Call Number:

Print Collection 31

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

2 linear feet (6 boxes)

Preferred Citation:

Broadway sheet music collection, 1918-1929, Print Collection 31, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1918-1929 (inclusive)

Form:

Sheet music

Abstract:

This collection contains sheet music for songs performed in musicals, revues, and vaudevilles on Broadway from 1919 to 1929.

In post World War I United States, musical theater underwent a massive evolution, combining themes from minstrel shows, vaudeville, and revues to create what we consider today "the Broadway Musical." The shows performed in Manhattan during this time period reflected both the tensions around contemporary issues of race and gender as well as the popular nostalgic view of nineteenth century life, touching upon the nativism and anti-immigration movements. Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, and other composers sought to integrate jazz into the European operetta, slowly Americanizing the European music show style, while mainstreaming jazz and making it popular in all classes. Without widespread access to sound machines like the phonograph, American families would buy sheet music in order to perform and relive the songs from the shows together.

This collection contains 387 music sheets from songs performed in musicals, revues, and vaudevilles on Broadway from 1918 to 1929. Each piece of sheet music includes the song name, publication date, lyricists, and composers, as well as the star who originally sang the song in its first performance. In addition to the main song featured on the cover, most pieces of sheet music include one to three shorter songs before and after the main song's music. A number of annual shows are represented in the collection, including, but not limited to Ziegfield Follies, Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue, Le Chauve-Souris, George White's Scandals, Earl Carol's Vanities, Greenwich Village Follies, and The Passing Show. Other high profile show music includes songs from Bombo, Kid Boots, Show Boat, Midnight Rounders, Blackbirds of 1928, Sally, Tumble In, The Cocoanuts, Sinbad, Strike Up The Band, Tip-Toes, Hit the Deck, and Big Boy, to name a few.

Most of the influential composers and lyricists who shaped the industry of the Broadway musical are represented in the collection. Key composers include Irving Berlin, Ray Henderson, Harry Tierney, Jerome Kern, Herbert Stothart, Vince Youmans, Albert von Tilzer, Sigmund Romberg, E. Ray Goetz, George M. Cohan and Rudolf Friml. Key lyricists include Anne Caldwell, Zelda Sears, Dorothy Fields, B.G. De Sylva, Lew Brown, Al Jolson, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Eddie Cantor and Irving Caesar.

The original singer played a key role in visual advertisement and many of the sheets include a photo of the singer on its cover. Some of these stars include Mitzi, Eddie Cantor, Sophia Tucker, George Price, Al Jolson, the Courtney Sisters, Francis White, the Howard Brothers, Florence Mills, Ted Lewis, Aunt Jemima, the Farber Sisters, Irene Bordoni, Eddie Buzzell, Helen Ford, Moher and Eldridge, the Rath Brothers, Dennis King, Tom Martell, Dottie Ray Greene, Eddie Dowling, Raymond Hitchcock, Charles Winninger, Ann Pennington, Green & Blyler, Gus Edwards, George White, Winnie Lightner, Don Clark, Betty Compson, Queenie Smith, G.P. Huntley, the Marx Brothers, Marilynn Miller, Leon Errol, Sissle & Blake, Dorothy Stone, Ruth Etting, Fanny Brice, Bothwell Browne, and Gallagher & Shean.

The sheets are arranged alphabetically by title.