Charles Payne and the Black Troubadours
In my first post, I tried to introduce the newspaper reports on the concert itself, how the performances were received and reviewed. In the second and third posts, I hope to dig a bit further into who these musicians were and how they came to perform in Korea. I was able to identify at least all of the three black singers. I’m yet to uncover who the Russian singer was – especially as her nationality seems to be up for debate – with some reports saying Russian, and some saying Turkish. But for now, let me take you through my discoveries about the three men, and in particular, the second tenor Charles Payne.
Who were these artists?
I took a hint from the image above, which is captioned: “from the right, Mr. Chik-seu(“칙스씨”), Mr. Doo-ee (“두이씨”), Mr. Pae-in (“패인씨”), and on the right Mrs. Ra-ee-seun-buck (“라이슨 벅 부인”)”. Since these names were only written in Korean, I had to first figure out what their names would be in English.
Mr. Pae-in seemed to be the easiest to tackle – “Pae-in” sounded a lot like the surname “Payne” so I started looking up mentions of a singer named Payne, when I came across this article: The Black Troubadours: Black Entertainers in Europe, 1896-1915 by Rainer E. Lotz2.
“In the fall of 1884, shortly after Loudin’s Fisk Jubilee Singers had sailed to Britain on the first leg of a six-year world tour, yet another former member of the original troupe, Miss Maggie L. Porter Cole, and her new husband, tenor Daniel Cole, formed their own company of Fisk Jubilee Singers, enlisting several individuals from the earlier group. […] Charles W. Payne seems to have joined Miss Cole around 1886; he too, had sung earlier with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Charles H. Lewis was a tenor who was well known around his home town of Indianapolis before he left with Miss Cole’s troupe for Europe in January 1895.” (Lotz, 1990, p. 253. My emphasis)
A man named Charles Payne was identified as becoming a member of the globe-trotting Fisk Jubilee Singers – who were doing numerous tours all over Europe, from the UK, Germany to Russia. Payne seemed to have joined the Fisk Jubilee Singers after they started on their independent tours (they are known for their fundraising tours in America, to fund Fisk University – one of the first African-American institutions to educate freed slaves in the South). After some years, he became part of a group called the Black Troubadours (also known as the Coloured Meistersingers, the Black Udels), performing all over Europe between 1895 and 1915.
I became more sure that Mr. Payne who came to Korea, was the Charles Payne of the Black Troubadours, when I saw another mention of their names in a 1996 article covering the concert.
It states that the four musicians who visited in Korea were “Chik-seu, Lae-wee-seu, Pae-in (칙스, 레위스, 페인), and a Russian woman called Ra-ee-seun-buck (라이슨벅)”. Whereas the 1920 article reads “Doo-ee (두이)”, in this one, the name “Lae-wee-seu” seemed a lot like the surname “Lewis”, by the sound of it. The print/scan quality of the 1920 article is quite poor, so I figured it could well be the letter “ㄹ” instead of a “ㄷ”.
Throughout Lotz’s article on the Black Troubadours, Charles Lewis is mentioned as one of the members of The Black Troubadours, and he had performed alongside Charles Payne.
I also found this article titled, “Fluvanna singer toured the world”4 from the Fluvanna Review which talked about the life of Charles Payne.
“Little is known about Payne and his family prior to 1880. He was born in Fluvanna around 1849, the second of nine children born to an enslaved couple named Richard and Harriet Payne. By 1870, the family was farming in Cunningham, with 21-year old Charles employed as a farm hand.”
It continues, describing how he went through different jobs, including a stint as a waiter at Harvard University dining hall. (In Lotz’s article there’s a mention of how he and the other singers would describe themselves not as professional singers, but that they had “normal” jobs – Payne had said he was a “gentlemen’s outfitter”, maybe this too was true?)
“For the next four decades, Payne lived the nomadic life of a hardworking performer. The Fisk Jubilee Singers (later renamed the Original American Jubilee Singers) eventually focused their touring primarily on Europe, where black performers were more accepted by white audiences.”
It also mentions how in 1895, Payne and three others split away from the Original American Jubilee Singers to form a male quartet called The Black Troubadours.
“Playing mostly music halls, their shows included spirituals, folk songs, comedy bits, and their show-stopper: an original song called Clever Cats Quartette, which always “amused the audience, especially on account of the ‘miaoows’ in different pitches,” said one reviewer.”
This was definitely my “Aha” moment, and I was pretty convinced that this song, “Clever Cats Quartette” was the same song that left a lasting impression on the Korean audience (if you haven’t already, there’s more about this in the first blog post). The article concluded with another promising fact about Payne’s travels during World War I, where he toured the “Far East” with the Black Troubadours, throughout Siberia, China and Japan through YMCA outposts. Finally,
“In 1920, the 71-year old singer applied for one last passport. He told the State Department, he would be touring ‘China, Hongkong (sic), India, Batavia (Dutch East Indies), the Straits Settlement, Suez ports,’ and, for the first time in 13 years, return home to the United States.”. (Michon, 2020, “Fluvanna singer toured the world“)
Unfortunately, it seems that Payne didn’t make it back to the States, because he passed away due to a heart failure in his hotel in Amritsar, India, aged roughly 72.
Given that we now know that at least two members of the group that performed in Korea – Payne and Lewis – had been part of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, I think we can also assume that the songs that they sang in Korea resembled the Jubilee Singers’ to a certain extent. Although I couldn’t find any recordings of the Black Troubadours, I did find some of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the same period. Have a listen below.
In my next and final post on this concert, I reveal my findings on the third singer, named “Chik-seu”. You can also read the first post: First Concert by African-American Singers Held in Korea.
Footnotes
- “米國黑人聲樂團(미국흑인성악단)”, Chosun Ilbo, July 29th, 1920, p.3
- Lotz, Rainer E. “The Black Troubadours: Black Entertainers in Europe, 1896-1915.” Black Music Research Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 1990, pp. 253–273., https://doi.org/10.2307/779388.
- “서양음악인 공연”, Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 6th, 1996, p.29
- Michon, Heather. “Fluvanna Singer Toured the World.” Fluvanna Review, 6 Feb. 2020, https://fluvannareview.com/2020/02/fluvanna-singer-toured-the-world/
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