1902: Under the Bamboo Tree

J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954); Robert “Bob” Cole (1868–1911)

I first heard “Under the Bamboo Tree” when I watched Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien sing it in the 1944 film, Meet Me in St Louis. This was in 1961. The composer, John Rosamond Johnson, had studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and started his musical career as a public school teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was raised. In 1899, Johnson and his older brother, James Weldon Johnson (a prominent civil rights leader) moved to New York to pursue a career in show business, and in 1900, he began a successful collaboration with Bob Cole. “Under the Bamboo Tree” was one of their first efforts. They also produced a popular all-Black operetta, The Shoo-Fly Regiment (1906), for which the musical director was James Reese Europe, as well as The Red Moon (1908), a Native American operetta, for which the Iroquois Nation made J. Rosamond Johnson an honorary chief.
J. Rosamond Johnson is probably best known for the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” He composed the music and his brother wrote the lyrics. It was so popular that the NAACP dubbed it, “The Negro National Anthem.” The multitalented Johnson was also an actor and an original cast member of Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess (1934).