She Filled Up the Saucer: The Story of Eva Jessye
Andrew S. Kohler, PhD.
We as black artists feel that we have a responsibility not only to ourselves but to our fellow Americans and people all over the world to be depicted in a manner that is truly representative of blacks in that particular time in our culture. —Eva Jessye, undated letter
Content Notice
Several of the documents below contain discussion of racism, and a number include racial slurs.
Eva Jessye (1895–1992)
Eva Jessye was an eminent choral director and civil rights activist during the twentieth century, garnering praise from Coretta Scott King. Jessye was born in Kansas in 1895 and lived in several east coast and mid-western states in her 97-year life. She studied at Western University (Kansas) and Langston University (Oklahoma), and in New York with William Mercer Cook (1869–1944), a composer, choral director, and violin of the Harlem Renaissance. Cook had studied with Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), a Czech composer who spent several years in America in the 1890s and declared that the roots of American music should be in the traditions of black and indigenous peoples. Jessye founded a chorus, which participated in the premieres of two major American operas, both of which broke ground in using black casts, although both were created by white composers and librettists. These were Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and the Gershwins’ and Heywards’ Porgy and Bess (1935). Jessye also was a composer in her own right, writing several arrangements of spirituals and large-scale oratorios. Her chorus also sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
The Bentley Historical Library houses the Eva Jessye papers, hereafter abbreviated as EJP. These papers include correspondence, music, recollections, and notes for a book on Porgy and Bess that regrettably did not reach fruition.
Porgy and Bess (1935)
Jessye may be best known for her work on Porgy and Bess, a fact that she sometimes resented, despite her appreciation and dedication to that work, when she felt that it overshadowed her other achievements. This fact underlies the quandary of Porgy and Bess: it is an opera for a black cast created by two white Jewish brothers, George (1898–1937) and Ira (1896–1983) Gershwin, and a white married couple, DuBose (1885–1940) and Dorothy (1890–1961) Heyward. The degree to which it paints an accurate or constructive picture of a particular slice of African-American life, and the question as to whether this project should have been undertaken by white creators, have been contended topics. Jessye’s papers reveal that the black cast of early productions did have some degree of agency, from the use of improvisation to the Crab Man’s number (inspired by a cast member of the Heywards’ stage play Porgy on which the opera is based[1]). Fortunately, today we are seeing increasing opportunities for black opera singers, who in the past have been largely relegated to Porgy and Bess, and increasing recognition of such Gershwin contemporaries as William Grant Still, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and others. The Metropolitan opera’s 2019–2020 season features both Porgy and Bess and Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of the same title by Charles Blow.
Jessye’s papers contain firsthand accounts of the discrimination and segregation that the cast faced on tours through the American south, including descriptions of the surprised reactions of immigrants in the orchestra who “thought this was a democratic country.” These recollections highlight the background of injustice against which Porgy and Bess and its source materials were created, an especially important consideration as contemporary performances have undermined the work’s themes of racism and ableism.
[1] Dorothy and DuBose Heyward, Porgy: A Play in Four Acts (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1928), xviii.
Further Resources
- For interviews with the original Porgy and Bess—Todd Duncan (1903–1998) and Anne Brown (1912–2009), see this documentary (addressing issues of the white authorship of the black story), this interview with Duncan (addressing his struggles with racism), and this interview with Brown ( preview here ).
- For performances of the Eva Jessye Choir and of Jessye’s music, see:
- The elegy for the those killed in the hurricane from Porgy and Bess , sung by the Eva Jessye Choir
- Jessye’s 1927 arrangements of the spirituals “Bles’ My Soul an’ Gone” and “ I ’ m Po ’ Lil ’ Orphan ” performed by soprano Marti Newland and pianist Artis Wodehouse
- For more on contemporary black singers’ perspectives on Porgy and Bess, see the following resources:
- The principals from the 2018 test performance (Ann Arbor, MI) of the new edition share their perspectives .
- Distinguished tenor and veteran Sporing Life George Shirley shares his thoughts at the symposium for the test performance and in this later video .
- Soprano Lenora Green-Turner, who has sung the roles of Lily and the Strawberry Woman, addresses Gullah diction in the opera .
- Soprano Kelly Bixby presents on her interviews with contemporary singers .
- For African-American artists performing their arrangements of Porgy and Bess, see
- Nina Simone , Sarah Vaughan , and Billie Holiday singing “I Loves You Porgy”
- Albums by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong , and by Miles Davis
- The Don Shirley Trio’s instrumental suite and arrangement of the trio “Where’s My Bess”
- For a selection of works by African-American composers who were active at the same time as Gershwin, see:
- Florence Price (1887–1953), Symphony No. 1 in E minor
- William Grant Still (1895–1978), And They Lynched Him on a Tree and Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American”
- Margaret Bonds (1913–1972), Dream Portraits (“ Minstrel Man ,” “ Dream Variations ,” “ I, Too ”—texts by Langston Hughes) and Troubled Water
- For more on Porgy and Bess, see:
- Andrew Kohler discussing leitmotifs in the opera and the character of Bess .
