The curtain would open and you wouldn't see nothing but this big record player... You know, a Victrola. Then Matt, he would come out and open the door, don't you know, and then I would step out singing while Hersal [Thomas] was playing the piano. It was beautiful, child, you should have seen it - Sippie Wallace describes a dramatic stage entrance in the 1920s, quoted in Black Pearls: Blues Queens Of The 1920s by Daphne Duval Harrison