The headliner of them all was Abbie Mitchell and her “Tenessee Students.” She was an enchanting Negro singer, a forerunner of Lorence Mills of the 'Blackbirds of 1925', with a troupe of shuffle-dancing, banjo-playing, Spiritual-singing young Negroes. It was my first contact with this rich vein of American folk lore, and it awoke an interest that has persisted through all the intervening years. The line of my contacts with Negro performers goes trough Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, the various Negro revues that created such a furore in Parisian avant-garde circles, Green Pastures, Porgy and Bess, the Hall-Johnson Choir, right up to my present associations with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton. << less