A. G. Allen

Albert George Allen (c. 1864 – December 27, 1926) was an American promoter and director of minstrel shows. His tent shows, billed under various names including A. G. Allen's New Orleans Minstrels and A. G. Allen's Big Minstrel Show, toured between 1899 and the late 1920s, and were prominent and influential in the Black Vaudeville tradition.

Biography

Allen was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and attended Denison University in Granville. Though his early business involvement is unknown, in the late 1890s he set up a partnership with George W. Quine (and initially John H. Oaks or Oakes) to set up a traveling minstrel show, comprising African Americans though Allen and his partners were themselves white. Allen was the General Director and gave his name to the show, with Quine as General Manager. With a roster of about 60 people, the show made its first appearance in Chicago in May 1899, and then toured widely in the Midwest and Southern States. The organisation described itself as the "Originators of Tented Minstrelsy" and, according to historians Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, "helped set the course for African American minstrel companies in the South, traveling by rail and showing under canvas". Allen himself was described, apparently in error, as "one of the most successful black promoters of minstrel theater in the United States".

The shows featured a band led by cornetist J. H. McCamon, playing music "from classical to ragtime". Other performers included blackface comedians, dancers, and "coon shouters", many of whom were women.