American Popular Song | Musicology For Everyone

D.P. Faulds: Border State music publisher

Posted on March 18, 2013 by dmguion

Louisville, Kentucky, located across the Ohio River from Indiana, was home to a thriving music publishing industry throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, D.P. Faulds being one of the more prominent. It issued music representing both sides of the Civil War, as did other Border State publishers. Four slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware voted down attempts to secede from the Union. They became known as Border States. Pro-Union and pro-Confederate sentiment ran high in all of these states, and troops from all of them served on both sides of the war. Is it any wonder that music … Continue reading →

American shaped notes tune books and the fasola tradition

Posted on October 17, 2011 by dmguion

When William Little and William Smith published The Easy Instructor (Philadelphia 1801), they started a spate of shaped notes tune books over the next half century or so. Perhaps the best known today is The Sacred Harp (1844). The traditional singing style associated with these books is known as the Sacred Harp style. The four shapes correspond to four syllables (fa, sol, la, mi) that form the theoretical underpinnings for the way these tunes have long been taught. Anyone who knows “Do, a deer” from The Sound of Music knows that there are seven syllables. Where did this fasola come … Continue reading →

The quest for a national anthem: Civil War edition

Posted on September 26, 2011 by dmguion

The Star Spangled Banner became the legal national anthem of the United States in 1931, the first time any song received that designation. That doesn’t mean no one perceived a need for a national anthem any earlier. In the early days of the Civil War, people attending rallies on the northern side sang two other songs besides The Star Spangled Banner: Yankee Doodle and Hail, Columbia. My Country ‘Tis of Thee dates from 1831, but apparently it was not as popular as the others.The other three were all good, emotional rallying cries, but more and more people were beginning to … Continue reading →

Henry Clay Work’s Civil War Songs

Posted on September 20, 2011 by dmguion

The son of an ardent abolitionist, Henry Clay Work was born in Connecticut in 1832. He trained as a printer and started a career setting musical type. Along the way, he taught himself music. By 1853, he had moved to Chicago and started writing his own songs. His first publication, “We Are Coming, Sister Mary,” became nationally famous after the Christy Minstrels started performing it regularly. After a fatal shipwreck on Lake Michigan, Work wrote the music to “Lost on the Lady Elgin,” and even that song was published in New York as well as Chicago. Not long after the … Continue reading →

Root & Cady: leading publisher of Civil War songs

Posted on August 31, 2011 by dmguion

Soon after Ebenezer T. Root and Chauncey M. Cady founded their music store and publishing house (Chicago, 1858), they became the city’s leading music dealer. Content at first to be, like other Chicago music companies, a general music dealer and publisher of songs for the local market, the partners could not have imagined that they would be best remembered for the songs they sold nationwide during the Civil War. During that time, most American music publishers catered to the local market. They made no particular attempt to promote their songs; the songwriters themselves did that. In fact, publishing was usually … Continue reading →

Benjamin Franklin on Handel

Posted on August 26, 2010 by dmguion

I have written extensively on this blog and elsewhere about how the distinction between classical and popular music arose. (See, for example, “Popular Music: the Birth of an Idea.”) Years before it became apparent, Benjamin Franklin anticipated it when he advised his brother on how to write a popular ballad: don’t use Handel’s music for a model. Peter Franklin had written a ballad text disapproving of expensive foppery and encouraging hard work and thriftiness. Benjamin thought it very good, but pointed out that its poetic meter did not resemble that of any of the common and well-known tunes. That would … Continue reading →

The most popular of 100 posts on Musicology for Everyone

Posted on June 18, 2010 by dmguion

Last Monday’s post marks the 100th installment of Musicology for Everyone. It seems like a good milestone to look back at the most popular posts. I have chosen partly on the number of visitors and partly on the number of tweets. If you have read these, enjoy them again. Otherwise, enjoy them for the first time. The birth of the popular music industry Centuries ago, there was music for the nobility and music for the commoners, but no popular music. Only when music became a commodity for sale did the concept of popular music become popular. That was a more … Continue reading →

"Easter Parade," by Irving Berlin

Posted on April 5, 2010 by dmguion

Perhaps the most popular Easter song in the English language, “Easter Parade” started out with completely different words. In 1917, Berlin wrote “Smile and Show Your Dimple” to cheer up women whose men had just been deployed to fight in the First World War. No one remembered it very long except Berlin himself. In 1933, Berlin and playwright Moss Hart decided to collaborate on a satiric review with sketches taken from the daily newspaper. They called it As Thousands Cheer. It had sketches not only from the news sections, but also the society column, advice column, weather report, and comics. … Continue reading →

An early song about Chicago

Posted on March 29, 2010 by dmguion

Probably everyone knows, or at least knows about, “Chicago, That Toddlin’ Town” and “My Kind of Town.” Frank Sinatra sang both with great success. Surely no one will be surprised to learn that nearly 200 more songs about Chicago exist that no one is ever likely to sing again. But could anyone expect that the earliest published song about Chicago takes such a dim view of the place? In 1868, Chicago music publisher H. M. Higgins found a very insulting poem about Chicago in a Pittsburgh newspaper and decided to set it to music. Musically, the piece has little interest, … Continue reading →

Popular song in America, part 10: The rock revolution

Posted on January 20, 2010 by dmguion

Tin Pan Alley songs appealed to a predominantly urban, white, affluent, and musically literate segment of the population. They remained unknown to much of the rest of the country, including most blacks and rural whites, who had their own music, learned and passed down orally. The advent of the recording industry and radio gave this music a wider reach within their respective niches. Consequently, when Billboard began to document record sales, it kept three charts, one for “popular music,” (Tin Pan Alley songs), one for Country-Western, and one for black music, labeled at various times Harlem Hit Parade, Race Records, … Continue reading →