Edna Alexander

Miss Edna Alexander, whose portrait appears in this issue, is a most interesting personage. Young in years, possessed with the most impressive style of Oriental beauty of face, with a figure like unto a Milo Venus, a wreath of raven tresses of the Indian maiden type and with a voice which rings with marvelous sweetness. All the above blessings, it has been Miss Alexander's good fortune to inherit, she bears with such unassuming and unaffected good grace, that one is wonderfully impressed at her simplicity.

When the representative of The Colored American Magazine called on her at the residence of the Misses Hodges, where she resided during her engagement here with "A Trip to Coontown" at the Grand Theatre in Boston, he found that she exhibited the same degree of modesty that her "paler sisters" do when they are asked to tell something of themselves.

"Just a few facts about your birth, your parents, school life, stage life, and future intentions. I am sure they would prove doubly interesting, Miss Alexander, to your admiring public," assured the interviewer.

"I have always been under the impression that the public would much rather hear me sing than talk," she answered, "but as you insist, I was born in Woodstock, Canada; soon after which my parents moved to Toledo, Ohio, thence to Chicago, where I spent most of my school life. It was as a member of Quin Chapel choir that I first discovered that I could sing a little.

"My mother soon placed me under competent teachers. I was delighted at having a chance to study music. I studied hard, and was soon rewarded for my pains by being promoted to leading soprano in Quin Chapel choir. I held that position for sometime, and was thus engaged when Messrs. Cole and Johnson made my mother an offer for me to travel with their company. At first she objected, but after numerous consultations and assurances she consented. Then I made that herculean leap from choir loft to the stage. Stage life to me at first was a blank disappointment. I expected it to be like the Frenchman would say, "one grand, sweet song," it is one never ceasing task of trying to please, filled with anxiety and expectation; work and sacrifice continually spurred on by checkered ambition, striving always to satisfy a fretful public.

"Still after you succeed in satisfying them they doubly repay you, along with all the dissatisfaction with the hardships of stage life, there comes a certain satisfaction in being able to please the public.

I shall go straight to my home in Chicago when the season closes. My summer I shall spend in study and designing for my mother's large millinery establishment."

Miss Alexander had a long stage career, an advert in the Washington Herald dated September 1, 1918, appeared for the play, "Darktown Follies" and "Broadway Rastus," at the Howard Theater of which Miss Alexander was featured.

In 1917, Edna Belle Alexander married famous composer, lyricist, songwriter, conductor, and music publisher Maceo Pinkard (1897-1962), he's listed in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

She has variously been credited as Edna Alexander, Edna Alexander Pinkard, Edna B. Pinkard, Alex Belledna and Mrs. Maceo Pinkard. In 1919 a song crediting “Alex Belledna” was published, and in 1920 the name appeared on another composition, but in the small world of Tin Pan Alley no one knew this person. In 1921 ‘Belledna’ shared credit with Maceo Pinkard and William Tracey on ‘’Tain’t Nothing Else But Jazz.’ To put speculation about the mysterious composer to rest, Variety reported on June 3, 1921, that ‘Alex Belledna’ was a pseudonym for Maceo Pinkard.” No one questioned why both Pinkard’s real name and pseudonym appeared on the same songs. “What the trade paper apparently did not know was that Pinkard had recently married an aspiring songwriter named Edna Belle Alexander.

She lists songs with this pseudonym in her ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) biography, including one with Andy Razaf, the “raunchy” “Kitchen Man” recorded by Bessie Smith. “Edna Alexander’s name appears on two Pinkard songs (‘Make Those Naughty Eyes Behave,’ in 1925, and ‘Sugar,’ in 1926), and the ‘Belledna’ alias appears on six unpublished songs with Pinkard.”

Maceo Pinkard died July 1962 and Edna Pinkard died November 1972.

Source: Colored American Magazine [1901 issue]