History, celebrity, leafy beauty live on at NYC cemetery

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cumella, dressed in 1920s garb, laid his old Victrola record player down among the tombstones and turned to the small tour group assembled under the towering trees at Woodlawn Cemetery.

“She was the diva of her day. The Beyoncé of her day,” he said, brushing leaves off the modest stone commemorating vaudeville star Nora Bayes.

The group had to lean in toward the old windup Victrola to hear Bayes' big voice, necessary in the age before microphones, belting her biggest hit, 1917’s “Over There.”

The song's author, George M. Cohan, was also honored on this tour of jazz and vaudeville greats buried at Woodlawn, a grand old cemetery and arboretum in the heart of the Bronx. Cohan and his family lie in an imposing mausoleum with Tiffany stained-glass windows.

Other stops included the resting places of jazz pioneers W.C. Handy and King Oliver; dancers Irene and Vernon Castle; comedian Bert Williams; and, at a crossroads known as “Jazz Corner,” Duke Ellington, surrounded by Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton and others.

The tour ended at the grave of Irving Berlin, where the old Victrola played “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”

“They called it ragtime, but it’s really proto-jazz,” says Cumella, who DJs and had a long-running radio show under the name Phonograph DJ MAC.

“Musicians and artists gravitated here, aspired to be here,” he said.

The Jazz Age musical greats are just one of the reasons a visit to Woodlawn can be fascinating.

Its 400 acres are the resting place of many influential people. including authors (Herman Melville, Dorothy Parker, E.L. Doctorow); business leaders (J.C. Penney, F.W. Woolworth, Madam C.J. Walker); women's rights pioneers (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt); musical stars from...