I have put a lot of time and effort into finding out all I could about my father.  I was only three when he died and I basically have no memory of him.  He was 30 years older than my mother and they were only married for five years.  During my research I have found out my mom knew very little about the man she married, or, what she told me was very little.  Eddie was an actor, a songwriter, a singer, a restaurant owner, a dancer, a movie producer, a movie star, a radio personality and I could go on, but I won’t.  The thing is, I have only learned most of this information in the last four years, mom never told me half of this stuff.  I figure since she was only in her early 20’s when she married Eddie and he had money at the time, their life was too busy for her to worry about what he had done before she met him.  They traveled and gave “soirees” and went to nightclubs all the time, and had me, so mom only knew what was going on from the time she married Eddie.

My problem now is that I have almost no information on my father’s early years.  I know where he was born, that he was extremely poor and that he left home at about nine years of age.  I know that he taught himself to read and taught himself magic tricks and became the “Boy Magician” traveling around Baltimore putting on shows in churches and halls.  And that is about it.  He was born in 1891 and I have been told his birth certificate no longer exists.  I have his parents names (finally) but cannot find them in any census.  I want to start my book but I hate to begin the book with sketchy information, and the longer I put if off, the more I feel that I am procrastinating.

My really good information starts when Eddie wrote his first song.  According to the Catalogue of Copyright Entries, Eddie copyrighted “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” on December 28, 1917 in Chicago under his given name, Edward Green.  He sold it a year later, but continued to perform the song in places like the Booker Washington Theater in St. Louis until 1920.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Pace and Handy Building, 232 West, 42nd ST., New York
on sale at Pace & Handy Co., Inc., Publishers. Price 15 c. Composed by Eddie Green.

From there it is easy to trace Eddie because his name stays in the paper as his career and his entrepreneurial life grows.  As a matter of fact, his name was in the paper so much, I was beginning to wonder if he was paying someone to see that it was.

Anyhow, I am going to start my very first book writing adventure for the new year and I hope to take you along with me.  I will use my blog as a place for updates of my progress and to ask for suggestions or words of encouragement, while continuing to post what I think are inspirational posts from myself or others, inspirational poetry if I find any, or information on motivational blogs I run across.  And speaking of inspiration and motivation, I know that my father started out with nothing, very little schooling and entered into a world that, in the early 1900’s was a truly difficult world for people of color, but Eddie took the bull by the horns and ran with it and became an upstanding man who was well-liked by those who knew him, both professionally and personally and always got asked back.  I am very proud to be his daughter.  Thanks for stopping by.