Turn-of-the-Century Child
Music

General Resources

• "Antique Record Machines."  Tim Gracyk's Home Page.
  [http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/]
  
  
• "Children, Art, and Music," in Childhood and Children; A Compendium of Customs, Superstititions, Theories, Profiles, and Facts by Joan Bel Geddes.   Phoenix, AZ: Oryx, 1997. p. 354-399.
  
  
• Music History Timeline: 20th Century 1801-1900
  [http://members.tripod.com/~papandr/musicology/19timeline.htm]
  
  
• Music History Timeline: 20th Century1900-1950
  [http://members.tripod.com/~papandr/musicology/20timeline.htm]
  
  
• Edison Sound Recordings
  [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edsndhm.html]
  Includes instrumental, vocal, spoken word, spoken comedy, foreign language and ethnic, religious, opera and concert recordings.

Specific Types of Music

Opera and Classical Music

• BMG  Classics World search by composer
  [http://search.bmgclassics.com/classics/www/search.html?p_action=composer]
  
  
• Enrico Caruso
  [http://www.bmgclassics.com/bmg/bmg/biography/caruso.html]
  Plays Don Juan in Carmen on the eve of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.
  

Folk and Popular Music

• History in Song
  [http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/history.html]
  See topics such as immigrants, railroads, tramps, labor.
  
  
• California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties
  [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/cowhome.html]
  The WPA California Folk Music Project is a multi-format ethnographic field collection that includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California, including folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and musicians.
  
  
• A Chronological Subject Guide to American Popular Music 1900 to 1950
  [http://www.nhmccd.edu/contracts/lrc/kc/music-2.html]
  
  
• Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande
  [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rghtml/rghome.html]
  The Juan B. Rael Collection is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.  Includes audio recordings, images, correspondence, recording logs, song text transcriptions, and publications.
  
  
• Historic American Sheet Music
  [http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/search.html]
  Duke University Rare book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
  

• Old Time Music on the Web
  [http://www.korrnet.org/jca/oldtime.htm]
  Country music resources
  
  
• Seeger, Pete and Bob Reiser.  Carry it On! A History in Song and Pictures of America's Working Men and Women.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
  The chapters "Eight Hours" 1865-1900 and "Solidarity Forever" 1900-1918 contain the words and music of 24 songs including the Yiddish ballad "Mayn Yingele" (My Little Boy), "Ballad of the Triangle Fire," "A Miner's Life," "The Popular Wobbly" and "Solidarity Forever."
  
  
• Southern Mosaic; The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
  [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/]
  700 sound recordings, as well as photographs and other text documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia collecting folksongs. These recordings represent a broad spectrum of musical styles many of which would have been familiar to children earlier in the century: ballads (e.g. "Influenza"), blues (e.g. "When I Was a Little Boy"), children's songs (e.g. "La Pájara Pinta" in Spanish), cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals and hymns (e.g."Amazing Grace"), and work songs (e.g."Rock Island Line").
  

• Southern Music in the 20th Century
  [http://www.southernmusic.net/]
  Description by decade
  

Specific Songs

• "Alexander's Ragtime Band"
  
• Burleson, Hattie. "Sadie's Servant Room Blues" song reprinted in History Matters Many Pasts
  
• "Sweet Adeline"
  
• "April Showers"
  
• Hill, Joe.  "The Preacher and the Slave" song reprinted in The American Reader; Words That Moved a Nation ed. Diane Ravitch.  New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

Blues, Jazz, Ragtime

• Alexander, Scott.  "A History of Jazz Before 1930." Red Hot Jazz Archive.
  [http://www.redhotjazz.com/]
  
  
• Colbert, David, ed.  Eyewitness to America; 500 Years of America in the Words of Those Who Saw It Happen.  New York: Pantheon, 1997. 
  Includes "The Birth of the Blues" by W. C. Handy and "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin.
  
  
• Doctorow, E. L.  Ragtime.  New York: Modern Library, 1997.
  Also movie.
  
  
• Madin, Mike.  "The Jazz Age."  Academic Info: U.S. History - Modern America.
  [http://www.academicinfo.net/usmod.html#jazz]
  
  
• "Sophie Tucker's Visit to the Barbary Coast, 1911."  South of Market Journal. (August 1925).   
  [http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist2/soph.html]
  

Specific Performers and Composers

• "It Was Considered Low Music"
  [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/1758b-blake.html]
  Pianist Eubie Blake on the birth of ragtime.
  
  
• Interview with Doc Cheatham
  [http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/scl/MULTIMED/JAZZHIST/jazzhist.html]
  Jazz trumpet player documents his childhood, born 1905 in Nashville (TN)
  
  
• Curtis, Lucious.  "Times Is Gettin Harder" from Mississippi River Blues Vol. 1, Matchbox label reissue. History Matters: Many Pasts. [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/541d-times.html]
  Blues of the Great Migration.
  
  
• "W. C. Handy."   Pick of the Month, February 1997.  Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village.
  [http://www.hfmgv.org/histories/pic/97.feb.html]
  
  
• Read and hear about the birth and growth of the blues by searching the archive of "This Day in History" for September 28 (scroll down or use "find in page" to locate the keyword "Handy") at the Library of Congress.
  
  
• Interview with Milt Hinton
  [http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/scl/MULTIMED/JAZZHIST/jazzhist.html]
  Double-bass player, born 1910, Vicksburg (MI)

© Debbie Abilock August 22, 1999-2004