Al Jolson

Jolson, circa 1916

Al Jolson was born Eizer Yoelson in the Jewish village of Srednike (Yiddish: סרעדניק) now known as Seredžius, near Kaunas in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He was the fifth and youngest child of Nechama "Naomi" (née Cantor, c. 1858–1895) and Moses Rubin Yoelson (c. 1858–1945); his four siblings were Rose (c. 1879–1939), Etta (c. 1880–1948), another sister who died in infancy, and Hirsch (Harry) (c. 1882–1953). Jolson did not know his date of birth, as birth records were not kept at that time in that region, and he gave his birth year as 1885.[13][14]

In 1891, his father, who was qualified as a rabbi and cantor, moved to New York City to secure a better future for his family. By 1894, Moses Yoelson could afford to pay the fare to bring Nechama and their four children to the U.S. By the time they arrived—as steerage passengers on the SS Umbria arriving at the Port of New York on April 9, 1894—he had found work as a cantor at Talmud Torah Congregation in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where the family was reunited.[14]^: 21–22

Jolson's mother, Naomi, died at 37 in early 1895, and he was in a state of withdrawal for seven months. He spent time at the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a progressive reformatory/home for orphans run by the Xaverian Brothers in Baltimore. After being introduced to show business in 1895 by Al Reeves, Asa and Hirsch became fascinated by it, and by 1897 the brothers were singing for coins on local street corners, using the names "Al" and "Harry". They often used the money to buy tickets to the National Theater.[1] They spent most of their days working different jobs as a team.[15]

In the spring of 1902, Jolson accepted a job with Walter L. Main's circus. Although Main had hired him as an usher, Main was impressed by Jolson's singing voice and gave him a position as a singer during the circus's Indian Medicine Side Show segment.[16] By the end of the year, the circus had folded and Jolson was again out of work. In May 1903, the head producer of the burlesque show Dainty Duchess Burlesquers agreed to give Jolson a part in one show. He performed "Be My Baby Bumble Bee", and the producer agreed to keep him, but the show closed by the end of the year. He avoided financial troubles by forming a vaudeville partnership with his brother Hirsch, a vaudeville performer known as Harry Yoelson. The brothers worked for the William Morris Agency.[17] Jolson and Harry formed a team with Joe Palmer. During their time with Palmer, they were able to gain bookings in a nationwide tour. However, live performances were falling in popularity as nickelodeons attracted audiences; by 1908, nickelodeon theaters were dominant throughout New York City. While performing in a Brooklyn theater in 1904,[18] Jolson began performing in blackface, which boosted his career. He began wearing blackface in all of his shows.[19]

1919 "Swanee" sheet music with Jolson on the cover

In late 1905, Harry left the trio after an argument with Jolson. Harry had refused his request to take care of Joe Palmer, who was in a wheelchair. After Harry's departure, Jolson and Palmer worked as a duo but were not particularly successful. By 1906[18] they agreed to separate, and Jolson was on his own.[20] He became a regular at the Globe and Wigwam Theater in San Francisco and was successful nationwide as a vaudeville singer.[18] He took up residence in San Francisco, saying the earthquake-devastated people needed someone to cheer them up. In 1908, Jolson, needing money for himself and his new wife, Henrietta, returned to New York. In 1909, his singing caught the attention of Lew Dockstader, the producer and star of Dockstader's Minstrels. Jolson accepted Dockstader's offer and became a blackface performer.[21]

According to Esquire magazine, "J.J. Shubert, impressed by Jolson's overpowering display of energy, booked him for La Belle Paree, a musical comedy that opened at the Winter Garden in 1911. Within a month Jolson was a star. From then until 1926, when he retired from the stage, he could boast an unbroken series of smash hits."[22]

On March 20, 1911, Jolson starred in his first musical revue at the Winter Garden Theater in New York City. La Belle Paree helped start his career as a singer. Opening night drew a large crowd, and he became popular with the audience by performing Stephen Foster songs in blackface. The show closed after 104 performances. After La Belle Paree, he accepted an offer to perform in the musical Vera Violetta which opened on November 20, 1911, and like La Belle Paree it was a success. In the show, he again sang in blackface and became so popular that his weekly salary of $500 (based on his success in La Belle Paree) was increased to $750.[23]

