While we have about ten hours of Ray’s recordings and some first-hand accounts from people who knew or worked with him, we don’t know much about the experience of seeing Ray in person at a nightclub. In this post, we one brief account I stumbled into at archive.org. The “Argonauts” is an obscure travel book … Continue reading What Was It Like to Visit Ray Bourbon’s Nightclub?
Month: February 2020
“Daddy Was a Lady”: The Surreal Story of Ray Bourbon’s Aborted Broadway Comeback
Update, March 20, 2025 - I recently obtained a rare (or maybe one of a kind) poster advertising "Daddy Was a Lady". You can read about it and see the poster in a new post on the blog. When I first started researching Ray Bourbon in the 1990s, I kept hearing about something called “Daddy … Continue reading “Daddy Was a Lady”: The Surreal Story of Ray Bourbon’s Aborted Broadway Comeback
Watch Ray Bourbon in “Hip Zip Hooray”
Despite years of searching, I’ve only found one sound film where we get to see Ray Bourbon performing. In his silent films and in Gold Diggers of 1937, we only see Ray in a small, non-speaking bit roles. Several years ago, someone saw my website about Ray and, seeing I was looking for films where … Continue reading Watch Ray Bourbon in “Hip Zip Hooray”
Don't Call Me Madam 