Biography
Butterbeans (Jody Edwards, 19 July 1895, Georgia, USA, d. 28 October 1967) and Susie (b. Susie Hawthorn, 1896, Pensacola, Florida, USA, d. 5 December 1963, Chicago, Illinois, USA) were one of the most durable teams in black vaudeville. They appeared together from before their marriage in 1916 until just before Susie’s death nearly 50 years later. They supported Trixie Smith in 1920 and James Brown in 1959, and headlined their own revues in the late 20s. Their recordings were miniature comic sketches in song and speech, with Butterbeans always cast as the henpecked, put-upon husband and Susie as the dominant wife, making both sexual (‘I Wanna Hot Dog For My Roll’) and financial (‘Papa Ain’t No Santa Claus, Mama Ain’t No Christmas Tree’) demands. Sometimes backed by top jazz musicians, their performances, though seldom explicitly blues, usually had blues inflections.
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