Mama's Black Baby Boy

A vocal quartet recorded in the 1890s, the Unique Quartette are one of the earliest recorded black groups in the US. This recording may be suggestive of how black vocal groups of the 1890s sounded generally, with a detectable influence from spirituals and their Southern past. According to Berlin's biography of Scott Joplin, the ragtime composer began with a vocal quartet that may have sounded something like this.