After Vera Violetta closed, Jolson starred in another musical, The Whirl of Society, propelling his career on Broadway to new heights. During his time at the Winter Garden, Jolson told the audience, "You ain't heard nothing yet" before performing additional songs. In the play, he debuted his signature blackface character "Gus".[18] Winter Garden owner Lee Shubert signed Jolson to a seven-year contract with a salary of $1,000 a week. Jolson reprised his role as "Gus" in future plays and by 1914 achieved so much popularity with theater audiences that his $1,000-a-week salary was doubled. In 1916, Robinson Crusoe, Jr. was the first musical in which he was the star. In 1918, his acting career was pushed further after he starred in the hit musical Sinbad.[24] It became the most successful Broadway musical of 1918 and 1919. "Swanee" was added to the show and became composer George Gershwin's first hit recording. Jolson added "My Mammy". By 1920, he had become the biggest star on Broadway.[25]

His next play, Bombo, became so successful that it went beyond Broadway to performances nationwide.[26] It led Lee Shubert to rename his theater Jolson's 59th Street Theatre. At the age of 35, Jolson was the youngest man in American history to have a theatre named after him.[27] But on the opening night of Bombo, the first performance at the new theatre, he suffered from stage fright, walking up and down the streets for hours before showtime. Out of fear, he lost his voice backstage and begged the stagehands not to raise the curtains. But when the curtains went up, he "was [still] standing in the wings trembling and sweating". After being shoved onto the stage by his brother Harry, he performed, then received an ovation he would never forget: "For several minutes, the applause continued while Al stood and bowed after the first act." He refused to go back on stage for the second act, but the audience "stamped its feet and chanted 'Jolson, Jolson', until he came back out". He took 37 curtain calls that night and told the audience, "I'm a happy man tonight."[27]^: 118

In March 1922, he moved the production to the larger Century Theater for a benefit performance to aid injured Jewish veterans of World War I.[28] After taking the show on the road for a season, he returned in May 1923, to perform Bombo at the Winter Garden. The reviewer for The New York Times wrote, "He returned like the circus, bigger and brighter and newer than ever.... Last night's audience was flatteringly unwilling to go home, and when the show proper was over, Jolson reappeared before the curtain and sang more songs, old and new."[29]

"I don't mind going on record as saying that he is one of the few instinctively funny men on our stage," wrote reviewer Charles Darnton in the New York Evening World. "Everything he touches turns to fun. To watch him is to marvel at his humorous vitality. He is the old-time minstrel man turned to modern account. With a song, a word, or even a suggestion he calls forth spontaneous laughter. And here you have the definition of a born comedian."[27]^: 87

Jolson had been a popular guest star on radio since its earliest days, including on NBC's The Dodge Victory Hour (January 1928), singing from a New Orleans hotel to an audience of 35 million via 47 radio stations. His own 1930s shows included Presenting Al Jolson (1932) and Shell Chateau (1935), and he was the host of the Kraft Music Hall from 1947 to 1949, with Oscar Levant as a sardonic, piano-playing sidekick. Jolson's 1940s career revival was nothing short of a success despite the competition of younger performers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and he was voted the "Most Popular Male Vocalist" in 1948 by a poll in Variety. The next year, Jolson was named "Personality of the Year" by the Variety Clubs of America. When Jolson appeared on Bing Crosby's radio show, he attributed his receiving the award to his being the only singer of any importance not to make a record of "Mule Train", which had been a widely covered hit of that year (four different versions, one of them by Crosby, had made the top ten on the charts). Jolson joked about how his voice had deepened with age, saying "I got the clippetys all right, but I can't clop like I used to."

In addition to his contribution to motion pictures as a performer, he is responsible for the discovery of two major stars of the golden age of Hollywood. He purchased the rights to a play he saw on Broadway and then sold the movie rights to Jack Warner (Warner Brothers which was the studio that had made The Jazz Singer) with the stipulation that two of the original cast members reprise their roles in the movie. The play became the movie Penny Arcade, and the actors were Joan Blondell and James Cagney, who both went on to become contract players for the studio. The two were major ingredients in gangster movies, which were lucrative for the studio.

Cagney won his Academy Award for his role in Warner Brothers' Yankee Doodle Dandy, which at the time was the studio's highest-grossing movie. The award is rarely given to performers in musicals. Ironically, Cagney, who became known for his tough guy movie roles, also made a contribution to movie musicals, like the man who had discovered him. While Jolson is credited for appearing in the first movie musical, Cagney's Academy Award-winning movie was the first movie Ted Turner chose to colorize.

