The Woman They Called “The Bronze Melba”

This post is one of a series honoring Black History Month.

We are afraid that much inexactitude mars this post, but we will rectify that as clearer details emerge, if they ever do turn up. The lady in question, though a star of her day, rendered her name in various ways throughout her career: sometimes as Mamie Flower, sometimes as Mamie Flowers, sometimes as Mrs., Madame, or Mademoiselle Flower or Flowers. It is not known when she was born or when she died. It is known that thoughout her career she was nicknamed “The Bronze Melba”, a comparison to Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931). She was also claimed to be “the only rival to Black Patti” i.e., Sissieretta Jones, although Jones had other rivals, even among African American singers.

What is known is that she performed with William Foote’s African American Character Concert Company in the early 1890s, followed by Bob Cole’s All Star Stock Company (1894) and then John Isham’s Octoroon Company, i.e. the company that put on the hit show The Octoroons (1895-1900). After this, she sang with the Alabama Troubadours (1901), and then finally Chicago’s Pekin Stock Company where she performed in a show called Queen of the Jungles (1906). At which point, she vanishes as mysteriously as she arrived. It’s reasonable to conjecture that she performed on the black vaudeville circuits either on her way up or the way down, although that too awaits confirmation.

What is also known is that she was critically lauded, called “the greatest singer of race” and it was claimed that when she sang at Madison Square Garden she could be heard several streets away.

This is all out of a 20 year old book called Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960, by Bernard L. Peterson. The answer to our enigmas may well be out there for the assiduous sleuth to unearth.