Archives and Special Collections Exhibits
Preview
Creation Date
2-24-2022
Description
A quick survey of songs published in 1921 gives some insights into the tastes of the day. Of period dances like the Charleston or Shimmy, by far the most popular dance tune of the year was the Fox Trot. Like its surrounding years, 1921 saw the publication of an extraordinary number of dance and novelty songs and tunes. After seeing hula dancers and hearing steel slide guitar players for the first time at the 1915 Panama Pacific World Exposition in San Francisco, Americans became obsessed with Hawaiian music. Over the next several years American song writers composed hundreds of songs based partly in actual Hawaiian sounds and traditions, but mostly in imagined ideas of Hawaii. There are plenty of examples of other geographic regions being exoticized through song as well. Even a lot of nostalgic songs about the American South were written in New York’s Tin Pan Alley by recent European arrivals who had never set foot in the South.
1921 wasn’t just filled with silly songs or dance music. With the enormous success of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” the previous year, there was a large uptick in recordings of African American performers. The Harlem, New York record label Black Swan was founded in 1921, becoming the first successful label owned and operated entirely by African Americans. This label released a number of important classical, blues, and jazz recordings of black musicians such as Trixie Smith, Lucille Hegamin, and Ethel Waters. All of the sheet music and 78s displayed here were donated by Ann Jefcoat Rayburn (1927-2012). See the finding aid for the Ann Rayburn Collection of Paper Americana.
Featured sheet music:
- Drifting and Dreaming (Sweet Paradise)
- Dapper Dan from Dear Old Dixie Land
- Jabberwocky (Novelty Fox Trot Song)
- Suez (Oriental Fox Trot Romance)
- Ziegfeld Follies 1921: Sally Won't You Come Back?
- Mississippi Cradle
- Home Again Blues
- Ain't We Got Fun
Featured recordings:
- Dapper Dan (Columbia, 1921)
- Mem'ries of You Mammy (OKeh, 1921)
- My June Love (Black Swan, 1921)
- Desperate Blues (Black Swan, 1921)
- That Naughty Waltz (Brunswick, 1921)
Relational Format
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