African American composer James Bland wrote the song that Philadelphia’s annual Mummers parade has danced to every New Year’s Day for over a century. The parade’s pre-colonial roots trace back to the New Year’s celebrations of Northern European and African-American settlers in the mid-1600s. According to the documentary “Strut,” the influence of Southern plantation life is evident in the cakewalk-like strut that became the Mummers’ signature dance — performed all day long to Bland’s “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers.”

Hailed as the greatest and most prolific African-American songwriter of the late 1800s, James Bland penned “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” as a minstrel show song set in the style of a spiritual. The song’s first stanza tells of a protagonist setting aside fine clothes — golden slippers, a long-tailed coat, a white robe — for a chariot ride to Heaven, leading to the still-popular refrain: “Oh, dem golden slippers!”

The Life of James Bland

Born in Flushing, New York in 1854, James Bland grew up in a family with rare educational advantages. His father, a free Black from South Carolina, had attended Oberlin and graduated from Wilberforce before moving the family to Philadelphia — where Bland, according to legend, first heard an elderly Black street musician and fell in love with the banjo. He went on to compose anywhere from 600 to 700 popular songs, earning the nickname “The Prince of the Colored Song Writers.” He was, however, a poor money manager.

In 1881, James Bland traveled to England as a member of the Callender–Haverly Minstrels, performing before Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. At his peak he was earning roughly $10,000 a year, but Bland’s carelessness with money eventually caught up with him. Penniless, he returned to the U.S. with the help of a friend who found him work in Washington, D.C. He later moved to Philadelphia, where he died of tuberculosis on May 5, 1911, and was buried just outside the city.

For over 25 years, James Bland’s memory languished in an unmarked pauper’s grave, and some of his music was miscredited to Stephen Foster or John Philip Sousa. In 1939, ASCAP located his grave and erected a granite monument in Bala Cynwyd’s Merion Cemetery. In 1970, Bland was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a musical scholarship sponsored by the Lions Club continues in his honor to this day.

James Bland’s Legacy and the Philadelphia Mummers

While the “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” creator rests in peace mere miles from where the Mummers party annually to the sounds of his music, the parade continues to raise debate over the themes it uses — making fun of current events and news stories involving religion, ethnicity, and feminism. Women were not officially allowed in the parade until the 1970s. And while a 1964 city policy officially ruled out blackface, it still manages to appear.

Today’s Mummers incorporate the costumes and traditions of many ethnic groups that have shaped Philadelphia’s cultural identity — a city whose calendar of celebration, from the ODUNDE Festival each June to the New Year’s Day parade itself, reflects the same spirit James Bland’s music captured well over a century ago.

Images: M. Edlow

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Bobbi I. Booker

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