When Jolson appeared on Steve Allen's KNX Los Angeles radio show in 1949 to promote Jolson Sings Again, he offered his curt opinion of the burgeoning television industry: "I call it smell-evision." Writer Hal Kanter recalled that Jolson's own idea of his television debut would be a corporate-sponsored, extra-length spectacular that would feature him as the only performer, and would be telecast without interruption. Even though he had several TV offers at the time, Jolson was apprehensive about how his larger than life performances would come across in a medium as intimate as television. He finally relented in 1950, when it was announced that Jolson had signed an agreement to appear on the CBS television network, presumably in a series of specials. However, he died suddenly before production began.[60]

Jolson and his fourth wife, Erle, 1946

Despite their close relationship while growing up, Harry Jolson (Al's older brother) did show some disdain for Jolson's success over the years. Even during their time with Jack Palmer, Jolson was rising in popularity while Harry was fading. After separating from "Al and Jack", Harry's career in show business sank. On one occasion Harry offered to be Jolson's agent, but Jolson rejected the offer, worried about the pressure he would face from his producers for hiring his brother. Shortly after Harry's wife Lillian died in 1948, the brothers became close once again.[78]

Jolson's first marriage, to Henrietta Keller (1889–1967), took place in Alameda, California, on September 20, 1907. His name was given as Albert Jolson. The couple divorced in 1919.[79] In 1920, he began a relationship with Broadway actress Alma Osbourne (known professionally as Ethel Delmar); the two were married in August 1922;[80] she divorced Jolson in 1928.[81]

In the summer of 1928, Jolson met young tap dancer, and later actress, Ruby Keeler in Los Angeles (Jolson would claim it was at Texas Guinan's night club) and was dazzled by her on sight. Three weeks later, Jolson saw a production of George M. Cohan's Rise of Rosie O'Reilly, and noticed she was in the show's cast. Now knowing she was going about her Broadway career, Jolson attended another one of her shows, Show Girl, and rose from the audience and engaged in her duet of "Liza". After this moment, the show's producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, asked Jolson to join the cast and continue to sing duets with Keeler. Jolson accepted Ziegfeld's offer and during their tour with Ziegfeld, the two started dating and were married on September 21, 1928. In 1935, Al and Ruby adopted a son, Jolson's first child, whom they named "Al Jolson Jr."[18] In 1939, however—despite a marriage that was considered to be more successful than his previous ones—Keeler left Jolson. After their 1940 divorce, she remarried, to John Homer Lowe, with whom she would have four children and remain married until his death in 1969.[18][82]

In 1944, while giving a show at a military hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Jolson met a young X-ray technologist, Erle Galbraith. He became fascinated with her and more than a year later he was able to track her down and hired her as an actress while he served as a producer at Columbia Pictures. After Jolson, whose health was still scarred from his previous battle with malaria, was hospitalized in the winter of 1945, Erle visited him and the two quickly began a relationship. They were married on March 22, 1945. During their marriage, the Jolsons adopted two children, Asa Jr. (born 1948) and Alicia (born 1949),[18] and remained married until his death in 1950.[83]

After a year and a half of marriage, his new wife had never seen him perform in front of an audience, and the first occasion came unplanned. As told by actor-comedian Alan King, it happened during a dinner by the New York Friars' Club at the Waldorf Astoria in 1946 to honor the career of Sophie Tucker. Jolson and his wife were in the audience with a thousand others, and George Jessel was the emcee.

Jolson (right) in 1924 with President Calvin Coolidge, whom he supported

Without warning, during the middle of the show, Jessel said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the easiest introduction I ever had to make. The world's greatest entertainer, Al Jolson." King recalls what happened next:

The place is going wild. Jolson gets up, takes a bow, sits down ... people start banging with their feet, and he gets up, takes another bow, sits down again. It's chaos, and slowly, he seems to relent. He walks up onto the stage ... kids around with Sophie and gets a few laughs, but the people are yelling, 'Sing! Sing! Sing!'.... Then he says, 'I'd like to introduce you to my bride,' and this lovely young thing gets up and takes a bow. The audience doesn't care about the bride, they don't even care about Sophie Tucker. 'Sing! Sing! Sing!' they're screaming again.
'My wife has never seen me entertain', Jolson says, and looks over toward Lester Lanin, the orchestra leader: 'Maestro, is it true what they say about Dixie?'[84]

Jolson was a Republican who supported Warren G. Harding in 1920 and Calvin Coolidge in 1924 for president. As "one of the biggest stars of his time, [he] worked his magic singing Harding, You're the Man for Us to enthralled audiences ... [and] was subsequently asked to perform Keep Cool with Coolidge four years later.... Jolson, like the men who ran the studios, was the rare showbiz Republican."[85] Jolson publicly campaigned for Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932.[86] By the next presidential election (1936), he was back to supporting Republican Alf Landon and would not support another Democrat for president during his life.[1][87]

Tomb of Al Jolson, at Hillside Memorial Park

While playing cards in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel at 335 Powell Street in San Francisco,[88] Jolson died of a massive heart attack on October 23, 1950. His last words were said to be "Oh ... oh, I'm going." He was 64.

