Miss Brown To You
1935Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra
Sung by Billie Holiday
name
place
Hearing the Queer Past
What is an oopsie gaysie and what can they tell us about the queer past?
The term, coined by project lead Effie Ralli, includes a perhaps surprising number of early jazz and popular music recordings. As an umbrella term, oopsie gaysie includes any tunes from the era for which a queer reading is either possible or almost unavoidable.
A number of these songs fit within queer music historian JD Doyle’s definition of cross vocals, a term for songs “intended to be sung by a woman but are instead sung by a man” and vice versa. The results are recordings in which the gender of the vocalist is the same as that of the person who they are waxing lyrically about. Other songs may include words or imagery that is meaningful or relatable to LGBTQ+ communities of today.
Billie Holiday (1940)
Photo from billieholiday.be
Though many of these tunes can be understood as only gay sounding in that their creators likely did not intend for them to be songs of same-sex desire or trans identity, we cannot forgot that the 1920s and 1930s were decades in which queer lives were lived. In many ways, oopsie gaysie songs reflect the people of their time.
Throughout history, queer people have been a part of, and significantly shaped, popular music.
Take the song Miss Brown to You, first recorded in 1935 by one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, Billie Holiday:
Press play to listen along:
LYRICS
Who do you think is coming to town?
You'll never guess who
Lovable, huggable Emily Brown
‘Miss Brown’ to you
What if the rain comes pattering down
My heaven is blue
Tennessee’s sending me Emily Brown
Miss Brown to you
I know her eyes will thrill ya
But go slow, oh oh
Don't you all get too familiar
Why do you think she's coming to town
Just wait and you'll see
The lovable little Miss Brown to you
Is baby to me (yes yes)
Here, Holiday sings of a woman called Miss Emily Brown, who she advises the listener to “not get too familiar with” despite her desirable traits. It is not until the last line when we are told the reason - Emily is in fact her love interest.
“The lovable little Miss Brown to you, is baby to me”
Notably, Holiday did not write the lyrics herself and was taking on a role of a narrator as she sang - aspects of performance culture that are key factors in the prevalence of oopsie gaysie recordings. In her personal life, however, it is widely acknowledged that she had romantic relationships with men and women.
Would she have noticed the significance of the object of her affection in this particular story? In this specific case we might not ever know her intentions or if audiences picked up on the queer overtones, but there are many reasons to believe that they may have...
Mrs Dalloway
(1925) Novel
Newspaper Article
(1926) JD Doyle Archives
'Masculine Women! Feminine Men!'
(1925) Sheet Music
The Captive
(1926) Play
The terms used to describe people who lived outside of heteronormativity were different then than they are today, yet queerness was far from unknown at the time.
Lyrics written by Black American blues artists explicitly included homosexuality as a theme, nightclubs were home to popular “pansy” performers, and newspapers reported on masquerade balls packed with attendees in drag. Though prone to significant censorship attempts, plays, books, films, and more all survive that clearly document a public awareness of non-straight and non-cis existence both on and off stage.
Whether queer or straight, it is often difficult to know what performers were thinking when they were singing oopsie gaysie songs. We can, however, look at songs that were purposefully gender-bending to find more evidence of queerness in the music.
Ella Shields (1920s)
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Cross-dressing was a popular part of stage culture in the US and UK in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and one of the main spaces where performances of queerness could be safely presented.
Far from unusual, vaudeville and variety shows often included singers and actors presenting characters apart from their own gender (as well as race and class), a tradition that would continue into the era of more widely recorded music.
Though many (but certainly not all!) of these performers lived heterosexual lives offstage, while in character they were admired for their ability to seemingly cross gender lines, entertaining audiences and stealing hearts in the process.
Take American cross-dressing artist Ella Shields, who found much success in the British music halls. Sporting her signature top hat and aristocratic menswear, she drew legions of unabashedly enamored female fans when she sang songs such as “If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie”.
“I have got a sweetie known as Susie,
In the words of Shakespeare she’s a wow”
In the words of Shakespeare she’s a wow”
LYRICS
[...] If you knew Susie like I know Susie
Oh, Oh, Oh what a girl
She wears long tresses and real tight dresses
Oh, oh Holy Moses what a chassis
She went skating, fell down alright
But hit something, oh it was a ripping sight
If you knew Susie like I know Susie
Oh, Oh, Oh what a girl
Susie had a perfect reputation
No one’s ever seen her on a spree
Nobody knows where Susie goes
Nobody knows but me
Oh Mam’zelle Susie, oh Mam’zelle Susie
Oo la la la très chérie [...]
Press play to listen along:
Originally a hit for white male character actors in the troubling American performance tradition of blackface, Shields’ version re-interprets the song to offer a satirical take on class and gender instead. With her rather feminine voice singing risqué lyrics about desiring a woman, this oopsie gaysie song was decidedly not accidental; her intentional play on gender expectations is a large part of what made the song intriguing to contemporary audiences.
Press play to see her stage persona in action:
Ella Shields performing (another tune about a woman) ‘Adeline’ (1930)
British Pathé
Out of character, it can be harder to know if musicians would fit into the definition of queer that we use today.
Many performers hid their relationships from the press to protect themselves from discrimination and even criminal charges, while the sexualities of others were downplayed, censored, or ignored by contemporaries and historians not willing or prepared to see or hear it.
Listen below to the test pressing of “Mad About The Boy” performed by prolific British playwright and songwriter Noël Coward, one of vocalists in the collection whose same-sex relationships were revealed only after his death.
Press play to listen along:
lyrics
I met him at a party
Just a couple of years ago
He was rather over-hearty and ridiculous
But as I'd seen him on the screen
He cast a certain spell
I basked in his attraction
For a couple of hours or so
His manners were a fraction too meticulous
If he was real or not I couldn't tell
But like a silly fool I fell
Mad about the boy
I know it's stupid to be
Mad about the boy
I'm so ashamed of it
But must admit
The sleepless nights I've
Had about the boy [...]
“He has a gay appeal...”
Noël Coward (1935)
Pictured with Julie Haydon in The Scoundrel
He often wrote his songs for other actors to sing, in this case for multiple female characters in a musical revue. When he sings this quiet rendition of “Mad About The Boy” himself however, we are reminded that from the lyricists, to vocalists, to audiences, queer individuals have always been a part of popular music.
While many of the songs in the oopsie gaysie collection were not intended to become artifacts of queer expression, the recorded sounds of the past can connect us to the real queer lives of the 1920s and 1930s.
Listen to more recordings from gender impersonators or known queer performers below, or continue to the next exhibit to keep exploring how the way songs were written and performed allowed the sounds of same-sex love stories to be heard across the airwaves.