Antique 1906 Sheet MusicAfrican American ComposersAida Overton Walker11 x 14

Original Large Antique Ragtime Sheet Music. I'LL KEEP A WARM SPOT IN MY HEART FOR YOU. By COLE & JOHNSON BROS. Note: Please also see our other early sheet music by Black composers.

The legendary African American songwriting team of Cole and Johnson Bros. Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson wrote the song. Was a groundbreaking Broadway-style stage production starring the famous comedy duo Bert Williams and George Walker (Williams & Walker).

Ada Overton Walker, also billed as Aida Overton Walker, was a vaudeville performer, actress, singer and dancer. She was a virtuoso in buck-and-wing and cakewalk and is recognized as one of the first choreographers on the American stage.

Born Ada Wilmon Overton on St. Valentine's Day in Greenwich Village, she was the daughter of Pauline Whitfield, a seamstress, and Moses Overton, a waiter. Before her parents decided she would take official dance lessons, she performed in the streets with a hurdy-gurdy. In 1895, at the age of fifteen, her career began when she joined John William Isham's Octoroons, one of the most successful Black touring groups of the time.

By 1897 she was part of Black Patti's Troubadours. She frequently starred in stage productions with her husband George Walker and his performing partner Bert Williams. She and George became the preeminent cakewalking pair of the new century. Carl Van Vechten, the Harlem Renaissance patron, writer and photographer, wrote of the act, The line, the grace, the assured ecstasy of these dancers, who bent over backward until their heads almost touched the floor, a feat demanding an incredible amount of strength, their enthusiastic prancing, almost in slow motion, have never been equaled in this particular revel, let alone surpassed.

Overton Walker used the performing arts to help middle-class Blacks achieve upward mobility. Many turn-of-the-century African American women became social activists and feminists, influenced in part by W. Dubois's idea that the "talented tenth" of African Americans rose and drew everything worth saving up to their vantage point. When George Walker became ill one evening in 1908, his role was reworked for Overton Walker, who dressed in showy masculine attire and sang his songs. She won great acclaim for her male impersonation; many newspapers printed cartoons of her in male attire, which became an iconic image of theatrical cross-dressing.

In 1912, Overton Walker performed " Salome " in a stunning vaudeville production at Oscar Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre in New York. She also joined Bert Williams for the annual Frog's Frolic, when she shared the stage with Bill Robinson. Overton Walker's ambition of producing her own play came true in 1913, when she led a cast of twelve at Chicago's Pekin Theatre.

Toward the end of her life, Overton Walker continued to choreograph for two Black female dance groups, the Happy Girls and the Porto Rico Girls. Dancers included Lottie Gee, who would later star in the musical revue Shuffle Along, and Elida Webb, who would star at the Cotton Club in the 1920s. The leading African American female theatre artist of her time, Overton Walker was inspired by African American indigenous material and translated it to the modern stage before Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus.

She established a cultural identity onstage that helped African American musical artists gain professional concert acceptance. Please see our other original vintage photographs, antique books and ephemera.

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