When Broadway took on its characteristic sepia glow – Brother John hits one outa' the park

John McWhorter nails it: The Black Musical That May Have Inspired Gershwin, NYTimes, Jan. 19, 2023.

He’s writing about Shuffle Along, an all-Black musical that stunned and entranced the Great White Way, as it was known (in reference to the lights, not the people), in 1921. “Before this,” McWhorter writes, “Broadway’s music was, for the most part, quite white in a sense similar to what one might mean today. It toodled, it cooed, it marched. Sometimes it had a touch of ragtime in its step. But little of it stood out in an artistic sense.” ...