As we do so often, this is another week in which we try to keep it in the family: Since we have profiled Will Marion Cook, let’s introduce you to his amazing wife, Abbie Mitchell. She was born on September 25, 1884, in Harlem, and named Abriea, but called Abbie. Her mother was African American and her father was of Jewish-German ancestry. Alice Payne, her maternal aunt, raised her in Baltimore and she attended a Catholic convent school.
After the death of her father, which interrupted her formal schooling in Baltimore, she returned to New York and began living with another aunt. She was 14 when she was discovered singing on a fire escape by Will Marion Cook and the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. So compelling was her voice that they signed her immediately for a leading role in “Clorindy: The Origin of the Cakewalk,” a one-act musical comedy, in 1898. Her performance, according to several reviews, was astounding and the show ran for the whole season at the Casino Roof Garden.
A year later, she married Cook and appeared in the lead role of his musical “Jes Lak White Folks.” This success was followed by her role in her husband’s “The Southerners.”
The couple had a daughter, Marion Abigail Cook, in 1900, and a son, Will Mercer Cook, in 1903. It should be noted that she studied voice with H.T. Burleigh and Emilia Serrano, along with starring in her husband’s productions, she was also a member and one of the principal singers in Joe Jordan’s Nashville Students, although they were neither from Nashville nor students. In 1905, they appeared at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theater and later toured Europe.
She was still a teenager when she was invited to appear in a Royal Command Performance for King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at Buckingham Palace.
In 1908, she performed in an operetta, “Red Moon,” composed by Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson. Five years later, she ventured into the film realm with Bert Williams, but the project was never released. She was off to Europe again in 1919 with Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra.
Abbie was in a short film by Lee de Forest in 1922, “Songs of Yesteryear,” where she sings in the newly developed sound-on-film process. It has been preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection at the Library of Congress.
Abbie took full advantage of her trips abroad, often securing vocal training from teachers such as Jean de Reszke in Paris, as well as concertizing at several venues. Back in the States, she further cultivated her natural talents at the Lafayette Theatre, and in 1924, she collaborated with her husband, Flournoy Miller, and Aubrey Lyles of “Shuffle Along,” fame. She also appeared in several Broadway productions, including “In Abraham’s Bosom,” in 1926, “Coquette” in 1927 with Helen Hayes, and Tallulah Bankhead in “The Little Foxes,” in 1939.
Abbie is perhaps best remembered for her role as Clara in the premiere of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” in 1935, which was her last musical role on stage. Her recording of “Summertime” was the first for this immortal song.
With her stage career put on hold, she took her talent to the classroom, teaching mainly at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Her son, Will Mercer Cook, was a professor at Howard University, a translator, and later appointed U.S. Ambassador to Niger and Senegal.
Abbie Mitchell died in New York on March 16, 1960, and was given a Catholic funeral. She was 75.
Find Out More
Anthologies and encyclopedia entries by editors Bruch Kellner and Darlene Clark Hine are indispensable.
Discussion
As we noted in the profile of her husband, more information is required about her marriage at such an early age.
Place in Context
Abbie Mitchell’s career on stage during the early 20th century offers an interesting and arresting perspective on the era.
This Week in Black History
July 16, 2024: Civil rights icon Bernice Johnson Reagon died in Washington, D.C. She was 81.
July 17, 2024: Acclaimed journalist, author, and teacher Robert Allen died in California. He was 82.
July 19, 2024: Sheila Jackson Lee, a long-term representative from Texas, died in Houston. She was 74.