THE SHOW BOAT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 8 (Supplement)

THE SHOW BOAT.

AN ERA ENDED. EXIT THE COTTON BLOSSOM. GHOST SHIPS OF OL' MAN RIVER. The "Show Boat ,, immortalised by the stage and screen has passed from the history of 01' Man River. The Cotton Blossom has been sold up the river from Memphis, Tenn., and, stripped of her calliope and flaming banners, has gone into service as an excursion steamer on a tributary stream. She was the last of the show boats. It was not an unfitting end. But that other glamorous river which makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico, the Tombigbee, accorded its historic show boats, tho Lillie Lou and The Dove, more dramatic endings. Tho Dove she claimed in that way of rivers, closing tawny anus about her. The Lillie Lou she first left high and dry five miles from the river bed, an o'b'ject of curiosity for the countryside. Then, years later, as is a matter of record, in a singular defiant gesture the Tombigbee reached out five miles again and drew the Lillie Lou back for a final wild ride to the end. The β-bow boat era on tho Tombigbee ended with a legend of superstitions awe engendered in the negroes along the banks who witnessed the passing of the Lillie Lou, a ghost ship in the night. An American Institution. The passing of the Cotton Blossom marks the end of tho show boat form of entertainment in the river towns of the South. It was the end of a distinctive American institution. The earlier chapters in the history of the show boat were written in a period of vivid, clashing colour, the period that came between the pioneer and the influx of Die full tide of civilisation. The first efforts to introduce civilised products into the wilderness are always glamorous by virtue of contrast alone. They breed romantic figures and swashbucklers. Tho Mississippi and the Tombig'bee run parallel courses to the seaports of New Orleans and Mobile. As overland communication was difficult the two rivers bore the incoming civilisation, first from European sources, then from better-settled parts of the United States. The show boat was as characteristic of this progress as the printing press. Where Jazz Was Developed. To the banks of the Mississippi the show boat brought the theatre; along the Tombigbee, in a black belt shielded by foetid, sub-tropical growths from many of tho white influences of 01' 3Man River, a music was evolved which has left its impress on much of the world. Jazz in its American form, a way of presenting music that came from the American negro, was developed there, where all the entertainment was that of negro minstrels. Tho blues, whose strange rhythms gave birth to our jazz, begau as a form of Afro-American folk-song on the plantations. The depression of a transported and enslaved race led to grotesque musical figures, expressive of the moods of tho river and expressive of the individual's mood of the instant. The blues started with some such phrase as this, expressive of the yellow river, the "Yellow Dog." "Where do Southern Cross do Dawg—cross dat Yallor Dawg." These strange sounds and rhythms, the seeds of jazz, were planted by the blacks in tho dives of Mobile, and by minstrel troupes on the decks of the Lillie Lou and The Dove along the river towns. A New Chapter In Music. The primary colours of this new rhythm escaped from the Tombigbee and Mobile Bay to leave an impress on the wider world. When the introductory theme of Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Scheherazade" was jazzed, a new chapter had been written in the history of music, a chapter which had its opening on the show boats on the Tombigbee and Mobile Bay. On the Mississippi tho show boat produced Americana, on the Tombigbee, Africana. Both are woven into tho American life of to-day. Both influences have endured, though the show boat has given way to the talking pictures and radio; both have exerted an artistic force. That is considerable. The rubber tyre was originally invented in 1845 by R. W. Thomson, who called his invention "The application of clastic bearings around the tyres of wheels on carriages for the purpose of lessening the power required to draw the carriage, rendering their motion easier and diminishing tho noise they jnake, etc., etc." Thomson's patent was dated December 10, 184"), the final being issued on June 10, 1846.