Not to be confused with the contemporary musician Al Bernard (bass player)

Alfred A. Bernard (November 23, 1888 – March 6, 1949) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 singer, known as "The Boy From Dixie

Dixie

Dixie is a nickname for the Southern United States.- Origin of the name :According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of this nickname remain obscure. According to A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles , by Mitford M...

", who was most popular during the 1910s through early 1930s.

Life

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...

, he became a blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 singer in minstrel show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

s before starting his recording career around 1916. He was one of the first white singers to record blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 songs. W. C. Handy

W. C. Handy

William Christopher Handy was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues"....

 credited Bernard with helping his own career by recording a number of his songs, notably "St. Louis Blues". Bernard recorded the song for nine different record labels, the most successful being what Handy called "the sensational Victor recording in which he sang with the Dixieland Jazz Band".

From 1919, he recorded solo for Okeh Records

Okeh Records

Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...

. His songs included one called "Shake, Rattle and Roll

Shake, Rattle and Roll

"Shake, Rattle and Roll" is a prototypical twelve bar blues-form rock and roll song, written in 1954 by Jesse Stone under his assumed songwriting name Charles E. Calhoun. It was originally recorded by Big Joe Turner, and most successfully by Bill Haley & His Comets...

", about a dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

 game, which was wholly unrelated, except in title, to the later rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 song. Bernard was sometimes billed as "The Singing Comedian", and was the first American singer to record the song "Frankie and Johnny" in America. (The first known recording was made by Gene Greene

Gene Greene

Eugene Delbert Greene , better known as Gene Greene was an American entertainer, singer and composer, nicknamed The Ragtime King. He was a vaudeville star and made some of the earliest sound recordings of scat singing in 1911 for Columbia Records and Victor Records and was a popular Ragtime performer...

 and Charley Straight

Charley Straight

Charles Theodore Straight , better known as Charley Straight, was an American pianist, bandleader and composer. He started his career in 1909 accompanying singer Gene Greene in Vaudeville. In 1916 he began working at the Imperial Piano Roll Company in Chicago were he recorded dozens of piano rolls...

 in London.) He also recorded duets with Ernest Hare

Ernie Hare

Thomas Ernest Hare was a bass/baritone who recorded prolifically during the 1920s and 1930s, finding fame as a radio star on The Happiness Boys radio program.-Career:...

, in which Bernard took the female singing part, including his biggest hit, "I Want To Hold You In My Arms". He recorded with songwriter J. Russel Robinson as "The Dixie Stars" and, with Robinson, wrote the Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...

 feature "Sam Jones Blues". He also co-wrote songs with Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...

.

Later, he recorded with Vernon Dalhart

Vernon Dalhart

Vernon Dalhart , born Marion Try Slaughter, was a popular American singer and songwriter of the early decades of the 20th century. He is a major influence in the field of country music.-Early life:...

. In 1925, inspired by Dalhart, he began recording hillbilly songs. His 1930 version of "Hesitation Blues

Hesitation Blues

"Hesitation Blues" is a popular song adapted from a traditional tune. One version was published by Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham. Another was published by W.C. Handy as "Hesitating Blues." Because the tune is a traditional tune many artists have given themselves credit as...

", recorded with the Goofus Five, is considered to predict the western swing

Western swing

Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...

style, with an intriguing combination of country and western and Chicago blues feels. Bernard continued to record into the 1940s, and died in 1949 in New York City.