Butterbeans & Susie

Jodie "Butterbeans" Edwards and Susie Hawthorne never reached household-name status, least of all inside many white homes. From the early 1920s into the 1950s, however, the pair ranked among the most popular comedic music acts on the Black vaudeville circuit that ran through New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Billed as Butterbeans & Susie, they specialized in razor-sharp comic timing and double-entendre banter between them. Onstage and on record, Hawthorne’s portrayal of the commanding yet exasperated wife became a template for countless similar characters throughout twentieth-century stage and recorded entertainment, while Jodie Edwards turned the role of the hapless husband into a reliable source of laughter. The basic premise was familiar across show business, yet their material was judged too suggestive for white audiences. Even so, they cut dozens of sides during the 1920s, chiefly for the OKeh label. Once the Great Depression struck and nearly destroyed the recording industry, the duo stayed active mainly through live appearances and released one final record at the close of the 1950s.