After his wife received the news of his death by phone, she went into shock, and required family members to stay with her. At the funeral, police estimated that upwards of 20,000 people showed up, despite the threat of rain. It became one of the biggest funerals in show business history.[89] Celebrities paid tribute: Bob Hope, speaking from Korea via shortwave radio, said the world had lost "not only a great entertainer, but also a great citizen". Larry Parks said that the world had "lost not only its greatest entertainer, but a great American as well. He was a casualty of the [Korean] war." Scripps-Howard newspapers drew a pair of white gloves on a black background. The caption read, "The Song Is Ended."[89]

Newspaper columnist and radio reporter Walter Winchell said:

He was the first to entertain troops in World War Two, contracted malaria and lost a lung. Then in his upper sixties he was again the first to offer his singing gifts for bringing solace to the wounded and weary in Korea.
Today we know the exertion of his journey to Korea took a greater toll of his strength than perhaps even he realized. But he considered it his duty as an American to be there, and that was all that mattered to him. Jolson died in a San Francisco hotel. Yet he was as much a battle casualty as any American soldier who has fallen on the rocky slopes of Korea.... A star for more than 40 years, he earned his most glorious star rating at the end—a gold star.[90]

Friend George Jessel said during part of his eulogy:

The history of the world does not say enough about how important the song and the singer have been. But history must record the name Jolson, who in the twilight of his life sang his heart out in a foreign land, to the wounded and to the valiant. I am proud to have basked in the sunlight of his greatness, to have been part of his time.[91]

He was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. Jolson's widow purchased a plot at Hillside and commissioned his mausoleum to be designed by well-known black architect Paul Williams. The six-pillar marble structure is topped by a dome, next to a three-quarter-size bronze statue of Jolson, eternally resting on one knee, arms outstretched, apparently ready to break into another verse of "Mammy". The inside of the dome features a huge mosaic of Moses holding the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and identifies Jolson as "The Sweet Singer of Israel" and "The Man Raised Up High".[92][93]

On the day he died, Broadway dimmed its lights in Jolson's honor, and radio stations all over the world paid tributes. Soon after his death, the BBC presented a special program entitled Jolson Sings On. His death unleashed tributes from all over the world, including a number of eulogies from friends, including George Jessel, Walter Winchell, and Eddie Cantor.[92] He contributed millions to Jewish and other charities in his will.[94]

Al Jolson Way in New York City

Jolson has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to radio, motion pictures, and the recording industry.

In 2000, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.[95] Jolson is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.[96]

The U.S. Postal Service honored him by issuing a 29-cent stamp that was unveiled by Erle Jolson Krasna, Jolson's fourth wife, at a ceremony in Lincoln Center on September 1, 1994. This stamp was one of a series honoring popular American singers, which included Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Ethel Merman, and Ethel Waters. In 2006, Jolson had a street in New York named after him with the help of the Al Jolson Society.[97]

In October 2008, the documentary Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, directed by German filmmaker Andrea Oberheiden, premiered at the 50th Lübeck Nordic Film Days, Lübeck, Germany, and won 1st Prize at an annual film competition in Kiel a few weeks later.[98] In November 2007, a documentary short by the same director, A Look at Al Jolson, was winner at the same festival.[99]

With Irving Berlin, c. 1927

According to music historians Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold: "During his time he was the best known and most popular all-around entertainer America (and probably the world) has ever known, captivating audiences in the theatre and becoming an attraction on records, radio, and in films. He opened the ears of white audiences to the existence of musical forms alien to their previous understanding and experience ... and helped prepare the way for others who would bring a more realistic and sympathetic touch to black musical traditions."[100] Black songwriter Noble Sissle, in the 1930s, said "[h]e was always the champion of the Negro songwriter and performer, and was first to put Negroes in his shows". Of Jolson's "Mammy" songs, he adds, "with real tears streaming down his blackened face, he immortalized the Negro motherhood of America as no individual could."[101]

