Butterbeans and Susie

Butterbeans and Susie were an African American comedy duo comprising Jodie Edwards (July 19, 1893 – October 28, 1967) and Susie Edwards (née Susie Hawthorne; December 1894 – December 5, 1963). They married in 1917, and performed together until the early 1960s. Their act, a combination of marital quarrels, comic dances, and racy singing, proved popular on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) tour. They later moved to vaudeville and appeared for a time with the blackface minstrel troupe the Rabbit's Foot Company.

Edwards began his career in 1910 as a singer and dancer. Hawthorne performed in African-American theater. The two met in 1916, when Hawthorne was in the chorus of the show Smart Set. They married onstage the next year.

The two began performing as a comic team. They had been touring with the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) with an African-American husband-and-wife comedy team, Stringbeans and Sweetie May. Upon the death of Stringbeans (Butler May) in 1917, a TOBA promoter asked Edwards to take the stage name Butterbeans and, with his wife, take over Stringbeans and Sweetie May's act. Butterbeans and Susie appeared for the first time shortly thereafter.

Butterbeans and Susie's act played up the differences between the two. Susie wore elegant dresses and presented an air of composure and sexiness. Butterbeans, in contrast, played the fool, with his too-small pants and bowler hat, bow tie, tails, and floppy shoes. He was loudly belligerent: "I'd whip your head every time you breathe; rough treatment is exactly what you need." However, his pugnaciousness was belied by a happy demeanor and an inability to resist Susie's charms.

Whereas Stringbeans and Sweetie May stressed song and dance, Butterbeans and Susie emphasized comedy with content that was frowned on by moralists. The typical act featured a duet, a blues song by Susie, a cakewalk dance, and a comedy sketch. Short bouts of bickering peppered the act. The humor often concerned marriage or occasionally black life in general. One of their more popular numbers was "A Married Man's a Fool If He Thinks His Wife Don't Love Nobody but Him". The act was risqué at times. One of their more popular comic songs was Susie's saucy "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll", full of racy double entendres:

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