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Entertainment

Description

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.

Type
Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Date
approximately 1900-approximately 1998; bulk approximately 1900-approximately 1979
Call number
priJLC_SMUS
Creator
Last, Jay T (1929-2021)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2005.
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2010-2019.
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2023.
Restrictions
Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more information.
IN PROCESS COLLECTION: !b material may be unavailable. Please contact Reader Services for more information.
Rights
The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining permission rests with the researcher.
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View in the Library catalog(Opens in new tab)

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