Herb Jeffries: Bronze Buckaroo and Baritone

This is a tale of bifurcations within bifurcations, concerning the mixed race actor and singer Herb Jeffries (Umberto Alexander Valentino, sometimes rendered Balentino or Ballentino, 1913-2014).

Jeffries’ racial identity is undeniably intriguing. His biological father was Sicilian, Ethiopian, Moorish, and French Canadian, and (he also claimed) Spanish, Portuguese and Native American. His mother was of Irish heritage. And his stepfather was black. Fairly light skinned himself, much like Johnny Otis though with much a better rationale, he identified as black, even going so far as to employ make-up to darken his complexion in public. Early in Jeffries’ career, Louis Armstrong, who had discovered him singing in Detroit speakeasies, advised him to describe himself as a “Creole from Louisiana”. Yet much later, when he married burlesque legend Tempest Storm, he chose to identify as white. To me, cases like Jeffries’ are valuable in pointing out the folly of identifying people by race at all. Scientifically, it is a discredited concept. Genetically, we are all just collections of traits. Race continues to have social and political significance, however, so it can’t be ignored, though like most of the taxonomy we use to describe nature, we should acknowledge that the language is imperfect, sometimes even clumsy, and at worst unfair.

But Jeffries was a jazz singer! Of course he was going to identify most closely with the people who made and loved that music. In the early ’30s he sang with the orchestras of Erskine Tate and Earl Hines in Chicago, and gained attention for his performance at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

Then in the late ’39s, inspired by the success of B movie westerns he collaborated with producer Jed Buell (producer of the “all-midget” western The Terror of Tiny Town) to back him in a series of westerns for the race market. These were popular with their intended audiences at the time, and are now prized for their historic place as the first black westerns. (Did you know that 25% of cowboys in the old west were black? Well, they were. Black cowboys have always been underrepresented in western films). Jeffries’ five now-classic films were Harlem on the Prairie (1937), Two Gun Man from Harlem (1938), Rhythm Rodeo (1938), The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) and Harlem Rides the Range (1939). He was a singing cowboy of course, and these films feature his own original western songs.

His stardom now burnished by his onscreen appearances, Jeffries returned to singing as a front man for the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the early 40s on record and radio, and in live performances. In the late ’40s and ’50s he was also a solo recording artist. In 1957 he starred as the title character in the film Calypso Joe opposite Angie Dickinson. Later acting work included appearances on the shows I Dream of Jeannie, The Virginian, Where’s Huddles?, and Hawaii Five-O, as well as the films Chrome and Hot Leather (1971, with Marvin Gaye), Portrait of a Hitman (1979, with Jack Palance), and The Cherokee Kid (1996) with Sinbad, a magical cap to his career. As late as 1995 he recorded an album, The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again).

In 2008 the documentary A Colored Life: The Herb Jeffries Story was released. Jeffries passed away in 2014 at the age of 100.

For more on show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.