Al Bernard's Complete Minstrel Folio for Stage, Radio and Home Entertainment - Book One

New York: Bibo-Lang, Inc.. Very Good+. (c.1933). Unstated edition. Softcover. [light handling wear, minor external soiling, short diagonal creasing at top right corner of front cover]. Everything you'll need to put on your very own minstrel show: "comedy recitations; Brother Polasses sermons; vaudeville acts; minstrel songs" -- a "complete two-hour minstrel show (with jokes and comedy situations)." Following four songs (lyrics only) by Al Bernard, about half of this 82-page book is taken up with the full script of the minstrel show, with lots of cringe-y "negro dialect" tomfoolery. (Songs for which both the music and lyrics are supplied are: "It's Not Funny When It Happens to You"; "Henceforth I'll Call on Friday"; "At the Pumpkin Fair in the Old Town Square"; "Prancin' Dancin' Yodelin' Man"; "Yodelin' Bill"; "Mister Black Boy Good Night"; "If He Enters That Door"; "The Race Track Blues"; "Stay Away From My Man"; and "My Ole Mule's Name is 'Iz'.") "It would take pages to tell you of [Al Bernard's] career in the world of show business," sez the Publisher's Foreword, but they manage to cram it into just one; and the man himself ("America's Premier Minstrel Man") is depicted on the front cover both as himself and in blackface. An interesting relic of a form of once-popular entertainment that's now thoroughly dead and buried (and good riddance), with Al Bernard himself pretty much forgotten -- although he does rate a Wikipedia page, where one learns that he was "one of the first white singers to record blues songs," including W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," which he recorded for nine different record labels! .