
A diminutive and sometimes cantankerous individual, Ham Tree Harrington developed a following in the Harlem nightclubs as "The Pint-Sized Bert Williams.” Louis Hooper, pianist and mainstay of the Elmer Snowden and Bob Fuller bands in the 1920s, recalled Harrington's ongoing feud with cornet star Johnny Dunn in a 1966 Record Research interview: "Now Johnny was no trouble maker...but there was something on his mind he didn't like about Ham Tree, and Harrington knew it. Dunn got up and...said something to Harrington. Ham Tree stood up and WHAM! He hit him! The next day they were still ribbing each other.”

After several years in vaudeville, Harrington got a major break with a starring role in the 1922 Broadway productions of Strut Miss Lizzie. Another feature role followed in 1924's Dixie to Broadway with Shelton Brooks and Florence Mills, about which the New York Post commented, "Harrington pulls off one of his most original pantomimes of ghost-fright seen in a long day...it is effective beyond words.” Despite good reviews, Harrington returned to club and vaudeville work and didn't appear in another Broadway musical until the ill-fated 1930 production of J.C. Johnson's Change Your Luck, co-starring with Alberta Hunter for all 17 performances.

Harrington recorded for Brunswick and Vocalion during 1924-1925. His performance of "Nobody Never Let Me in on Nothin'” / "C.O.D. - Cash on Delivery” (Brunswick 2588, released in April 1924) reveals Harrington's slavish imitation of the Williams style. His last record, for Vocalion in 1925, shows him moving toward a less derivative style and accompanying himself on the ukulele, an instrument that Williams almost certainly would have shunned. Harrington resurfaced briefly in the 1930s, playing small comic roles in all-black films like "Keep Punching" and "The Devil's Daughter" (both 1939).

(Recently, Harrington has become the victim of a bit of creative "bixing". Several sources now claim that Jelly Roll Morton named his "Big Foot Ham" in honor of Harrington, who (like Bert Williams) sometimes wore oversized shoes in his act. The problem with this fabrication is that Morton never wrote a song entitled "Big Foot Ham," his own handwritten 1923 score being clearly titled "Big FAT Ham." In fact, "Foot" was a typo that appeared in some Parmount ad materials, an error perpetuated ad infinitum by less-than-rigorous jazz writers and reissue producers who obviously have never seen the original records or score. The correct title, which has no verifiable connection to Harrington, appeared on the labels of both the Paramount and the Gennett versions.

Eddie Hunter
Thanks to his association with Alex Rogers (Williams' collaborator as far back as 1900), Eddie Hunter is more closely linked to Bert Williams than the other performers listed here.

Hunter seems to have appeared on the scene suddenly, first attracting notice in 1923 for his starring role in the Broadway production of How Come? He also wrote the show's libretto, which was criticized at the time for borrowing too liberally from Sissle & Blake's Shuffle Along. The show opened on April 16, 1923 to generally poor reviews and ran for only 32 performances. The New York Sun huffed, "It's getting dark on Broadway. But not very dark, as the young people who make up the personnel of How Come? have hardly the shade of darkness.”

Left to right: Bert Williams, James Reese Europe, and Alex Rogers, 1908. Rogers,
one of Williams' early collaborators, later recorded several Victor sides
with Eddie Hunter. (Mainspring Press Collection)

References
"Advance Record Bulletins.” Talking Machine World, various issues, 1920–1925.
Bordman, Gerald. American Musical Theatre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Charters, Ann. Nobody: The Story of Bert Williams. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
"Jay C. Flippen to Record for the Columbia Co.” Talking Machine World, August 15, 1921.
Kidd, Jim. "Louis Hooper.” Record Research, June 1966.
Kinkle, Roger D. Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900–1950. Vol. I. New    Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1974.
Shaw, Arnold. Black Popular Music in America. New York: Schirmer Books, 1986.

© 1996 by Allan R. Sutton. Revision and additional content © 2001 by Mainspring Press. All rights reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced without prior written consent of the copyright holder(s).