I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.
The first half of 'Book Reports' deals with the history of popular music and rock criticism. When I hooked all those historical pieces together, building on the minstrelsy piece, it became my history of popular music.
Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form.
I'm not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days.
To learn the history of the banjo is to recover the actual history of America.
Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well remembered form in each old tree And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy.
Not that long ago - in my parents' lives, in fact - actors in minstrel shows wore blackface to mimic and mock African Americans. These performances were based in contempt and gave people an opportunity to act out their prejudices.
I think when black performers performed in blackface, they were kind of taking back slave songs, but it was still a little bit iffy because they were performing, a lot of times, for white audiences who found it hilarious.
A black face, run-down shoes and elbow-out make-up give me a place to hide. The real Bert Williams is crouched deep down inside the coon who sings the songs and tells the stories.
