Bert Williams

Bert Williams, born Egbert Austin Williams on November 12 1874 in Nassau, Bahamas, emerged as the pre‑eminent Black entertainer of the vaudeville era, blazing a trail through a career that spanned three decades and reshaped American popular culture. He migrated with his family to New York City as a small child, where he grew up amid the bustling immigrant neighborhoods that would later inform his keen observational humor. By the early 1890s he joined West‑Coast minstrel troupes, meeting future partner George Walker, and together they forged the groundbreaking duo Williams & Walker, whose witty song‑and‑dance routines subverted the demeaning “coon” stereotypes even as they performed in burnt‑cork blackface. Their 1903 Broadway hit In Dahomey marked the first all‑Black musical produced on a major Broadway stage, and its success carried the pair to London, a command performance at Buckingham Palace, and a celebrated run that cemented their international fame. After Walker’s stroke in 1909, Williams reinvented himself as a solo star, captivating audiences in the Ziegfeld Follies where his signature piece “Nobody”—a plaintive, half‑spoken lament—became one of the era’s best‑selling recordings, selling between one‑hundred‑and‑fifty thousand copies. Throughout his career he recorded over a hundred songs, headlined top‑ticket vaudeville houses, and earned more than any other Black performer of his time, while simultaneously confronting segregation, hostile critics, and the “White Rats” union that sought to limit his billing. Despite his public triumphs, Williams endured profound personal sorrow; contemporaries noted a “secret sadness” behind his gentle smile, a melancholy intensified by chronic illness, alcoholism, and the relentless pressure of being a racial pioneer. He collapsed onstage in Detroit in February 1922 and died on March 4 1922 in New York City, leaving a legacy honored by Masonic rites, a Liberty ship bearing his name, and enduring influence on comedians, musicians, and scholars who recognize him as a foundational figure in American entertainment.