Red Pepper (musical)

Red Pepper is a musical in two acts with music by Albert Gumble and Owen Murphy, lyrics by Howard Emmett Rogers, and a book by Edgar Smith and Emily Young. Staged on Broadway in 1922 after a premiere in Baltimore in 1921, the musical was created for the comedy duo of McIntyre and Heath, who were famous for their performances in blackface.

Set at a racetrack in Havana, Cuba, and in the Southern United States, Red Pepper takes its title from a race horse who is featured in the musical's storyline. It was one of the earliest musicals to use a musical score rooted in jazz, marking a shift away from operetta and ragtime which had dominated the musical theatre landscape previously in the 1910s and into the early 1920s.