If the world of professional music had the category “most valuable player,” Jules Bledsoe (1899-1943) would have been a contender.

The Waco-native vocalist — born Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe on Dec. 29, 1899 — had a professional career spanning less than two decades. But in that period he demonstrated a versatility that delighted his global audiences, even if it did confound his critics.

His first professional gig was singing for a bankers’ convention banquet, for which he was paid the princely sum of $5 — more than $100 today.

Jules Bledsoe — making 500 dollars per week (or more than 6,000 dollars in modern funds) as one of the stars of "Showboat" — poses with his car in front of the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City.
The Scurlock Studio, NYC

Even as a college student, he’d perform concerts for black or white audiences in Waco.

After he graduated from Bishop College with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Bledsoe worked with the Civilian Chaplain Service in Virginia in World War I and also the YMCA in St. Louis, Mo., as the chapter’s musical director.

He headed to New York City to study medicine at Columbia University, when he was “discovered” by impresario Luigi Parisotti, a voice teacher who persuaded him to pursue music full time.

Bledsoe made his professional debut on Easter Sunday 1924 at New York’s Aeolian Hall with a program of Handel, Bach and Brahms.

But it was his breakout role as the stevedore Joe in Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” (1927) that won him fame as the first popularizer of “Ol’ Man River,” making the song an American classic.

In a 1932 interview, the baritone estimated he’d sung “tote that barge, lift that bale” about 20,000 times. He’d even sung a version called “Ol’ Man Ocean” at a reception that producer Florenz Zeigfeld hosted for pilot Amelia Earhart.

During his short career, Bledsoe won international praise for his ability to sing in several languages and for his vocal control. Even those who found rare technical flaws lauded his deeply touching timbre and versatility as a performer.

Bledsoe performed with the Boston Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Cleveland Stadium Opera, the Chicago Opera Company and the NYC Cosmopolitan Opera Company, among others.

He sang the role of Amonasro, king of Ethiopia and father of Aida, in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” with the Cleveland Stadium Opera (1932), the Chicago Opera Company at the Hippodrome in New York (1933) and the Cosmopolitan Opera Company, also at the Hippodrome (1934).

A highlight of his career was his title role for the European premiere, in Amsterdam, of Louis Gruenberg’s opera “The Emperor Jones” (1934), set in the steamy Caribbean during revolutionary turmoil.

And, in a bold reversal given the era, Bledsoe even appeared (in whiteface) in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” (“Players”), as Canio — the murderous clown and jealous husband of Nedda — in a theatrical troupe of comedy performers.

Bledsoe died of a cerebral hemorrhage in the home of his longtime companion and agent, Freddye Huygens of Holland, on July 14, 1943, in Hollywood, after performing during a World War II bond drive.

A week later, his funeral took place in Waco at his childhood church home, New Hope Baptist.

He is buried in Waco’s Greenwood Cemetery, where his tombstone is inscribed with music and lyrics from “Ol’ Man River”: “He just keeps rolling along.”

The Jules Bledsoe Papers are housed at The Texas Collection at Baylor University and include 86 folders of documents, programs, correspondence, newspaper clippings and music pertaining to his life and times.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

757-5746

Sources: The Jules Bledsoe Papers, Texas Collection at Baylor University; Lynnette Geary, “The Career and Music of Jules Bledsoe” (M.Mus. thesis, Baylor University, 1982); Dayton Kelley, ed., “The Handbook of Waco and McLennan County, Texas” (Waco: Texan, 1972).