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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, producers, and publishers)and performers, 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 includes scores with vernacular and imagery recognized as stereotypical or offensive today; these include mention of racially prevalent stereotypes, such as Blackface.

Prominent early twentieth-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 twentieth century; Karyl Norman, one of the foremost female impersonators of the early twentieth 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 composer 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 twentieth 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 and 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), who composed Blue Night from Michael Todd's Peep Show (1950).

Throughout the subseries are scores from notable productions , including 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 1900-1998; bulk 1900-1979
Call number
priJLC_SMUS
Creator
Last, Jay T(Opens in new tab)
Provenance
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2005.
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2010-2019.
Gift of Jay T. Last, 2023.
Find out more
View in the Library catalog(Opens in new tab)

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    Entertainment

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    The Entertainment subseries is comprised of sheet music published in the United States between 1794 and 1899, with the bulk of materials dated between 1840 and 1899.  Materials cover a broad range of subject areas including performers (actors, actresses, minstrels, musicians, singers, singing groups, and duets), fetes (balls, carnivals, circuses, fairs, and expositions, including the 1876 Centennial), magic, comic songs, composers and lyricists, social and performance dances (polkas, mazurkas, quadrilles, schottisches, and waltzes, some concerning Austrian ballet dancer Fanny Elssler).  Also included are scores about musical instruments (guitar, lute, mandolin, harp, piano, and organ), music stores, patriotism (foreign and domestic), and productions (theatrical and concert). The latter includes a 1794 version of See Brother See which was performed in the opera The Children in the Wood. A sizable portion of this subseries contains comic songs and minstrelsy that use stereotypical vernacular, offensive language, and reinforce racial stereotypes that audiences of the time found acceptable and agreeable (such as Blackface). Prominent Nineteenth century performers in the subseries include the Alleghanians, Sara Bernhardt, Charlotte Mignon "Lotta" Crabtree, the Hutchinson Family Singers, Henry Irving, May Irwin, Jenny Lind, Margaret (Maggie) Julia Mitchell, the Rainer Family, Lillian Russell (the Queen of Song), William J. Scanlan, and Lydia Yeamans (the New Jenny Lind). Prominent minstrel troupes in the subseries include Buckley's Serenaders (established by James Buckley, 1803-1872), Christy's Minstrels (led by Edwin P. Christy, 1815-1852), and Bryant's Minstrels (led by Dan Bryant, 1833-1875). Both Christy's and Bryant's Minstrels were the longest-lasting troupes to have formed before the American Civil War. Other troupes include the Virginia Minstrels (led by Daniel Decatur Emmett, 1815-1904). Also included are scores by Emerson, Allen and Manning (founded by Billy Emerson, 1846-1902); the Ethiopian Serenaders; the Harmoneons; Kunkel's Nightingale Opera Troupe (founded by George Kunkel, one of the first promoters of nineteenth-century American Minstrelsy, 1822 or 1823-1885); and the San Francisco Minstrels. Prominent composers and lyricists found throughout the subseries include Basile Bares (1845-1902), formerly enslaved in Louisiana and the first African American to copyright his music; Mrs. L. L. Deming; Emma Edwards; Jennie Engel; Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864), composer of household and Minstrel songs; Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (1829-1892), composer and early creator of Big Band music; Charles Grobe; Edward Harrigan (1844-1911), a member of comedy teams of Harrigan and Braham, and Harrigan and Hart.  Also included are Charles (1840-1923) and Jacob Kunkel (1846–1882); Dan Lewis, African American composer and minstrel performer; Stephen Charnak Massett (1820-1898); John Philip Sousa (1854-1932); Johann Baptist Strauss II (1825-1899); and Theo Von La Hache (1822-1869), composer of Confederate songs. Throughout the subseries are scores for notable productions including Aladdin; Amelie or, The Love Test; The Black Crook; The Bohemian Girl; The Barber of Seville; and Cinderella. Other productions include Der Freischutz; Faust; Fra Diavolo; The Huguenots; Il Travatore;  La Sonnambul;  The Merry Wives of Windsor; and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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