Butterbeans and Susie were an American

comedy duo A double act (also known as a comedy duo) is a form of comedy originating in the British music hall tradition, and American vaudeville, in which two comedians perform together as a single act, often highlighting differences in their characters' ...

comprising Jodie Edwards (July 19, 1893 – October 28, 1967) and Susie Edwards (née Hawthorne; December 1894 – December 5, 1963). They married in 1917, and performed together until the early 1960s. Their act, a combination of marital quarrels, comic dances, and racy singing, proved popular on the

Theatre Owners Booking Association Theatre Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s. The theaters mostly had white owners, though about a third of them had black owners. These included the restored Morton Theat ...

(TOBA) tour. They later moved to

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...

and appeared for a time with the

blackface Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a glo ...

minstrel troupe The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...

the Rabbit's Foot Company.Harris 1994, p. 173.

Career

Early career and marriage

Edwards began his career in 1910 as a singer and dancer. Hawthorne performed in African-American theater. The two met in 1916, when Hawthorne was in the chorus of the show '' Smart Set''. They married onstage the next year. The two began performing as a comic team. They had been touring with the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) with an African-American husband-and-wife comedy team, Stringbeans and Sweetie May. Upon the death of Stringbeans (Butler May) in 1917, a TOBA promoter asked Edwards to take the stage name Butterbeans and, with his wife, take over Stringbeans and Sweetie May's act. Butterbeans and Susie appeared for the first time shortly thereafter.

Comedy act

Butterbeans and Susie's act played up the differences between the two. Susie wore elegant dresses and presented an air of composure and sexiness. Butterbeans, in contrast, played the fool, with his too-small pants and

bowler hat The bowler hat, also known as a Coke hat, billycock, bob hat, bombín (Spanish) or derby (United States), is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown, originally created by the London hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler in 1849 and commissioned by ...

bow tie The bow tie or dicky bow is a type of neckwear, distinguishable from a necktie because it does not drape down the shirt placket, but is tied just underneath a winged collar. A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also ...

tailcoat A tailcoat is a knee-length coat (clothing), coat characterised by a rear section of the skirt (known as the ''tails''), with the front of the skirt cut away. The tailcoat shares its historical origins in clothes cut for convenient horse-riding ...

, and floppy shoes. He was loudly belligerent: "I'd whip your head every time you breathe; rough treatment is exactly what you need." However, his pugnaciousness was belied by a happy demeanor and an inability to resist Susie's charms. Whereas Stringbeans and Sweetie May stressed song and dance, Butterbeans and Susie emphasized comedy with content that was frowned on by moralists. The typical act featured a

duet A duet (italian language, Italian: ''duo'') is a musical composition for two Performing arts, performers in which the performers have equal importance to the piece, often a composition involving two singers or two pianists. It differs from a har ...

, a

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

song by Susie, a

cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Unit ...

dance, and a

comedy sketch Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches" or, "skits", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. While the form developed and became popular in ...

. Short bouts of bickering peppered the act. The humor often concerned marriage or occasionally black life in general. One of their more popular numbers was "A Married Man's a Fool If He Thinks His Wife Don't Love Nobody but Him". The act was risqué at times. One of their more popular comic songs was Susie's saucy "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll", full of racy

double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, one of which is typically obvious, and the other often conveys a message that would be too socially unacc ...

s: :Well I want a dog without bread you see. :Because I carries icmy bread with me. :. . . :Give me a big one, that's what I say. :I want it so it will fit my bread.Quoted in Watkins, p. 376. The song was accompanied by Susie's provocative dancing and Buttberbeans's

call-and-response Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...

one-liners: "My dog's never cold!" "Here's a dog that's long and lean." "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll" was one of the few songs that Okeh refused to release. The act usually ended with a song by Susie that showed that the two really were happily married, followed by Butterbeans's trademark song-and-dance number, "The Heebie Jeebies" or "The Itch". During this dance, Butterbeans thrust his hands in his pockets and began to scratch himself in time with the music. As the tempo increased, he pulled the hands back out and scratched the rest of his body. According to Stearns, this was the moment when the audience "flipped".

Recordings and film

Butterbeans and Susie made several recordings of

songs interspersed with comic banter for

Okeh Records OKeh Records () is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name originally was spelled "OkeH" from the init ...

between 1924 and 1930.Harris 1994, pp. 172–173. In 1926, they made a recording with

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...

Hot Five Hot commonly refers refer to: *Heat, a hot temperature *Pungency, in food, a spicy or hot quality Hot or HOT may also refer to: Places * Hot district, a district of Chiang Mai province, Thailand ** Hot subdistrict, a sub-district of Hot Distri ...

, a mildly salacious

number called "He Likes It Slow". In 1960, they issued an album on King Records' Festival label (FRC-7000). 78 RPM Singles - OKeh Records

Legacy

Butterbeans and Susie used their fame and influence to help younger black comedians. After seeing

Moms Mabley Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1897 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie "Moms" Mabley, was an American stand-up comedian and actress. Mabley began her career on the theater stage in the 1920s and became a veteran entertainer of the ...

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

, for example, they helped her gain acceptance at better venues. Even after leaving show business, they remained friends with many black entertainers and put up down-on-their-luck comedians in their

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

home.

Stepin Fetchit Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (May 30, 1902 – November 19, 1985), better known by his stage name Stepin Fetchit, was an American vaudevillian, comedian, and film actor of Jamaican and Bahamian descent, considered to be the first black ...

stayed with them at some point in the 1950s or 1960s. Susie Edwards died on December 5, 1963. Jody (Butterbeans) Edwards died on October 28, 1967, at the Dorchester Inn outside of Chicago IL. The Killer Blues Headstone Project placed a headstone for Susie Edwards in 2020 at Mt. Glenwood Cemetery in Thorton, IL and in 2024 placed a headstone for Jodie Edwards at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL.

References

Bibliography

*Harris, Sheldon (1994). ''Blues Who's Who''. Rev. ed. New York: Da Capo Press. *Watkins, Mel (1994). ''On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying—The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor That Transformed American Culture, from Slavery to Richard Pryor''. New York: Simon & Schuster. {{Authority control, additional=auto 20th-century American comedians 20th-century American dancers 20th-century African-American singers African-American comedians American blues singers American comedy duos American dance groups Blackface minstrel performers Okeh Records artists American vaudeville performers American comedy musicians Comedy theatre characters Theatre characters introduced in 1917 Male characters in theatre Female characters in theatre Married couples