"50th Anniversary Year of Talking Pictures" stamp on first-day-of-issue cover featuring Jolson

However, Jolson's signature style, loud and passionate, was soon eclipsed by the cooler and more intimate style of the crooners, singers such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, who dominated the pop charts in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. While Jolson could and did croon, his basic style was formed in the era when a singer needed to project to the back of a theater with his own physical power; later singers who developed in the microphone era were freed from this constraint.[102][103]

People and places that have been influenced by Jolson include:

Tony Bennett

My father ... took us to see one of the first talking pictures, The Singing Fool, in which Al Jolson sang "Sonny Boy". In a way, you could say that Jolson was my earliest influence as a singer. I was so excited by what I saw that I spent hours listening to Jolson and Eddie Cantor on the radio. In fact, I staged my first public performance shortly after seeing that movie ... to imitate Jolson.... I leaped into the living room and announced to the adults, who were staring at me in amazement, "Me Sonny Boy!" The whole family roared with laughter.[104]

Irving Berlin

As the movies became a vital part of the entertainment industry, Berlin was forced to "reinvent himself as a songwriter". Biographer Laurence Bergreen wrote that while Berlin's music was "Too old-fashioned for progressive Broadway, his music was thoroughly up-to-date in conservative Hollywood." He had his earliest luck with the landmark sound film The Jazz Singer (1927), in which Jolson performed his song "Blue Skies".[105] He wrote the music for Jolson's film Mammy (1930), which included hits such as "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy" and "Mammy".[1][87]

Bing Crosby

Music historian Richard Grudens writes that Kathryn Crosby cheerfully reviewed the chapter about her beloved Bing and his inspiration, Al Jolson, where Bing had written, "His chief attribute was the sort of electricity he generated when he sang. Nobody in those days did that. When he came out and started to sing, he just elevated that audience immediately. Within the first eight bars he had them in the palm of his hand."[100] In Crosby's Pop Chronicles interview, he fondly recalled seeing Jolson perform and praised his "electric delivery".[53] Crosby's biographer Gary Giddins wrote of Crosby's admiration for Jolson's performance style: "Bing marveled at how he seemed to personally reach each member of the audience." Crosby once told a fan, "I'm not an electrifying performer at all. I just sing a few little songs. But this man could really galvanize an audience into a frenzy. He could really tear them apart."[106]

Bobby Darin

Darin's biographer, David Evanier, writes that when Darin was a youngster, stuck at home because of rheumatic fever, "[h]e spent most of the time reading and coloring as well as listening to the big-band music and Jolson records.... He started to do Jolson imitations ... he was crazy about Jolson." Darin's manager, Steve Blauner, who also became a movie producer and vice president of Screen Gems, likewise began his career "as a little boy doing Al Jolson imitations after seeing The Jolson Story 13 times".[107]

Neil Diamond

Journalist David Wild writes that the 1927 movie The Jazz Singer, would mirror Diamond's own life, "the story of a Jewish kid from New York who leaves everything behind to pursue his dream of making popular music in Los Angeles". Diamond says it was "the story of someone who wants to break away from the traditional family situation and find his own path. And in that sense, it 'is' my story." In 1972, Diamond gave the first solo concert performance on Broadway since Al Jolson, and starred in the 1980 remake of Jazz Singer, with Laurence Olivier and Lucie Arnaz.[108]

Eddie Fisher

On a tour of the Soviet Union with his then wife, Elizabeth Taylor, Fisher wrote in his autobiography that "Khrushchev's mistress asked me to sing.... I was the first American to be invited to sing in the Kremlin since Paul Robeson. The next day the Herald-Tribune headlines [read] 'Eddie Fisher Rocks the Kremlin'. I gave them my best Jolson: "Swanee", "April Showers" and finally "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody". I had the audience of Russian diplomats and dignitaries on their feet swaying with me."[109] In 1951, Fisher dedicated his "smash hit" song, "Good-bye, G.I. Al", to Jolson, and presented a copy personally to Jolson's widow.[110] With one of his later wives, Connie Stevens, he had a daughter, Joely Fisher, whose name honors Jolson.

