• This was the drawing of George Copeland that appeared in local media when he was wrongly accused of the murder of Miranda Bricker in 1905. At the time, he was 18, a former high school football player.

  • Hall’s Jubilee Singers toured extensively throughout California and Arizona. Walker Auditorium was typical of the small to medium sized theaters they performed in during the early part of Copeland’s time with the group, though they began building to larger and larger venues.

  • This is the poster for a variety concert at the YMCA in Phoenix, Arizona, in September of 1919 which featured Hall’s Jubilee Singers.

  • In 1922, the group was said to have played a successful eight-week run at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, a venue which seated 1600.

  • George H. Copeland died on Nov. 8, 1925, at the Santa Fe Railroad Hospital in Los Angeles, after coming down with double pneumonia. This building was later renamed the Linda Vista Community Hospital, before closing down in 1991. Since then it has become a popular site for television, movie, and music video shoots.

  • With his wife stricken by tuberculosis, Copeland had to stop touring and threw himself into local productions, including the presentation of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s cantata “A Tale of Old Japan,” which was staged at The Gamut Club.

  • This less clear photo still seems to show the same members as the 1919 photo. The group continued for slightly longer like this, before Hall departs and they become known as the Bilbrew Quartette.

  • The clearest surviving newspaper photo of Hall’s Jubilee Singers allows for speculation. The older gentleman to the left is presumably John Hall, the manager and founder of the group, who was said to have had 20 years experience with such groups. The costumed man in front is probably monologist Ralph Bilbrew, husband of A.C. Bilbrew, the female accompanist and orator. That leaves the other two men. Of the two, the one second from left — standing between Mr. Hall and Mrs. Bilbrew — most closely matches the known descriptions of George H. Copeland. (Submitted image.)