Carrie Jacobs Bond composed music and lyrics of I Love You Truly in 1901. It was the first of her many compositions to be published and is still heard today, most often at weddings. Jacobs Bond was not just a creator; she was a marketer. In later years she had her own music publishing company. In publishing sheet music, all of her own creation, she was the first woman to find a place in Tin Pan Alley, that wonderful place where music-lovers went into one of the hundreds of small rooms where a song-plugger pounded out the latest musical offering on his piano. The purchaser took the new sheet music home to play on the parlor piano. Others in the room gathered around to sing. That is when the technology for recording sound was in its infancy.
Music is a part of human history. Before Tin Pan Alley there was folk music, with many of the songs being a commentary on historic events. One song which comments on nothing but love is Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. The lyrics are a poem written by Ben Jonson in 1616, the year of Shakespeare’s death. In about 1770 someone, whose identity has never been discovered, put the poem into the musical setting which is still heard today. I like to sing it.
In spite of my advanced years, I am still a crooner, and an Irish tenor and I would be singing in a barbershop quartet if three others would show up to replace my old friends who are now singing with the angels.
Good tunes endure. Good lyrics endure. I must confess that, as a traditionalist, I was not greatly impressed with young Elvis Presley. After listening to present day vocalists and what they are performing, I give departed Elvis my admiration for having a good voice that he used with straight- from-the-heart passion. When Elvis sang “are you lonesome tonight” he revived a beautiful song that was first heard in the year I was born. His Love Me Tender is new lyrics to a haunting Civil War song called Aura Lea. They are old tunes, enduring tunes.
When one nation wishes to seize the territory of another, we see a display of military might, killings and destruction. When poets and music-makers invade the minds of other human beings, there is no violence. They bring about changes in values and foster new convictions. Poets such as Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, all of whom had served in the trenches, fueled anti-war sentiment after the Great War was over.
In the United States, from the 1950s into the 1970s, folk singers were in the forefront of the non-violent movements which brought an end to the war in Vietnam and the beginning of the end of racial segregation at home. They were instrumental in winning the minds of the people.
Not all the music of the past was romantic or had a serious purpose other than earning money for composers, music and performers. There were comedic performers. Frank Crumit, popular in the early decades of the past century, was the acknowledged master of the comic song. I enjoy hearing recordings of him singing A Gay Cabellero, The Pig Got Up and Slowly Walked Away and How Dry I Am. They tickle my funny-bone.
Other beautiful, enduring songs from the past play on my heart-strings. Many modern music performances, however, just jangle my nerves. I think of them as only a part of what could be called the Decline of the Polite Society.
