Eleven African Americans, including a musician, were among the First Fleet of colonial settlers to Australia. In the 150-plus following years, African Americans visiting the region included jubilee singers, vaudevillians, sports stars and general entertainers. This book provides the only comprehensive history of more than 350 African American entertainers in Australia and New Zealand between European settlement in Australia in 1788 and the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941. Famous names covered include boxer Jack Johnson, film star Nina Mae McKinney and jazz singer Eva Taylor. Background stories provide a multidimensional view of the entertainers' time in a place very far from home.

All forms of American entertainment have been influenced by the participation of African Americans, and some forms have been invented by them, yet for much history that influence and those inventions went undocumented in the white press. For the first half of the twentieth century, the best coverage of blacks in entertainment-especially the developing motion picture industry-was in the newspapers published and circulated by the African American community. This annotated bibliography offers easy access to that coverage in four of the most influential black newspapers in the period from 1910 to 1950: the Chicago Defender, the Afro-American (Baltimore), the Los Angeles Sentinel and the New York Amsterdam News. The chronological arrangement allows the reader to trace developments in entertainment from the early days of motion pictures to mid-century. Quotations from the articles offer a taste of each newspaper's style, and extensive indexing provides quick access to names, titles, and subjects, making the book an invaluable aid to researchers.

"The stimulus this handsomely produced volume will provide to research and teaching may well surpass that offered by Dr. Southern's earlier studies. This major accomplishment belongs in the libraries of all individuals and institutions interested in any aspect of American music." Ethnomusiciology

Some Hustling This!:Taking Jazz to the World, 1914-1929 is a narrative of first encounters, notable events, and significant figures in the internationalization of jazz. The narrative is framed by Louis Mitchell’s career abroad, beginning with his first trip as a drummer with the Southern Symphony Quintette to London in 1914 and concluding with his final attempt as an entrepreneur to operate a nightclub in Paris in 1929. The 15 years of Mitchell’s European sojourn encompassed the Jazz Age, which has been dated from around the time of the end of the First World War in November 1918 to the New York stock market crash of October 1929. Some Hustling This! is the story of the young men and women who took jazz in its formative stages to the world— a story of hope, escape, and wanderlust, success, infamy, and tragedy.