Can’t Stand Still by Michael K Johnson
Born in 1893 into the only African American family in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, Emmanuel Taylor Gordon (1893–1971) became an internationally famous singer in the 1920s at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. With his musical partner, J. Rosamond Johnson, Gordon was a crucially important figure in popularizing African American spirituals as an art form, giving many listeners their first experience of black spirituals.Despite his fame, Taylor Gordon has been all but forgotten, until now. Michael K. Johnson illuminates Gordon's personal history and his cultural importance to the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, arguing that during the height of his celebrity, Gordon was one of the most significant African American male vocalists of his era. Gordon's story—working in the White Sulphur Springs brothels as an errand boy, traveling the country in John Ringling's private railway car, performing on vaudeville stages from New York to Vancouver to Los Angeles, performing for royalty in England, becoming a celebrated author with a best-selling 1929 autobiography, and his long bout of mental illness—adds depth to the history of the Harlem Renaissance and makes him one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century.
Through detailed documentation of Gordon's career—newspaper articles, reviews, letters, and other archival material—the author demonstrates the scope of Gordon's cultural impact. The result is a detailed account of Taylor's musical education, his career as a vaudeville performer, the remarkable performance history of Johnson and Gordon, his status as an in-demand celebrity singer and author, his time as a radio star, and, finally, his descent into madness. Can't Stand Still brings Taylor Gordon back to the center of the stage.
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Pieces of Freedom
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The Nine O'Clock Whistle
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The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer
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African American Religion and the Civil Rights Movement in Arkansas
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A Songbook of Slavery and Emancipation
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Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years
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Activism in the Name of God
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The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner
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Perspectives on Percival Everett
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City Son
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Black Saturation
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Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos
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Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement
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Black and More Than Black
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Labor Pains
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Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought
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Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt
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All Stories Are True
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The Postwar African American Novel
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In the Lion's Mouth
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Borders of Equality
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Fame to Infamy
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This Woman's Work
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Shadowing Ralph Ellison
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The African American Sonnet
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African American Haiku
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Rediscovering Frank Yerby
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Making a Way Out of No Way
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Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America
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Unexpected Places
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The Souls of White Folk
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The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello
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African American Preachers and Politics
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Raised Up Down Yonder
Michael K. Johnson is professor of English at University of Maine at Farmington. He is author of Black Masculinity and the Frontier Myth in American Literature and Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West, the latter published by University Press of Mississippi.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781496821959 |
| ISBN 10 | 1496821955 |
| Title | Can’t Stand Still |
| Author | Michael K Johnson |
| Series | Margaret Walker Alexander Series In African American Studies |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | University Press of Mississippi |
| Year published | 2019-02-28 |
| Number of pages | 280 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |