(MUSIC) Dance to the Smooth Rhythm of the Harlem Play Girls

Sale 2271 - Lot 454

Price Realized: $ 2,880

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(MUSIC.) Dance to the Smooth Rhythm of the Harlem Play Girls. Mammoth Floor Show. 12 Colored Artists and Entertainers. Direction of Edie Crump, a Stecker Bros. Attraction. Poster 22 x 13-3/4 inches. Springfield, Ohio, 1937

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a classic "art-deco" poster for this noted all female jazz band and theatrical review. The poster features Edie Crump and a silhouette of women playing saxophones, a banjo, a trumpet, drums and vibraphone. The Harlem Playgirls were organized by Minneapolis-based drummer Sylvester Rice in 1935 and drawing from members of the popular Dixie Sweethearts, the group toured the Theatre Organization Booking Agency's circuits. TOBA was an all black management company. They performed in picture houses, jazz clubs, ballrooms and variety theatres. In the tradition of prior all-girl bands led by musical theater stars, headliners Edie Crump and Baby Briscoe both led the band as dancing, singing front women. Briscoe had gained prominence in New Orleans and had worked with Lil Hardin Armstrong's all-girl band and Joe Robichaux and his Rhythm Boys. Trombonist Lela Julius and saxophonist Vi Burnside were two of the group's leading soloists. The group appeared at the Apollo Theatre in New York in 1937 and competed in the prestigious battle of the bands contest at Chicago's Savoy ballroom against Johnny Long' group in 1938. Many members later went on to perform with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and the Prairie View Coeds.