Judy Garland

Garland performed a tribute to Jolson in her concerts of 1951 at the London Palladium and at the Palace Theater in New York City. Both concerts were to become "central to this first of her many comebacks, and centered around her impersonation of Al Jolson ... performing 'Swanee' in her odd vocal drag of Jolson."[1][87]

Ernest Hemingway

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway wrote that "Zelda Fitzgerald ... leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, 'Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?'" [111]

Jerry Lewis

Actor and comedian Jerry Lewis starred in a televised version (without blackface) of The Jazz Singer in 1959. Lewis's biographer, Murray Pomerance, writes, "Jerry surely had his father in mind when he remade the film", adding that Lewis himself "told an interviewer that his parents had been so poor that they could not afford to give him a bar mitzvah". In 1956, Lewis recorded "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby".[112]

Jerry Lee Lewis

According to singer and songwriter Jerry Lee Lewis, "there were only four true American originals: Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Jerry Lee Lewis."[113] "I loved Al Jolson," he said. "I still got all of his records. Even back when I was a kid I listened to him all the time."[114]

Mario Lanza

Mario Lanza's biographer, Armando Cesari, writes that Lanza's "favorite singers included Al Jolson, Lena Horne, Tony Martin and Toni Arden".[115]

David Lee Roth

Songwriter and lead singer of the rock group Van Halen, was asked during an interview in 1985, "When did you first decide that you wanted to go into show business?" He replied, "I was seven. I said I wanted to be Al Jolson. Those were the only records I had—a collection of the old breakable 78s. I learned every song and then the moves, which I saw in the movies."[116]

Rod Stewart

British singer and songwriter Rod Stewart, during an interview in 2003, was asked, "What is your first musical memory?" Stewart replied: "Al Jolson, from when we used to have house parties around Christmas or birthdays. We had a small grand piano and I used to sneak downstairs.... I think it gave me a very, very early love of music."[117]

Jackie Wilson

African-American singer Jackie Wilson recorded a tribute album to Jolson, You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet, which included his personal liner note, "the greatest entertainer of this or any other era.... I guess I have just about every recording he's ever made, and I rarely missed listening to him on the radio.... During the three years I've been making records, I've had the ambition to do an album of songs, which, to me, represent the great Jolson heritage.. [T]his is simply my humble tribute to the one man I admire most in this business ... to keep the heritage of Jolson alive."[118]

State of California

According to California historians Stephanie Barron and Sheri Bernstein, "few artists have done as much to publicize California as did Al Jolson" who performed and wrote the lyrics for "California, Here I Come".[119] It is considered the unofficial song of the Golden State.[120] Another example is the 1928 song "Golden Gate" (Dave Dreyer, Joseph Meyer, Billy Rose & Jolson).[1][87]

The Jazz Singer, 1927

Jolson often performed in blackface makeup.[121] Performing in blackface makeup was a theatrical convention of many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel show.[122] According to film historian Eric Lott:

"For the white minstrel man to put on the cultural forms of 'blackness' was to engage in a complex affair of manly mimicry.... To wear or even enjoy blackface was literally, for a time, to become black, to inherit the cool, virility, humility, abandon, or gaité de coeur that were the prime components of white ideologies of black manhood."[123]

In the retrospective view of a later era, however, the use of blackface has come to be viewed as implicit racism.[12][124][125] Music critic Ted Gioia, commenting on Jolson's use of blackface, wrote:

"Blackface evokes memories of the most unpleasant side of racial relations, and of an age in which white entertainers used the makeup to ridicule black Americans while brazenly borrowing from the rich black musical traditions that were rarely allowed direct expression in mainstream society. This is heavy baggage for Al Jolson.[12]

1922 sheet music

• 1946 Al Jolson in Songs He made Famous (Decca)
• 1947 Souvenir Album, Vol. 1 (Decca)
• 1948 Al Jolson, Vol. 3
• 1949 Jolson Sings Again (Decca)
• 1949 Souvenir Album, Vol. 2 (Decca)
• 1949 Souvenir Album, Vol. 4 (Decca)
• 1950 Stephen Foster Songs (Decca)
• 1951 Souvenir Album, Vol. 5 (Decca)
• 1951 Souvenir Album, Vol. 6 (Decca)[141]

• Young, Jordan R. (1999). The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio & TV's Golden Age. Beverly Hills: Past Times Publishing. ISBN 0-940410-37-0.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Al Jolson

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al Jolson.

• International Al Jolson Society
• Al Jolson recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
• Newsreel at the Internet Archive, including Jolson's death and funeral
• The Museum of Family History
• Al Jolson at Virtual History
• Radio programs at Zoot Radio Archived August 4, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
• Documentary about Al Jolson and the making of The Jazz Singer
• Al Jolson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Al Jolson at IMDb