Evelyn Whorton, m.c. with Willie Jones at right.
Willie “Ash Can” Jones, uncredited extra
Willie Jones may have had a dancing role in “Pitch” had not his partner, Pearl, gone back to New York with two other dancers. They had been traveling with Irvin C. Miller’s Brownskin Models as the Six Swingsters.
They were all talented swing dancers and veterans of the famed Harvest Moon Ball swing dance competition that were held annually at Madison Square Garden.
With the Models, Jones worked as stage manager, talent scout, and dancer. He had worked with Miller off and on since the early 1930s, first on a touring revival of Shuffle Along and then, after World War II, more regularly as Miller tried his hand at managing a Southern tent show, the Florida Blossom Minstrels, which for a while absorbed the Brownskin Models. Audiences after the war became increasingly difficult to find in DC and the north, and for many entertainers, the Southern routes were their only options to make a living as a performer, and Miller saw the territory as wide open. His plan was to rule both the theater and tented vaudeville. But he had difficulty keeping performers on the Southern routes–everyone, it seemed to Jones, was quitting and going back to New York, citing the usual: travel and working conditions and pay.
The Six Swingsters were all talented dancers but Jones called only their first names–Pearl, his partner; Jessie & Blue; and the Count & Harriet. It’s easy to see that roster in the finalists at the 1945 Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden: Willie Jones & Pearl Edwards; Jessica Cookley & James “Blue” Outlaw ; and Harriet Drayton & Count duBarry.
The Susan Massengale Papers at UNC-Chapel Hill have three tapes of Willie Jones interviews made as part of Boogie in Black and White. I’ve not yet been able to re-listen to them all. Transcripts culled from those interviews offer some hope that Jones goes into much more non-“Pitch” details–several times in the working typescript I’ve encountered comments such as “stopped typing here, irrelevant stories again.”
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–24 April 2024