“Some Wept at the Injustice”: Encounters with Racism
In contemporary performances of Porgy and Bess, the issues of racial injustice are often downplayed. The one line referencing enslavement is in a scene that is frequently cut (the episode with Mr. Archdale in Act II, Scene 1), and the removal of racial slurs for the white characters, combined with cartoonish performances, dulls the impact of the pivotal moments in the opera. Jessye’s own accounts of the racism and segregation that the original company endured are a stark reminder of the context in which this work was created. As the cast had to endure slurs and segregation in real life, it is important to honor their experiences by presenting the scenes in the opera depicting white supremacy with due gravity.
Here, Jessye recalled the realities of Jim Crow and segregation, as experienced by the first cast of Porgy and Bess. Alexander Smallens (1889–1972) conducted the orchestra, and Warren Coleman (1900–1968) played Crown, an antagonist. Of particular note is the fact that the ensemble for Porgy and Bess faced anti-Semitism as well as racism, and Jessye wondering if Smallens only was disturbed by segregation when it inconvenienced his chess game.
Jessye recalls a sobering incident of segregation in a Mississippi theater and its effects on the company as they had to play in a venue that reinforced their second-class citizenship.
In these notes from the 1952 production by Blevins Davis (1903–1971) and Robert Breen (1909–1990), Jessye first recalls yet another “great hardship” as the result of segregation. William Warfield (1920–2002) was one of the most distinguished interpreters of the role of Porgy, in this production alongside Leontyne Price (b. 1927), whom he married before the European tour in 1952. They separated in 1967.
In the second portion of the page, Jessye describes Lorenzo Fuller (1919–2011) filling the role of the dope peddler Sporting Life before the role was taken by the acclaimed jazz musician Cab Calloway (1907–1994). Of special note is the description of Fuller’s performance as “the epitome of evil” and the concern that Calloway would be too much his usual “hi-de-ho character.” While Sporting Life has been described as a manifestation of the minstrel Zip Coon character, Naomi André has observed that those characters of Porgy and Bess in whom one may find traces of minstrel stock characters have evolved far beyond those disturbing origins (see Further Reading below), and Jessye’s account confirms an earnest effort to make Sporting Life not into Zip Coon (a character whose self-styled sophistication and ambition are meant to be mocked), but rather into a truly threatening villain. Wayne Shirley has called Sporting Life “the most Mephistophelian character in opera not to be named Mephistopheles.”[1]
[1] Personal correspondence, 23 Feb 2018.
An Assertion of Agency
In this letter, Jessye, on behalf of herself and her colleagues, advocates for Porgy and Bess to be a better vehicle for black representation than it sometimes became under unsatisfactory directors. The insistence that the opera be “truly representative of blacks in that particular time of our culture” clearly demonstrates Jessye’s and her colleagues’ assertion of their agency in telling a story about their own culture. Ella Gerber (1916–2010), formerly stage manager for Robert Breen, directed numerous productions of the opera beginning in 1958 and continuing through the 1980s, at times the favored director of the Gershwin estate.[1]
[1] Ellen Noonan, The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America’s Most Famous Opera (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 280 and 288.
Todd Duncan, the original Porgy, recounted the 1976 Houston Grand Opera production of Porgy and Bess, which restored the work to a form much closer to its original after decades of it having been turned into a musical theater piece, with large portions of the score replaced by dialogue. Duncan felt that in the effort to establish the work’s status as an opera, the cast treated it too much like traditional repertoire and lost the elements of African-American musical tradition.
Praise from Coretta Scott King
Jessye was sufficiently involved in the Civil Rights Movement to draw the attention of Coretta Scott King. The following correspondence is found in EJP, Box 1, Folder “Correspondence—King, Coretta Scott.”
Multi-Cultural Vision
In this letter addressed to “Still” (possibly the black composer William Grant Still, a major figure in American music), Jessye describes her feelings toward the South. Her desire to create a multiracial and multicultural ensemble demonstrates her commitment to using the arts as a uniting force.
“Fill Up the Saucer”
Eva Jessye intended to write a book about her experiences with Porgy and Bess, which unfortunately fell through. The details are not entirely clear based from the documents that survive in her archive (see below).
The title Fill Up the Saucer refers to a portion of the opera in which the character of Serena is attempting to raise money to bury her dead husband, who ignored her advice to join the “burying lodge” (i.e., to have burial insurance), using a saucer for the collection. Here is a concert arrangement of that portion of the opera, performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Cape Town Opera Chorus (directed by Marvin Kernelle), and conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada. The featured soloists include Goitsemang Lehobye, Babongile Manga, Pumza Mxinwa, and Lindile Kula.
This piece of cardboard contains a number of Jessye’s assorted thoughts for Fill Up the Saucer, including some of her salient memories from the opera. These include some of the most powerful moments from the original cast, beginning with Ruby Elzy (1908–1943) singing Serena’s prayer for Bess’s recovery ( sung here by Wilma Shakesnider ). She also cited Anne Brown attempting to drive away the dope peddler Sporting Life, preying on her at an especially vulnerable moment. Elsewhere, Jessye said that Brown “gave it such a gut-bucket quality that it just wrenched your heart,” and even regretted that the opprobrious language of the original was altered (it is restored in this performance with Clamma Dale ).[1] She also recalled Pryce and Warfield, presumably shortly after their marriage, in the love duets in the 1950s, and a performance of the street cries in Act II (a slice-of-life scene typical of verismo opera). Also within this document, Jessye gave what appear to be her own philosophical thoughts, as “God enters by a private door into every individual.”
