George Walker was born in Lawrence, Kansas, 1873; there’s scarce little word on his family life and upbringing. His public life begins when he began touring with a medicine show.

Medicine shows were horse and carriage shows that sold miracle cure elixers (snake oil, holla!) and provided entertainment. The tradition begain in Europe and existed here from the 19th century until about WWII. Anyway:

The medicine show Walker toured with ended up in San Francisco, where Walker met Bert Williams. Egbert Williams was born in Nassau, The Bahamas in November of 1874. His father worked as a waiter, his mother was the daughter of an clergyman from Antigua. Williams was an imaginative youth and avid reader. His family first emigrated from the West Indies to Florida, before finally settling in Riverside, California by the time Williams was 10. He drifted into the world of entertainment and settled in San Francisco by the time he became acquainted with Walker.

The two men began to put together an act as a duo and Walker became the businessman and spokesperson for them. They travelled back and forth from the west to Chicago and New York, honing their skills with little success until they began embracing the coon stereotype on stage, basing their act on old minstrel routines they picked up from their respective pasts. In their act, Williams, with his light skin tone, played the straight man in mismatched oversized suits. Walker portrayed an aristocratic-style dandy and told the jokes. In one performance, Williams slathered his face with burnt cork. That performance was such a success and the audience responded so well, he would perform in blackface for the rest of his career.

In the late 1890’s, the duo began to find fame in a musical, The Gold Bug. It was here they perfected and popularized the cakewalk. The reputation gained from that show led them to appear in a all black production, Clorindy. It was here Walker met his life long wife, Aida Overton, a dancer in the show. They married in 1899.

Aida gets her own paragraph: A singer and dancer from an early age, Aida appeared in and was the resident choreographer for all the Williams and Walker stage productions. This makes her the first major black female choreographer in America, and at the time she was considered the countries best black female dancer. More on her can be found here.

And Briefly: in 1901, Williams and Walker made a recording for the Victor Company. Walker didn’t like the sound of his voice, but Williams had the pipes and began making recordings of his comedic work for the next 20 years. His big hit in 1905 was Nobody, a song that became a performance staple of his for the remainder of his career.

1902 Williams and Walker made history with their stage show, In Dahomey. Born out of the teams desire to create original material, they teamed with Clorindy’s producer and lyric writer Paul Laurence Dunbar to create In Dahomey which was the first full length African American musical comedy to appear on Broadway. They took the show to England for a couple of seasons and a command performance at Buckingham Palace. Its an interesting footnote that blackface and stereotypical comedy socially required for American audiences got mixed reception in London, but overtime they became quite successful and well known.

In 1908, George Walker founded the Frogs Club, an organization of African American men in theater that eventually opened up to include black doctors and lawyers. The Frogs Club raised money for charities and maintained theater space in Harlem.

In performance, George Walker began stuttering and experiencing memory loss and before finally collapsing while on tour. …All symptoms of syphillis. At the time, syphillis was an incurable disease and it burned its way through the african american arts community of the early 1900’s, crippling the small black theater community on Broadway. There were be no more African American presence on Broadway until the early 1920’s.

Walker died in 1911 back home in Kansas. Walker, as mentioned, was the business man of the duo. This meant for the first time in 20 years, Williams had to work alone — and he was quite successful. In addition to his popular recordings, he joined the Ziegfield follies– a touring vaudeville variety show and continued to work and perform and tour with stage productions until his sudden death of pneumonia during a performance in Detroit in 1922.