Visual Materials
Entertainment
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Entertainment
Visual Materials
The Entertainment subseries comprises sheet music published in the United States between 1900 and 1998, with the bulk of the materials dated between 1900 and 1979. This subseries covers a broad range of subject areas: creators (composers, directors, lyricists, performers, producers, and publishers), fetes (carnivals, circuses, expositions, and fairs), cartoon and comic book characters, and dances (cake walks, the Charleston, marches, polkas, quadrilles, shuffles, two-steps, and waltzes). Also found within the subseries are scores about musical instruments (brass, percussion, string, and wind), music stores, patriotism (domestic and foreign), minstrels, musical productions (theatrical and concert), and scores published outside of the United States. A broad representation of people from African, Asian, European, Hawaiian, Hispanic, and Native American backgrounds appears throughout. Notably, a sizable portion of the collection comprises scores with vernacular, language, and imagery now recognized as stereotypical or offensive, including materials that reflect racial stereotypes prevalent and widely accepted during their time, such as Blackface. Prominent early 20th-century performers in this subseries include George Walker and Bert Williams (Williams and Walker, Co.), two of the most renowned African American minstrels of the early 1900s; Ada Overton Walker; Eddie Leonard, one of the most prominent minstrels of his era; Sherman Houston Dudley, creator of the first black operated vaudeville circuit; and Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones. Also included are Eva Tanguay, the first performer to achieve national mass-media celebrity; Helen Hayes, the first woman to reach EGOT status (winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony); and Eddie Cantor. Other performers appearing within this subseries are Jean Constant Havez, a Hispanic American lyricist, screenwriter, and vaudevillian; Kitty Doner, one of the foremost male impersonators of the early 20th-century; and Al Jolson, the first openly Jewish American performer, best known for his starring role in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927). Prominent performers from the 1920s moving forward include Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (Stepin Fetchit), the first African American actor to receive a featured screen credit in a film, In Old Kentucky (1927); Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe, the first African American Opera singer and the first African American to obtain regular employment on Broadway; Rudy Vallée, the first male singer to rise from local radio broadcasts to national popularity as a crooner; Fannie Brice; and Ethel Merman. Other performers include Native American jazz singer Mildred Bailey (Queen of Swing), Cab Calloway, Hoagy Carmichael, Ethel Waters, the Supremes, and many others. Prominent composers, directors, lyricists, producers, and publishers in this subseries include Queen Liliuokalani, the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom (1891-1893) and composer; Harry von Tilzer, a prominent Tin Pan Alley songwriter at the turn of the 20th-century; Florenze Ziegfeld, Jr.; W.C. Handy, one of the first song writers in the United States to publish blues music; E.T. Paull, noted composer, arranger, and sheet music publisher known for his colorfully lithographed sheet music; May Frances Aufderheide; Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle who together wrote Shuffle Along (1921), one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Other notable creators mentioned are Dai-Keong Lee, an Asian American composer whose Symphony No. 2 was runner-up for the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Music; Shepard N. Edmonds, composer, lyricist, and founder of the Attucks Music Publishing Company (1904), the first African American music publishing company in the United States. Also found within this subseries are composers and lyricists Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, George M. Cohan, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and theatrical producer, and the Shubert brothers, prominent producers and theatre owners. To note are scores written by Dorothy Fields, librettist and lyricist, and one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters; Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond, the first woman to sell one million copies of a song; and Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand (1946-2016), he composed Blue Night from Michael Todd's Peep Show (1950). Throughout the subseries are scores from notable productions , including And Ain't Misbehavin'; Cats; the Cotton Club Parade; Grease; the Greenwich Village Follies; Hellzapoppin'; the Passing Show; Phantom of the Opera; Porgy and Bess; Ragtime; West Side Story; the Wizard of Oz; and Ziegfeld's Follies.
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Subseries B. Minstrel (large size)
Visual Materials
This subseries contains 61 large-size items that pertain to minstrel show entertainment primarily in the United States from the 1850s to the 1920s. The majority of items consist of lithographic posters related to minstrel dance, comedic, and musical acts, often with caricatured depictions of African Americans; blackface entertainers both in costume and in formal dress; and female minstrels.
