Brevities reports on New York’s ‘pansy’ balls, 1932. Public domain.
Liberace on the cover of Confidential. Author’s own collection.
Cris Williamson’s album The Changer and the Changed. Author’s own collection.
John ‘Smokey’ Condon, circa 1974. Photo by E.J. Emmons, from the collection of John Condon. Used by permission.
Marc Almond featured on the cover of Gay Times, 1987. Author’s own collection.
Adam Lambert performing with Queen, 2014. Photo by DianaKat/Creative Commons.
Holly Near. Photo by Irene Young. Used by permission.
Patrick Haggerty performing at Seattle Pride, 2000. Used by permission of Patrick Haggerty.
Endnotes
Introduction
1 Author interview with Sean Dickson, February 2017
2 ‘“Eugene Onegin” is Final Novelty at the Metropolitan’, Musical America Vol 31, Music Publications Limited, 1919
3 ‘Stock, Aitken, Waterman: the Biggest Hitmakers of the 80s’, Mark Lindores, Attitude, 5 July 2015
4 ‘Judas Priest’s Rob Halford: “I’ve Become the Stately Homo of Heavy Metal”’, Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, 3 July 2014
5 ‘Tune In, Cheer Up, Rock Out’, David Cavanagh, Q, October 1994
Chapter 1 – David Bowie Made Me Gay
1 ‘How I Came Out of the Closet and into the Streets’, Kid Congo Powers, Huffington Post, 3 March 2014
2 ‘Holly Johnson Relaxed’, Richard Smith, Gay Times, April 1994
3 Author Interview with Paul Rutherford, February 2017
4 Author Interview with Andy Partridge, February 2017
5 Author interview with Andy Bell, February 2017
6 ‘I Always Dreaded This Day; I Hoped he was Immortal’, Boy George, The Daily Mail, 12 January 2016
7 ‘Marc Almond: “I’ve had the chance to be subversive in the mainstream”’, Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 23 October 2016
8 Author interview with Tom Robinson, November 2016
9 ‘David Bowie: A Candid Conversation With the Actor, Rock Singer and Sexual Switch-hitter’, Playboy, September 1976
10 ‘I Was the Filling in a “Cookie” with David Bowie and Mick Jagger’, Marissa Charles, The New York Post, 17 January 2016
11 ‘David Bowie “Changed My Life Forever”’, Marilyn Manson, rollingstone.com, 11 January 2016
12 Guillermo Del Toro quoted from Twitter, 11 January, 2016
13 New Musical Express, 12 March 1974
14 ‘Freddie Mercury: More than Flash’, Bruce Britt, Los Angeles Daily News, 27 November 1991
15 Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury, Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne (Blink Publishing, London, 2016)
16 Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury, Lesley-Ann Jones (Touchstone, New York, 2011), p. 91
17 ‘Freddie’s Song of Sadness’, Annette Witheridge & Gerry Brown, News of the World, 24 November 1991
18 ‘Oh, You Pretty Thing’, Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 22 January 1972
19 ‘Dusty Springfield’, Ray Connolly, Evening Standard, September 1970
20 Author Interview with Ray Connolly, April 2017
21 ‘The Mad, Bad and Sad Life of Dusty Springfield’, Roger Lewis, The Spectator, 2 August 2014
Chapter 2 – Pretty Baby
1 Interview with Johnny St. Cyr about Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson, Morton’s Compositions, and Arranging Old Tunes, Alan Lomax, 2 February 1949. Association for Cultural Equity, 2008
2 Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues, Vic Hobson (University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS, 2014)
3 In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz, Donald M. Marquis (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA 1978), p. 4
4 They All Played Ragtime, Rudy Blesh (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1950), p. 164
5 Creating Jazz Counterpoint, New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues, Vic Hobson
6 Mr Jelly Roll, Alan Lomax (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1950), pp. 50-1
7 Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows, Henry T. Sampson (Scarecrow Press, Inc., Lanham, MD, 2014), p. 67
