Before Neville Goddard Modeste Abdallah Guillaume Between The Williams Walker Glee Club And The Bel Canto Studio 1905 1910

16 Oct Before Neville Goddard: Modeste Abdallah Guillaume between the Williams & Walker Glee Club and the Bel Canto Studio (1905–1910)

- Part 1: Harlem’s Secret Fire — Esoteric Currents of the 1920s–30sScene-setting: mysticism, street lectures, Hebrew schools in mystical Harlem

- Part 2: Obelisks, Lodges & Ethiopian mysticsTracking the Black Freemasons, Ethiopian mystics across the occult underground

- Part 3: Mokomba, Mahalla & the Names That VanishMytho-historic clues from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Caribbean

- Part 1: Harlem’s Secret Fire — Esoteric Currents of the 1920s–30s

- Part 4: Abdullah Identified – The Baritone Mystic of Atlantic City and 30 West 72nd StreetThe first documented trail of Abdullah, linking his Atlantic City advertisements and census records to his later presence at 30 West 72nd Street in New York

- Part 4.1: Which Abdullah? Sorting Evidence from Myth in Neville Goddard Research

- Part 4.5: Abdullah Identified (Again): A Little Houdini on the Trail from Atlantic City to West 72nd Street

- Part 4.7: The Final Link to 30 West 72nd: This Is Neville Goddard’s Real Teacher, Abdullah

- Part 4.8: Before Neville Goddard: Modeste Abdallah Guillaume between the Williams & Walker Glee Club and the Bel Canto Studio (1905–1910)

- Part 5: The Man Behind the Silence — The True Identity of AbdullahA culminating profile

This article is still undergoing minor edits and building reference section.

Before Atlantic City knew him as “Dr. Modeste Abda’llah Guillaume, D.M.,” the baritone Doctor of Music with a Bel Canto studio, he was a working member in the biggest Black musical machine of the 1900s.

Williams & Walker wasn’t a nightclub act or a simple vaudeville show; it was a full-scale touring company that even hit London. This was top Black musical theater that featured epic scores, choreography, and a men’s glee club during the summer months to keep the cast employed. If you were in, you had credentials. Most members of this glee club were picked from top conservatories and were serious musicians.

Our first clear glimpse is 1905, where Modeste Bel Guillaume appears among the “Williams & Walker Gentlemen” the all-male glee club.

Bert Williams and George Walker built the most ambitious Black musical-comedy company of their time. Their Broadway runs of In Dahomey (1903), Abyssinia (1906), Bandanna Land (1907) were not vaudeville acts. They picked their members from classically trained Black talent, graduates of Fisk, Howard, Oberlin, and the National Conservatory of Music and worked with composers like Will Marion Cook and the Johnson brothers.

THE STAGE.

By “WOODBINE.”WILLIAMS AND WALKER GLEE CLUB.

By DOROTHY.In order that he might keep the young men of his company in touch with each other during the summer months and also to furnish them employment, George Walker organized the Williams & Walker Glee Club at the close of the season in the summer of 1905. The members were chosen from the male chorus and are graduates of the best music schools. At that time the following composed the club: William C. Elkins, director; J. L. Hill, Henry Green Tapley, Sterling C. Ray, Charles Henry Young, Charles Henry Moore, Charles Lincoln, Theodore Lawrence Pankey, James Escort Lightfoot, J. Mantell Thomas, Adolph Manuel Henderson, Arthur H. Payne, Lloyd E. Gibbs, Lewis Henry Saulsbury, and Modeste Bee Guillaume. Some few changes have been made.

In August, 1905, this club visited Dr. and Mrs. Washington at their summer home at South Weymouth, Mass., near Boston, and their presence was highly appreciated by the great educator. The club has appeared in vaudeville with much success and has been a headliner over Caucasian artists of note and have therefore proved themselves to be one of the best choruses seen in this line for many years. Their repertoire consists of both popular and classical musical numbers, which are received enthusiastically by the public everywhere, and the absence of rag-time is quite a surprise, while their version of high class music is enviable.