Background
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was born on May 20, 1808 of poor parents in New York City.
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was born on May 20, 1808 of poor parents in New York City.
Rice received some formal education in his youth.
Although trained as a wood carver, he early became a supernumerary at the Park Theatre. Abandoning his work as an artisan, he took to the open road as an itinerant player, and made his way to the Ohio Valley frontier, where he was employed, under the management of Noah Miller Ludlow in Ludlow and Smith's Southern Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, as property man, lamp lighter and stage carpenter.
In 1828, he played minor stock parts, and between acts, presented negro imitations. It was as an interpolation between the acts of Solon Robinson's The Rifle that Rice first sang and jumped "Jim Crow. "
He found the pattern for his stage success in the performance of a negro whom he encountered in Louisville, cleaning the horses in the stable-yard near the theatre where Rice was employed, crooning an odd melody, doing a curious shuffling step whenever he reached the chorus of his song, and ending with a little jump which set his "heel-a-rickin. " Rice apparently concluded that an imitation of the walk and dress of this negro would be welcomed by American audiences as a variation from the stage Irishman with his shillalah. He memorized the old stanzas, improvised many new ones to fit local situations, and his song and dance became a minstrel sensation. He was equally successful in his mimicry of the plantation hand and in his later creation of "the dandy negro. " Though the stanzas multiplied by the hundreds, the chorus of "Jim Crow" remained the same: "First on de heel tap, den on de toe, Ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow. Wheel about and turn about and do jis so, And ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow. "
In 1828-29, Rice appeared at the Columbia Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he repeated his success as the impersonator of the shiftless "Jim Crow, " William Cumming Peters prepared the song for publication. It became the "song hit" of America and England.
November 12, 1832, marked his first New York appearance in the rôle of "Jim Crow. " In turn, he visited Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington. In the national capital, he used as a partner the four-year-old Joseph Jefferson, 1829-1905, dressed as a miniature "Jim Crow. " In 1836, he played with phenomenal success at the Surrey Theatre in London, and negro minstrelsy became so popular there, that for the next generation American minstrel troupes made extended tours through the British Isles.
Rice himself played in few minstrel companies. He preferred to act alone, or between the acts of other plays. Charley White's Serenaders and Wood's Minstrels were among the few minstrel troupes to enlist his talents. Although one of the greatest drawing cards of his day at the box office, Rice indulged in so many extravagances and eccentricities that he was in real financial distress when he died in New York City, the victim of paralysis.
He was buried beside his wife and their infant children in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
He is known as "the father of American minstrelsy". He wrote numerous negro extravaganzas and thus helped to create what was known as "Ethiopian Opera. " In these "operas, " he introduced old negro songs into his own libretto. His most popular pieces were a negro burlesque of Othello, Bone Squash Diavolo - a travesty on Fra Diavolo, Long Island Juba, Jumbo Jum, Ginger Blue, and Jim Crow in London. These burlesques were the patterns for the skits which became fixed parts of minstrel-show programs in later years. Although he was not the first burnt-cork performer, it was Rice's phenomenal success that brought in the vogue for "negro specialists. " In the 1840's, the standard American minstrel show evolved from these specialties, and became a unique American contribution to the history of the stage. Negro minstrelsy remained the most popular American form of entertainment from 1840 to 1880. Rice also adapted and popularized a traditional slave song called "Jump Jim Crow".
On June 18, 1837, he had married Charlotte B. Gladstone of London, England.
