?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
JOHN C. PAYNE (1872-1952)
Brochure depicting the singer as an impersonator of opera singer Sissieretta Jones, the "Black Patti." Illustrated pamphlet, 4 pages (200x140; 8x5½ inches) on one folding sheet; folds and wrinkling, inked date stamp, light soiling, ½ inch of loss along top edge. Los Angeles, CA, 21 November 1913.
John C. Payne was born in Alabama and supported himself as a railroad porter while he established himself as a successful singer. He first came to prominence as a member of the California Jubilee Quartet. This brochure for a coming performance by the quartet devotes the rear page to Payne. A photograph shows him seated in full drag as the famed Black opera singer Sissieretta Jones, describing him as "a man with a double voice, only impersonator of Black Patti on the Pacific Coast," with "a most wonderful lyric soprano and baritone combination of voices. . . . Let us prove that he can reach D above the staff." He is also shown in tuxedo as a member of the quartet, noting of him that "a number of difficult high soprano solos are included in the evening's program." The Quartet was touring through northern California in November 1913. On the date this pamphlet was ink-stamped, the 21 November 1913 Petaluma Argus-Courier noted their upcoming performance.
Payne later removed to England in 1919, and established himself as a composer whose works were performed by Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. His long biography on the "Afrocentric Voices in 'Classical' Music" website does not mention his early notoriety as a drag performer.