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Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera contains more than 2,300 printed items primarily advertising theatrical and musical entertainment and related performers in the United States from 1839 to the 1940s, with the majority of items dating from the 1870s to the 1890s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations pertaining to a wide variety of performance genres that have been grouped broadly as music and theater (including theater, music, dance, burlesque, comedy, pantomime, and variety); minstrel (including minstrel shows, blackface entertainers, and female minstrels); and magic and miscellaneous (including magicians, motion pictures, and Wild West shows). Materials are arranged into two series: small-size items (11 x 14 inches or less) and large-size items (bigger than 11 x 14 inches). Small size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name. The collection has 450 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic theatrical and minstrel posters that were intended to advertise specific shows or performers. Small-size items in the collection number approximately 1,850 and are comprised mainly of promotional ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and playbills, souvenir booklets, tickets, die-cut cards, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. The collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American theater and the evolution of advertising strategies for the performing arts in the United States in the late 19th century. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in printmaking, and of the artists, engravers, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
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People and culture
Visual Materials
The People and culture subseries comprises sheet music published between 1900 and 1962, and focuses on scores with images of, or are about, children, death and mourning, holidays, immigrants, marriage, men, organizations, people of color, politics, religion, and women. A portion of the scores is benign in nature; however, there is a heavy concentration of derogatory images and language showcased throughout a range of Coon songs, jazz, minstrel scores, plantation melodies, pop, and ragtime tunes. Following a similar pattern, other scores focus on the experiences of immigrants, women, and other marginalized groups of people. This includes people of African, Asian, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, and Middle Eastern descent, as well as people of Hawaiian, Fijian, Jewish, and Native American origin. A few examples include Happy Little Coons, by J.W. Ladd, Hasta Mañana Until Tomorrow, by Egbert Van Alstyne, I'm A Yiddish Cowboy (Tough Guy Levi) by Al Pantadosi and Halsey K. Mohr, Who'll Take Care of the Harem When the Sultan Goes To War? by William J. Lewis, Chong He Come From Hong Kong by Harold Weeks, Good-Bye Red-Man Good-Bye by Ted Snyder, and Honest Injun by Harry Von Tilzer. To note is Apache Chief Gernimo's Own Medicine Song by Carlos Troyer. The latter was representative of the Indianist movement during the late 19th-century, which was part of a broader interest in Native American music. There are also scores dedicated to significant fraternal orders and nonprofit organizations, including the Pullman porters, the Grand Aerie Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Kiwanis Club of Atlanta, and the Ku Klux Klan.
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People and culture
Visual Materials
The People and culture subseries consists of sheet music published between 1817 and 1899, covering diverse topics such as African Americans, children, couples, groups, immigrants, death and mourning, holidays, marriage, men, Native Americans, organizations, religion, and women. Please note that this subseries contains language and stereotypical imagery that some library users may find harmful or offensive. The section about African Americans contains comic songs, "Coon" songs, minstrel scores, plantation melodies, and ragtime tunes, depicting aspects of African American life in the 19th century, including plantation life, contraband life, and the Jim Crow era. This section includes scores by African American composers and performers such as Blind Tom, James Allen Bland, Brewer and Suttle's Ragtime Four, Bob Cole, Gussie Lord Davis, Peter Devonear, Billy Johnson, Irving Jones, Sam Lucas, and Bert A. Williams. Additionally, it includes scores by European American composers and performers including E. P. Christy, Press Eldridge, George "Honey Boy" Evans, Charles Kunkel, the Virginia Serenaders, Lew Dockstader, Lotta Crabtree, Flo Irwin, May Irwin, and John Philip Sousa. Notably, "A Trip To Coontown" by Bert A. Williams, Bob Cole, and Billy Johnson, the first musical in New York written, produced, and performed by African Americans, is part of this collection. Additional scores to note focus on the experiences of immigrants to the United States (such as the Chinese, English, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, and Scottish) and Native American characters and tribes including Chief Keokuk of the Sauk Nation, the mythical figure Minnehaha, "Old Bets," Chief Osceola of the Seminole, Chief Ossahinta of the Onondaga, Chief Paxinosa of the Shawnee, Pocahontas, as well as the Dakota, Narragansett, Nez Perce, and the Sioux nations. To note is the rare score "Wakona Waltz" published in 1837 by Fred Munson, Jr. There are also scores dedicated to significant fraternal orders and nonprofit organizations including the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, and the American Red Cross.
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Twentieth century
Visual Materials
The 20th-century series contains approximately 21,600 scores dated between 1900 and 1998. The collection represents various styles of American music, such as blues, jazz, minstrel, pop, religious, rhythm and blues, showtunes, and soul music. These scores cover topics including entertainment, industry and professions, the military, people and culture, science and technology, sports and leisure, transportation, travel, and miscellaneous songs. A small number are published outside the United States, including works from Australia, Britain, Europe, Mexico, and Chile. While many of the scores are intact, several are fragile or loose at the seam, and in some cases, only the cover page remains. Most available cover pages are ornately designed and may contain photographic images, inserted notes, or autographs. The scores feature lyrical or instrumental compositions, in the form of cake walks, the Charleston, marches, polkas, quadrilles, shuffles, two-steps, and waltzes. Multiple editions exist for some titles. Notable actors, composers, directors, lithographers, lyricists, performers, producers, and publishers are frequently involved, often serving in more than one role. There is overlap between some subseries. For example, scores suitable for the Creators boxes may be included in the People and Culture boxes because of accompanying images or stereotypical representations of people of color. Similarly, some Productions scores are located within People and Culture. Please note that the collection may contain historical images and language that users could find harmful, offensive, or inappropriate.
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