He's Up Against The Real Thing Now: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Sheet music for the song He's Up Against The Real Thing Now. The front cover features three photographs. The photograph on left side of cover depicts an African American man in a suit with white type at bottom of the photograph that reads: [Williams]. The photograph on right side depicts an African American man in a suit with white type at bottom of photograph that reads: [Walker]. The photograph in the center features the two men in the other photographs dressed in costume, Walker is in blackface and Williams has an exaggerated collar. A plant-like design, in green ink, surrounds the photographs. Red type on front cover reads: [WILLIAMS AND WALKER'S Latest Comic Coon Craze / HE'S UP AGAINST / THE REAL THING NOW / WORDS BY / Edward Furber / MUSIC BY BERT A. WILLIAMS]. Underneath the photographs a text block contains a logo for Jos. W. Stern & Co. On the bottom of the cover there is an ink stamp that reads: [The Model, / Music Store / Washington St. Sonora, Cal.]. The interior of the sheet music contains five pages of music bars and notes in black ink. The music is for several songs. The back cover contains additional songs in red ink.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1898
• Composed by: Bert Williams, American, 1874 - 1922
• Subject of: George "Nash" Walker, American, 1873 - 1911
• Written by: Edward Furber
• Published by: Jos. W. Stern & Co., American
• Owned by: Vernon Sugg McDonald, American, 1906 - 1982
• Owned by: Mary Elizabeth Sugg, American, 1839 - 1915
• Type: sheet music
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm)
• Place collected: Sonora, Tuolumne County, California, United States, North and Central America
• Place printed: New York City, New York County, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Blackface
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Topic: Stereotypes
• Topic: Vaudeville
• Object number: 2014.275.15
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Sylvia Alden Roberts
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.