My daughter was in a song and dance recital where someone sang a solo of “Mammy”. There was nothing obviously offensive with the song. Yet, that word has negative connotations. Why? (Was it once sang in “black face”?) What’s the SD? 
Rent The Jazz Singer. Al Jolson sings “Mammy” in blackface.
From the Wikipedia article:
According to the article, he performed Mammy in blackface in The Jazz Singer.
Pfft. Just tell her to tell people that she’s doing the version from “Liza with a Z”. Liza’s was better than Jolson’s anyway…
I may just Wiki-up myself and alter that entry as follows:
His legacy is considered by many to be severely neglected today because he was a hopeless eye-rolling ham with a voice like a steam-powered kazoo.
I do give him a pass for those mannerisms. He was literally pioneering the transition from silents, and eye-rolling hamminess (and not-ready-for-talkies voices) were pretty much non-sins then.
As was performing in blackface.
It does call back to a more racist era. Still, if I saw a kid singing it at a dance recital, I’d probably just laugh my ass off. How old was this singer?
Well, to be fair, Al Jolson was not himself any more of a pioneer than any other contract actor of the time. He just lucked into a place in history on a technicality. Sure, The Jazz Singer is the first studio feature film with synchronized dialog, but notice how many qualifiers there are in that statement? It was far from the first talkie. Me, I consider Sunrise–a far, far greater movie than the nearly unwatchable Jazz Singer–as the first feature sound film. No dialogue, but synchronized score and sounde effects.
I should say, *it was far from the first sound film. It was not, in fact, that far from the first talkie.
You owe me a new monitor and a cup of herbal tea for that. I dare you to put that in Wiki.
Even if he hadn’t sung it in blackface, I think the song would still be uncomfortably un-PC today. I think the mammy character (basically, think of Mammy in Gone With the Wind) is associated with old stereotyped caricatures of African-Americans along the lines of Uncle Toms and “pickaninnies”. If a white kid today had a black nanny, he would never be taught to call her his “mammy.”
**A quick google search indicates that the lyrics of the song may have originally meant to refer to the singer’s birth mother, not his “mammy.” Even so, I think most people today would not hear it that way.
Not really a talkie, either. Songs on the soundtrack, dialogue on title cards.
Well, of course! Why else would a white guy put on blackface to sing it?
You can see him singing “Mammy” here at 2:30. (I added it to Wikipedia.)
Well, no, that’s the technicality it squeaks by on. Yes, most of the story is told in good old-fashioned title cards, but Al Jolson couldn’t shut up, so there are snatches of dialogue included before and after some of the musical numbers.
Mammy is an offensive word, like squaw.noun: a term for a Black nursemaid in the southern U.S.
I sublimated the urge by making an addition to the page about kazoos. It doesn’t involve Jolson but, rather, Paul Whiteman.
The Jazz Singer – or, to be precise – the massive popular success of the film, which brought Warner Brothers back from the brink of bankruptcy – is the first talking film that mattered. Others were experiments; The Jazz Singer transformed movies. No matter how much you nitpick, it is the film that made talkies possible and put an end to the silent cinema.
Or, in some cases, what a person would call his/her mother.