Clarice Vance, born in 1871, turned to vaudeville in 1897 because she was very tall and theatre managers thought her suited only to comic parts. She soon won star billing as a "coon singer," a designation thoughtlessly employed a century ago to describe soubrettes who sang comic or wistful songs as they imagined "colored folks" would. She was recording regularly for the old cylinders and cavorting about the leading vaudeville stages until 1914, after which time she seemed to disappear. But there is nearly a half century of mystery and tragedy still to be discovered.
