Gertrude Saunders

Shuffle Along’s two female leads, Lottie Gee and Gertrude Sanders, saw their careers boosted thanks to the show. They were given different types of tunes to perform to suit their different characters. Good-girl Gee performed “Love Will Find a Way” and “I’m Just Wild about Harry.” Modern woman Saunders’s songs were the jazzier ones, “Simply Full of Jazz,” “I’m Craving for that Kind of Love,” and “Daddy.” The New York Age praised Saunders’s lusty vocals, saying “for the first time white theatregoers …are having such numbers . . . as they really should be sung.”

Unlike others in the show, Saunders already well-established on the stage and record.  Born in 1903 in Asheville, North Carolina, Saunders even attended college for a few years before joining comedian Billy King’s Chicago-based touring vaudeville troupe.  She had appeared with King’s company in the stage show Over the Top in 1919, and had hits with racy numbers like “Hot Dog.” Even before Shuffle Along opened, OKeh Records invited her to record two of her featured numbers—“I’m Crazy that Kind of Love” and “Daddy.” She was accompanied by African-American band leader Tim Brymn’s group. Listening to these recordings today it is hard to understand how revolutionary they must have sounded in 1921. It is clear that Saunders was used to projecting her voice in the days before amplification, as her powerful voice nearly leaps off the wax. However, her wide vibrato and stage-like diction seem hopelessly antique to modern ears, hardly exuding raw sexuality as they did for listeners in her day. And despite critics raving that she performed “real” African-American music, she sounds not that much different than similar white belters of the day—and nothing at all like the blues singers like Bessie Smith and her contemporaries. Nonetheless, Saunders success was such that she was soon lured away by vaudeville promoters Hurtig and Seamon promising her a $50 raise from her $125 weekly salary (about $1720 in today’s dollars) if she would open at Reisenweber’s Cabaret.

Leaving Shuffle Along turned out to be a mistake, however, although Saunders continued to appear on stage and tour through the ‘30s working with various different producers, including Flournoy Miller’s brother, Irvin’s, revues and a show produced by Bessie Smith’s husband, Jack Gee. In the late ’30s she produced her own touring show, and appeared in a minor role on Broadway in Hall Johnson’s Run Little Chillun in 1943; Johnson had been a member of the Shuffle Along Orchestra, and staged this “folk drama” as a showcase for his choir. Saunders final appearances came in the mid-to-later ’40s in a few low-budget films aimed at the African-American market before retiring from performing.  She died in 1991.