Butterbeans & Susie

Butterbeans & Susie were a comedy duo made up of Jodie Edwards (1895-1967) and Susie Hawthorne (1896-1963). Edwards began his career in 1910 as a singer and dancer. Meanwhile, Hawthorne performed in African American theater. The two met in 1916 when Hawthorne was in the chorus of the Smart Set show. They married on stage the next year. The two did not perform as a comic team until the early 1920s. They had been touring with the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) with a black husband-and-wife comedy team known as Stringbeans and Sweetie May. Upon the death of Stringbeans (Butler May or Budd LeMay), a TOBA promoter asked Edwards to take the stage name "Butterbeans" and for him and his wife to take over Stringbeans and Sweetie May's act. "Butterbeans and Susie" appeared for the first time shortly thereafter. Their act, a combination of marital quarrels, comic dances, and racy singing, proved very popular on the TOBA tour. They later moved to vaudeville and appeared for a time with the blackface minstrel troupe the Rabbit's Foot Company. Butterbeans and Susie published several recordings of blues songs interspersed with comic banter through Okeh Records. They later starred in a black-produced feature film. Butterbeans and Susie used their fame and influence to help younger black comedians. After seeing Moms Mabley in Dallas, for example, they helped her gain acceptance at better venues. Even after leaving show business, they stayed friends with many black entertainers and put up down-on-their-luck comedians in their Chicago home. Stepin Fetchit stayed with them at some point in the 1950s or 1960s.