8 ‘He Knew A Thousand Songs’, Roy J. Carew, Jazz Journal, March 1952
9 Storyville, New Orleans, Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-light District, Al Rose (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1974), p. 110
10 Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, Thomas Brothers (W. W. Norton & Company, London, 2006), p. 66
11 Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It, Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (Courier Corporation, North Chelmsford, MA, 1955), p55
12 Mr Jelly Roll, Lomax, p. 43
13 ‘He Knew A Thousand Songs’, Roy J. Carew, Jazz Journal, March 1952
14 Mr Jelly Roll, Lomax, p. 45
15 Author interview with St. Sukie de la Croix, November 2016
16 ‘On and Off the Stroll’, Columbus Bragg, The Chicago Defender, 17 October 1914
17 ‘On and Off the Stroll’, Columbus Bragg, The Chicago Defender, 5 September 1914
18 Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It, Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Dover Publications, 1955, p88
19 They All Played Ragtime, Blesh, p. 162
20 Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong (Prentice Hall Inc, New York, 1954,) pp. 96-7
21 ‘Jazz Artist Recalls Storyville Tunes’, Lodi News-Sentinel, 15 August 1988
22 ‘Testimonial to Tony Jackson’, Billboard, 5 March 1921
23 ‘Big Benefit’, The Chicago Defender, 26 February 1921
24 Film Voices: Interviews from Post Script, Gerald Duchovnay (ed.), State University of New York Press, 2004, p234
25 Mr Jelly Roll, Lomax, p. 129
Chapter 3 – Bull Dyker Blues
1 ‘2011 Chicago G/L Hall of Fame to Induct 11 People’, www.windycitymediagroup.com, 21 September 2011
2 Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, Sandra R. Lieb (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 1981), p. 18
3 Quoted in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The Poems, 1921-1940, (University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 2001), p. 71
4 Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent, ed. Thomas H. Wirth (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2002)
5 ‘Aeolian Company Announces First List of Race Records’, Talking Machine World, 26 July 1932
6 ‘Hamilton Lodge Ball an Unusual Spectacle’, New York Age, 6 March 1926
7 ‘Fag Balls Exposed’, Buddy Browning, Brevities, 14 March 1932
8 The Harlem Renaissance, Steven Watson (Pantheon Books, New York, 1995)
9 ‘Children to Have Preference at Saturday Carnival Matinee’, Benton Harbor News Palladium, 2 August 1929
10 Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz: Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff (University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS, 2009), p. 261
11 New York Age, 16 November 1911
12 New York Age, 18 March 1909
13 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time, Gene Goblinski (ed.), Rosen Publishing Group, New York, 2009, p. 162
14 Yonder Come the Blues, Paul Oliver, Tony Russell et al. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001), p. 262
15 ‘Special Columbia Publicity’, Talking Machine World, 15 October 1923
16 ‘Atlanta: Business Satisfactory Throughout Southern Territory’, Talking Machine World, 15 July 1923
17 ‘Bessie Smith Scores Success’, Talking Machine World, 15 August 1923
18 Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, Lieb
19 ‘Store Concert by Bessie Smith Helps Dealer Sales’, Talking Machine World, 15 December 1925
20 New York Recorder, 11 December 1933
21 Bessie, Chris Albertson (Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, London, 1972), p. 117
22 Bessie, Albert
son, p. 120
23 Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality In the Harlem Renaissance, James F. Wilson (University of Michigan Press, 2010)
24 Bessie, Albertson, p. 32
25 ‘Reflections on the Origins of a Jazz Tune’, International Discophile, Issue 1, Summer 1955, p176
26 ‘The Life And Death of Bessie Smith’, Kay Mott, The Philadelphia Enquirer, 2 December 1961
