In 1899, recording artist Len Spencer decided to make a bold move: take his small group of phonograph friends on tour in a minstrel troupe. While minstrel shows are now considered insensitive and unsightly to people today, they were at one time a mainstay of American and European entertainment. After many months of planning and gathering the funds to accommodate, he was able to spend the end of 1898 into 1899 playing in various theaters, even with a terrible blizzard threatening to throw off the entire journey. A number of important things happened while he was on tour however, and when they all came back, the Columbia phonograph company was in shambles; it seemed that the old tight-knit crew would never be able to darn itself back together.
Since the beginning of his recording career (1888-89), Len Spencer had an idea to start his own troupe. In 1893, he decided to start an ambitious project that would end up being the first of its kind. He gathered a group of his closest friends in the phonograph world and made a series of minstrel show recordings, that were intended to be sold together as a set. What was unique about these recordings wasn’t just the nature of the content and sales, but was also that they included a black recording artist
