Have you heard the songs of that era when "After the Ball" started modern pop history by selling over 5 million copies, when the nation sang and danced to the beat of Tin Pan Alley, when sheet music was the medium for musical fame? You probably know the tunes and choruses; they are always favorites. But there were also verses and piano parts in the original sheets that are every bit as much fun to sing today. Whether soprano, alto, tenor, bass, piano player, even whistler, you will enjoy these original pages and see why millions in the Nineties made them their own favorite songs.
Here is the original sheet music, complete with piano parts, singing parts, and the original covers, for 89 songs that span the mid-1880s to the mid-1900s. There are songs by the composers who made Tin Pan Alley history: Victor Herbert — Gypsy Love Song, The Streets of New York, Toyland; George M. Cohan: Give My Regards to Broadway, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Forty-five Minutes from Broadway; Paul Dresser — On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away, My Gal Sal; James Thornton — When You Were Sweet Sixteen, The Streets of Cairo; Harry Von Tilzer — A Bird in a Gilded Cage, Coax Me; Cole and Johnson — Under the Bamboo Tree; Gus Edwards — In My Merry Oldsmobile; and A. M. Hirsh — Yale Boola. There are songs that were originally sung by: Miss Lillian Russell — Somebody's Sweetheart I Want to Be; Eva Tanguay — I Don't Care; Frank W. Shea — Dear Old Girl; Du Rell Twin Brothers — The Fountain in the Park; Leona Thurber — In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree; Gus Williams — Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis; Lottie Gilson — You're Not the Only Pebble on the Beach; and Annie Hart — Sweet Rosie O'Grady. Additional songs include The Band Played On; Bill Bailey; The Bowery; Break the News to Mother; Daisy Bell; Hello, Ma Baby; A Hot Time in the Old Town; Ida! Sweet as Apple Cider; In the Good Old Summer Time; Little Annie Rooney; My Wild Irish Rose; Wait 'till the Sun Shines, Nellie; You Tell Me Your Dream, I'll Tell You Mine; and 50 others, equally singable, equally popular in their time and ours.
Robert Fremont has selected the songs, ballads, dance songs, comic songs, and marches that capture the era, and the songs that we still sing, attempting to recapture that time in our own special way. Some you may have seen before, but most, in their original editions, are completely unavailable anywhere else. So tune up your vocal cords, bring out the piano, grab your tootsie-wootsie, and replay the favorite songs of the 1890s.
