The Black Patti
M. Sissieretta Jones was the original pop diva

After a groundbreaking Big Apple debut in 1888, the New York Clipper newspaper gave Virginia-born classical singer M. Sissieretta Jones a somewhat condescending nickname that linked her to the then-popular Italian opera star, Adelina Patti.

In the true style of a diva, of which she was an American first, Madam Jones disdained being called "the Black Patti" — but she capitalized on the nickname her entire career. In the end, her fame would eclipse that of the white Patti. As a talented African-American woman largely fending for herself in the cutthroat world of the early American music hall, the exotic soprano was a pioneer in more ways than one. Her showy and dramatic style was copied by imitation "Black Patti" vocalists across the country, and her blending of light opera and dramatic spirituals was a heady meld of European Old World and African-American folksong.

Matilda Sissieretta Jones was born on Jan. 5, 1869 in Portsmouth, Va. Aside from her vocal training at the Providence Academy of Music in Rhode Island, little is known of her early life. She seemingly sprung out of nowhere around the 1890s, a powerful and sensual vocalist who would sing opera for President Benjamin Harrison in the White House and to a packed Madison Square Garden. She also headlined sold-out tours in Europe and Canada.

Compelled to choose between the refined music she preferred and the lower-rent minstrel circuit that paid the bills, she did both, touring early in her career with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and, later, with a blackface company dubbed "Black Patti’s Troubadours." When the Troubadours broke up in 1916, Madam Jones faded from memory. The pioneering American Diva died, largely forgotten, in 1933.

--- Originally published in 64 Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2001. For more information, log on at www.64magazine.org