THE CAKE WALK
495
●
(MUSIC.)
The Florida Creole Girls * Bacchus & Meallan, and others.
Group of sixteen “Real Photo Post Cards” of beautiful young women and handsome
young men, posing in the various attitudes of the popular “Cake Walk.”
France, circa 1900-1902
[700/1,000]
These young women, known as the Florida Creole Girls, performed at the Casino de Paris at
the turn of the century. They, and Bacchus & Meallan were all part of a larger group of song
and dance companies, which introduced the “Cake Walk” to Europe. The founder and head of
the Creole troupe was a Miss Shippert, who is visible in several of these photographs. The
Cake Walk made its first public appearance at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial, which fea-
tured blacks singing “plantation songs” and doing a dance called the “Chalk-line walk.”
Similar routines found their way into the repertoires of most minstrel shows from the late
1870’s on. A “Grand Cakewalk was held at Madison Square Garden in 1897, the largest
venue in New York City.
495
494
●
(MUSIC.) RUCKER, JOHN, “THE ALABAMA BLOSSOM.”
Small flyer-
program for John W. Vogel’s Afro-American Mastodon Minstrel, combined with
the historical “Darkest America.”
10
1
⁄
2
x 4
5
⁄
8
inches; paper lightly toned.
[New York?], 1898
[400/600]
An uncommon flyer advertising a minstrel program headlined by John Rucker, one of the most
famous black minstrel song and dance men of the day. John Rucker and his company performed
in New York’s Harlem. This flyer is headed “The Masonic!,” possibly Brooklyn’s Masonic Hall.