[1] Hollis Alpert, The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess: The Story of an American Classic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 169, internal quotation marks omitted.
In this document, Jessye poses a critical question: why have those who brought Porgy and Bess to life not been included in the telling of its story? To do this was the goal of her proposed book, and one may lament that it never reached fruition.
Boldly weighing in on the question as to whether a person accurately can—or should—represent a culture to which they do not belong, especially when the culture has been marginalized, Jessye wondered if George Gershwin may have had “one drop,” referring to the notion that a single “drop” of African blood was enough to make a person black. This is especially extraordinary given that the “one drop rule” is invoked usually in the enforcement of white supremacy, as in a powerful scene in Edna Ferber’s novel Show Boat (1926), made into a musical (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.[1]
[1] Edna Ferber, Show Boat (New York: Vintage Books, 2014), 109; Oscar Hammerstein II, Show Boat: A Musical Play in Two Acts (London: Chappell & Co. Ltd., 1934), 34.
Those anxiously awaiting Jessye’s book included the two creators of Porgy and Bess still living, Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin, as well as one of the most celebrated figures in American music, Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990).
For reasons difficult to piece together through what has been preserved in the EJP, the book deal for Fill Up the Saucer, despite its glowing endorsements, never came to pass. One only can contemplate the loss for American music and African American artists that this failure (not Jessye’s) represents.
Disappointments
Beyond the loss of her book deal, Jessye did not always receive the due respect and praise that she deserved. The following letters—all from EJP, Box 1, Folder “Correspondence—Jessye, Eva”—reflect her frustration at being under-appreciated by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, having her collection be neglected, and by being remembered only for her work on Porgy and Bess, rather than her mentorship of so many young artists.
One of Jessye’s Own Compositions
One of Jessye’s most ambitious works was the “folk oratorio” Paradise Lost and Regained (1934), an impressive melding of European canonical literature—the text of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667)—and Negro spirituals. The following pages come from a coil-bound vocal score, handwritten, which has photocopied pages of Milton’s poetry pasted in (EJP, Box 3, Folder “PL Score, Vocal”).
Further Reading
- Alpert, Hollis. The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess: The Story of an American Classic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
- André, Naomi. Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.
- André, Naomi. “From Otello to Porgy: Blackness, Masculinity, and Morality in Opera.” In Blackness in Opera, edited by Naomi André, Karen M. Bryan, and Eric Saylor, 11–31. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
- André, Naomi. “Complexities in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess: Historical and Performing Contexts.” In The Cambridge Companion to Gershwin, edited by Anna Harwell Celenza, 182–196. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
- Baldwin, James. “On Catfish Row: ‘Porgy and Bess’ in the Movies.” In James Baldwin: Collected Essays, 616–621. New York: Library of America, 1998.
- Black, Donald Fisher. The Life and Work of Eva Jessye and Her Contributions to American Music. PhD. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1986.
- Chadwick, Jocelyn. The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
- Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership. New York: New York Review of Books, 2005.
- Decker, Todd. Who Should Sing “Ol’ Man River”? The Lives of an American Song. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Farmer, Ashley D. “In Search of the Black Women’s History Archive.” Modern American History, Vol. 1 (2018): 289–293.
- Ferber, Edna. Show Boat. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.
- Hammerstein, Oscar II. Show Boat: A Musical Play in Two Acts. London: Chappell & Co. Ltd., 1934.
- Heyward, Dorothy and DuBose. Porgy: A Play in Four Acts. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1928.
- Heyward, DuBose. Porgy. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001.
- Horowitz, Joseph. “On My Way”: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
- Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. It’s Our Music Too: The Black Experience in Classical Music. Los Angeles: Middle Passage Press, 2016.
- Jenkins, Lynnel. The Evolution of Eva Jessye’s Programming as Evidenced in Her Choral Concert Programs From 1927–1982. DMA dissertation, University of Arizona, 2016.
- Jessye, Eva. “‘Porgy’ A Stellar Production.” The Afro American (Baltimore), 22 October 1927 (37th Year, No. 7), p. 8.
- Morrison, Toni. The Origin of Others. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2017.
- Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 2007.
- Noonan, Ellen. The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America’s Most Famous Opera. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
- Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
- Seidman, Peter. “Eva Jessye.” The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (1990): 258–263.
- Standifer, James. “Jessye, Eva.” Grove Music Online, 2001, https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.48273 .
- Wilson, Doris Louise Jones. Eva Jessye: Afro-American Choral Director. PhD. dissertation, Washington University, 1989.
- Williams, Jeffrey J. “Historicizing African American Literature: An Interview with Ken Warren.” symploke, Vol. 25, Nos. 1–2 (2017): 553–566.
- Wintz, Cary D. and Paul Finkelman, editors. Encylopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Routledge, 2004.