Biography
Born on 22 October 1854 in Flushing, New York, USA, and passing away on 6 May 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, James A. Bland attended Howard University, earned a law degree, and later took a post at the US Patent Office. Despite these steps toward a conventional profession, he pursued a life in performance and composition instead. Early on he joined traveling minstrel companies, among them Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels, where he sang, played banjo, and shared bills with Jim Grace, Billy Kersands, and Tom Mackintosh. The troupe toured extensively, reaching audiences across Europe during an era in which even African-American performers applied blackface and trafficked in stereotypical material—an approach Bland himself adopted. His popularity peaked in 1880, when reports placed his yearly earnings in five figures, an extraordinary amount at the time, generated chiefly by an exceptionally large catalog of songs.
After two decades based in London he returned to the United States in 1901 and lived briefly in Washington, DC. By then his fortune had vanished, leaving him in straitened circumstances compounded by declining health; he succumbed to tuberculosis. Contemporary newspapers ignored his death, and more than twenty-five years elapsed before his grave received a marker.
Bland is credited with writing upwards of seven hundred songs. Among them was “Listen To The Silver Trumpet’s Sounding,” whose published score bears a dedication to the white team of Harrigan and Hart, whose work, like Bland’s own, helped spark the chalk-line walk that preceded the cakewalk vogue. Several other compositions remain in circulation, including “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” “Tell ’Em I’ll Be There,” “In The Evening By The Moonlight,” and “De Golden Wedding.” The most enduring, “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny,” prompted the recently arrived classical cellist Victor Herbert to shift toward popular composition and was later adopted as the state song of Virginia. In 1999 Dick Hyman supervised the recording Don’t Give The Name A Bad Place, which featured selections from Bland’s output alongside pieces by other songwriters of the period.
After two decades based in London he returned to the United States in 1901 and lived briefly in Washington, DC. By then his fortune had vanished, leaving him in straitened circumstances compounded by declining health; he succumbed to tuberculosis. Contemporary newspapers ignored his death, and more than twenty-five years elapsed before his grave received a marker.
Bland is credited with writing upwards of seven hundred songs. Among them was “Listen To The Silver Trumpet’s Sounding,” whose published score bears a dedication to the white team of Harrigan and Hart, whose work, like Bland’s own, helped spark the chalk-line walk that preceded the cakewalk vogue. Several other compositions remain in circulation, including “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” “Tell ’Em I’ll Be There,” “In The Evening By The Moonlight,” and “De Golden Wedding.” The most enduring, “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny,” prompted the recently arrived classical cellist Victor Herbert to shift toward popular composition and was later adopted as the state song of Virginia. In 1999 Dick Hyman supervised the recording Don’t Give The Name A Bad Place, which featured selections from Bland’s output alongside pieces by other songwriters of the period.