27 ‘The Life And Death of Bessie Smith’, Kay Mott, The Philadelphia Enquirer, 2 December 1961
28 Chicago Defender, 7 April 1934
29 ‘I Am a Woman Again’, Bentley, Gladys: Ebony Magazine, August 1952
30 Jet, 28 January 1954
Chapter 4 – The Pansy Craze
1 The Real New York, Helen Worden (Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1932), p. 289
2 ‘Amuck on Bleecker St.’, The World (New York), 7 September 1890
3 ‘Brogan’s Queer Bookkeeping’, The Press (New York), 8 September 1890
4 New York Herald, 5 January 1892
5 ‘Infamous Slide Closed By Herald’, New York Herald, 8 January 1892
6 ‘Another Resort For Slide Patrons’, The New York Evening Telegram, 11 March 1893
7 Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, George Chauncey (Basic Books, New York, 1995), pp. 219-20
8 ‘Ariston’s Owner Bankrupt’, New York Sun, 17 October 1903
9 ‘A Dressing Room Marvel’, Ann Abblle Whitford, Variety, 4 December 1909
10 ‘Madame Critic’, The New York Dramatic Mirror, 8 September 1915
11 ‘Old Impersonator, Julian Eltinge Dies’, Martin Kane, Madison Wisconsin State Journal, 8 March 1941
12 ‘Julian Eltinge, Famed as Impersonator, Dies at 59’, Madison Capital Times, 8 March 1941
13 ‘Old Impersonator, Julian Eltinge Dies’, Martin Kane, Madison Wisconsin State Journal, 8 March 1941
14 ‘Love Calamities of the Cave Man Who is a Perfect Lady’, Syracuse Herald, 18 December 1921
15 ‘New York Day By Day’, O. O. McIntyre, 14 August 1923
16 ‘The Mirrors of Mayfair’, Broadway Brevities, October 1923
17 Rochester Times Union, 17 December 1935
18 The Stage, 9 October 1920
19 New York Morning Telegraph, 25 May 1922
20 Variety, 27 May 1925
21 The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1994), p. 375
22 Variety, 12 April 1923
23 The Sun, New York, 29 January 1931
24 The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Slide, p. 375
25 ‘The Gay Boys Are So-o-o Pleased’, Syracuse Journal, 4 April 1935
26 ‘All In A Day’, Mark Hellinger, The Syracuse Journal, 14 August 1933
27 ‘Rival Gangs Shoot It Out in Broadway Resort’, Amsterdam Evening Recorder New York, 24 January 1931
28 ‘All In A Day’, Mark Hellinger, The Syracuse Journal, 14 August 1933
29 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10 May 1931
30 ‘On Broadway’, Walter Winchell, New York Daily Mirror, 3 February 1931
31 ‘On Broadway’, Walter Winchell, New York Daily Mirror, 26 February 1931
32 On Broadway’, Walter Winchell, New York Daily Mirror, 27 July 1931
33 Damon Runyon, Jimmy Breslin, Random House Inc, 1992, p238
34 ‘New York Day By Day’, O. O. McIntyre, Canandaigua Daily Messenger, 7 January 1932
35 ‘New York Day By Day’, O. O. McIntyre, El Paso Herald Post, 17 December 1931
36 ‘Highlights of Broadway’, Jack Lait, Salt Lake Tribune, 29 March 1931
37 ‘Days and Nights in Gotham’, Gilbert Swan, Charleston Daily Mail, 17 March 1931
38 ‘About New York’, Gilbert Swan, Indiana Evening Gazette, 24 November 1931
39 ‘Queers Seek Succor!’, Stephen O’Toole, Brevities, 4 July 1932
40 ‘On Broadway’, Walter Winchell, New York Daily Mirror, 17 August 1933
41 The Day, 10 November 1936
42 Pittsburgh Press, 9 November 1936
43 ‘Sylvester Russell’s Review’, The Pittsburgh Courier, 16 March 1929
44 ‘Sylvester Russell’s Review’, The Pittsburgh Courier, 19 March 1927
45 ‘Pansy Parlors – Rough Chicago Has Epidemic of Male Butterflies’, Variety, 10 December 1930
46 ‘Seen and Heard at the Fair’, The Chicago Defender, 10 June 1933
47 ‘Race Represented as World’s Fair Opens in Blaze of Glory’, Dewey R. Jones, The Chicago Defender, 3 June 1933
48 ‘Rival Gangs Stage War in Club Abbey’, Rome Daily Sentinel, 24 January 1931
49 ‘Corona Detective Accused At Police Trial’, Daily Star, Long Island, 14 February 1931
50 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 31 March 1931
51 ‘In New York’, Paul Harrison, Hawk Eye Gazette, 23 January 1935
52 Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, Marc Stein, Routledge, 2012
