Bert Williams

The output of brilliant miniatures – Jack the Bear, Ko-Ko, A Portrait of Bert Williams, Prelude to a Kiss, Concerto for Cootie – continued as he entered the 1940s with perhaps the greatest line-up he ever assembled, and in 1941 his first full-length Broadway show, Jump for Joy, introduced Just Squeeze Me and I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good.

Duke Ellington's mother dies 2011

The output of brilliant miniatures – Jack the Bear, Ko-Ko, A Portrait of Bert Williams, Prelude to a Kiss, Concerto for Cootie – continued as he entered the 1940s with perhaps the greatest line-up he ever assembled, and in 1941 his first full-length Broadway show, Jump for Joy, introduced Just Squeeze Me and I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good.

Duke Ellington's mother dies 2011

The output of brilliant miniatures – Jack the Bear, Ko-Ko, A Portrait of Bert Williams, Prelude to a Kiss, Concerto for Cootie – continued as he entered the 1940s with perhaps the greatest line-up he ever assembled, and in 1941 his first full-length Broadway show, Jump for Joy, introduced Just Squeeze Me and I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good.

Duke Ellington's mother dies 2011

WATSON: "Nobody" was made famous by Bert Williams, a popular and controversial Vaudeville artist - a black man who performed in blackface.

Jason Moran: Finding Sound, Then Making It His Own 2010

(Soundbite of song, "Study No. 6") WHITEHEAD: On his album "Ten," Jason Moran also updates 1920s stride piano, and turns vaudeville star Bert Williams 'understated "Nobody" from 1906 into a two-fisted swinger.

Jason Moran: 'Ten' Years Later 2010

(Soundbite of song, "Study No. 6") WHITEHEAD: On his album "Ten," Jason Moran also updates 1920s stride piano, and turns vaudeville star Bert Williams 'understated "Nobody" from 1906 into a two-fisted swinger.

Jason Moran: 'Ten' Years Later 2010

This coming season, I'm directing two plays at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery: Bear Country, about the legendary University of Alabama head football coach, Paul "Bear" Bryant; and Nobody, a story about Bert Williams, a black minstrel performer.

Tim Rhoze, Combining Activism and the Arts, Exclusive Interview 2009

Folklorists and record collectors, she suggests, preferred blues performers to be downtrodden, decrepit and obscure — much as Broadway audiences needed Bert Williams to black up and talk in plantation dialect.

It’s a White Thing 2008

Out of this tradition came the comedian Bert Williams.

It’s a White Thing 2008

Yet his insistence on wearing blackface was paradoxically liberating: "The real Bert Williams," he said, "is crouched deep down inside the coon who sings the songs and tells the stories … It was not until I was able to see myself as another person that my sense of humor developed."

It’s a White Thing 2008