A sad and surprising piece of news was reported in the Kokomo Daily Tribune, October 21, 1926.  Bobby Edwards, the avatar of Bohemia, got a job.  I only hope it didn’t last.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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I’ve found another picture of Bobby Edwards online; we can add it to the archive. There he is in the back, to the left, cigar box uke in hand. This was at the Garrick Club, sometime in the ‘teens.
(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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From the audience, Angela Alverson captured a snippet of the recital at the Jalopy Theatre.  My beginning uke class made its first public appearance with this blues chorus.  From left to right: Katherine, Rachel, teacher, Carrie, Ana, and Ashley.  They’re on their way!
Another of my uke students, Robin Hoffman, keeps a blog of her drawings […]

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Doug Skinner will be performing at the Fabulous Jalopy Theatre, in Brooklyn, on March 12 at 9 pm.  I’ll sing mostly Skinner songs, with perhaps a couple of covers.  I’ll be on uke and cuatro; David Gold will join me on viola.
I’ve asked the incomparable Brian Dewan to share the evening with me.  He’ll hold […]

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Our Edwards fiesta draws to a close now.  I’d like to leave with an intriguing note for the Forteans out there: in 1915, Theodore Dreiser threw a party for Edgar Lee Masters.  Fort attended; and Bobby Edwards entertained on his ukulele.  A photographer from the New York World was also there; I may have to […]

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The Quill was one of the Village’s more successful little magazines.  It debuted on June 30, 1917, owned and edited by Arthur Moss.  Edwards was a regular contributor from the beginning; in 1921, he took it over, and ran it until 1926.
There are a number of issues of The Quill archived on the internet.  The […]

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Since Edwards in his Village heyday was described as a former illustrator, I’ve been curious about that earlier career.  After a little rummaging, I think I found something.  A “Robert Edwards” illustrated a book by Marion Hill, Harmony House, in Boston in 1910.  Is it the same Edwards?  I don’t know, but I think so:  […]

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Romany Marie (Marie Marchand), whose Gypsy-themed tavern was a popular hangout for decades, reminisced about Bobby Edwards in a long interview with Robert Schulman (for his book Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village, 2006).
She quotes several Edwards songs, including this charming snippet:
We are holy Christian martyrs
We don’t shave or clean our faces
When we sit […]

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Edwards was featured a couple of times in Theatre Magazine in the ‘teens.  We see him here in the August 1919 issue, rehearsing for “Greenwich Village Nights” — which soon changed its name to “Greenwich Village Follies,” thereby enraging Flo Ziegfeld.
The August 1917 issue carried an article called “The Renaissance of Greenwich Village,” by one […]

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This postcard, by Jesse Tarbox Beals, was sold in the Village to fans of “The Village Troubadour.”  I suppose that’s the “rustic shirting” Woollcott mentioned in the review I cited earlier.  And it serves as a suitable illustration for another description of Edwards at work — although, in this excerpt, we find him not playing […]

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