53 Bruz Fletcher: Camped, Tramped & A Riotous Vamp, Tyler Alpern, Tyler Alpern, 2010
54 Chicago Whispers, St. Sukie de la Croix (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), p. 112
55 The Sun (New York), 23 September 1936
56 Ibid.
57 ‘Bourbon Switches’, Long Island Star Journal, 24 July 1956
58 ‘Voice of Broadway’, Dorothy Kilgallen (syndicated column), 2 April 1955
59 The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy: Billy J. Harbin, Kim Marra, Robert A. Schanke (eds.), University of Michigan Press, 2005, p69
Chapter 5 – Europe Before the War
1 ‘What We Owe to Oscar Wilde’, Hugh E. M. Stutfield, Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1895
2 Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957, Matt Houlbrook, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p245
3 ‘Prisoners Numbered at Old Bailey’, Lancashire Daily Post, 20 February 1933
4 ‘Man’s Weird Pose’, The Auckland Star, 2 January 1932
5 The Argus (Melbourne), 9 October 1922
6 ‘Barnes’ Engagement Broken’, New York Clipper, 1 October 1919
7 ‘Frederick Jester Barnes (1885-1938)’, Jason Tomes, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
8 Hollywood Babble On: Stars Gossip about Other Stars, Boze Hadleigh (Penguin Group (USA), London, 1995), p. 179
9 ‘Prison For Comedian’, The Daily Mail, 12 November 1924
10 ‘Frederick Jester Barnes (1885-1938)’, Jason Tomes, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
11 ‘Fred Barnes’ Appeal in London Traffic Court’, Variety, 26 November 1924
12 ‘Yonkers Woman Wills British Actor $425,000’, Syracuse Journal, 5 August 1927
13 ‘Obituary: Fred Barnes, Actor’, Daily Mercury, 25 October 1938
14 ‘Too Daring Broadcast Turn Abandoned’, Saturday Journal (Adelaide), 6 April 1929
15 On the Same Side: Homosexuals During the Second World War, Stephen Bourne, BBC History Magazine, February 2012
16 ‘The Darling of Drury Lane’, The Independent, 17 August 1999
17 ‘Pansies Blow U.S.!’, Lepra Chaun, Brevities, 9 May 1932
18 Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Marjorie Garber, Routledge, 2000, p122
19 ‘How an Up-To-Date Josephine Won Paris’, Carl de Vidal Hunt, Canton Daily News, 16 January 1927
20 ‘Josephine Baker’s Latest Exploit’, The American Weekly, 12 October 1930
21 ‘Fags Ram Heinies!’, Fred Schultz, Brevities, 19 September 1932
22 ‘The War, the World and the Cornish Land’, The Cornishman, 15 October 1942
23 ‘Reichstag Fire Disclosure’, Western Daily Press, 14 January 1946
24 Marlene Dietrich, Maria Riva (Bloomsbury, London, 1992), p. 52
25 Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich, Donald Spoto (G.K. Hall, Boston, MA, 1993), pp. 64-5
26 Quoted in The Life And Times Of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock, Cha
rles White (Harmony Books, New York, 1984)
Chapter 6 – Strange Fruit
1 ‘Lisa Ben: A Lesbian Pioneer’, Kate Brandt, Visibilities, January 1990
2 Ibid.
3 Billie Holiday, Singer, Bud Kliment (Chelsea House, New York, 1990), p. 19
4 ‘A Southerner Looks at Prejudice’, Ebony, January 1960
5 ‘Blues Singer Sentenced As Drug Addict’, Binghamton Press, 28 May 1947
6 ‘A Southerner Looks at Prejudice’, Ebony, January 1960
7 New York Age, 12 February 1949
8 ‘New York Is My Beat’, Alan McMillan, New York Age, 24 October 1953
9 Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke, Da Capo Press, 2000, p398
10 New York Sun, 16 August 1944
11 ‘Mme. Knight Out’, Pittsburgh Courier, 26 November 1949
12 The Beatles Anthology, The Beatles (Cassell & Co, London, 2000), p. 38
13 Shout Sister Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-n-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Gayle F. Wald (Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2007)
14 ‘Liberace Says Story Hurt Career’, Buffalo Courier Express, 10 June 1959
15 ‘I Am Not, Liberace Replies In Suit Against Cassandra’, Binghampton Press, 8 June 1959
16 Ibid.
17 ‘Any Chance of a Refund’, Daily Mirror, 11 February 1987
18 ‘A More Reflective Leap On Elton John’s “Diving Board”’, npr.com, 23 September 2013
19 ‘Peer is Cashiered on Grave Charges’, The Daily Mail, 4 December 1947
20 ‘Lord Montagu on the Court Case Which Ended the Legal Persecution of Homosexuals’, Evening Standard, 14 July, 2007
21 ‘Johnny Mathis: Realising I was a Drug Addict was so Traumatic’, Sunday Express, 22 February 2014
22 ‘Happy Cry Baby’, The American Weekly, 15 June 1952
23 The Age (Melbourne), 20 September 1954
24 The Central Queensland Herald, 17 March 1955
25 ‘Johnnie Ray Accused Of Morals Offense’, Philadelphia Enquirer, 22 November 1959
26 The Life And Times Of Little Richard, pp. 40–1
27 Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll, David Kirby (Continuum International Publishing, New York, 2009), p. 176
28 ‘Little Richard Brings Flamboyance to Revivalism’, San Bernardino County Sun, 1 June 1980
29 Lush Life, David Hajdu (Granta Books, London, 1996), p. 79
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