Description
Robbins Music Corporation, Published 1932. Sheet music, 4 pp.; 31 cm; plate S.H. 854-2; Art Deco cover in pink, black and white with an inset black-and-white photographic portrait of Ethel Shutta.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
13
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Good condition. A few small nicks and short closed tears to the edges, with light creasing to the corners. Previous owner's name in ink at the head of the cover. Faded purple rubber stamp of a Sacramento music dealer at the lower right of the cover. Toning and mild soiling throughout. Pages otherwise unmarked. Ethel Shutta's radio theme song, published at the peak of her fame and dedicated to her. Shutta (1896-1976) had come up through vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies of 1925 and then to Whoopee in 1928 opposite Eddie Cantor; she married the bandleader George Olsen and sang with his orchestra on the air, where this waltz opened her broadcasts. Forty years later she returned to Broadway at the age of 74 to create Hattie Walker in Sondheim's Follies, singing "Broadway Baby" to a show-stop every night through the entire fifteen-month run. The lyric is by Howard Johnson (1887-1941), who had written "M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word That Means the World to Me)" and, the year before this, "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," which became Kate Smith's radio theme; two moon songs, two radio signatures, one after the other. The ukulele arrangement is by May Singhi Breen, "The Ukulele Lady," who persuaded Tin Pan Alley to print ukulele chord diagrams on sheet music in the first place and who in 1931 was fighting the Manhattan musicians' union over its refusal to recognize the ukulele as an instrument at all. For voice and piano, with chord diagrams for ukulele or banjulele banjo and chord symbols for guitar. The cover carries the "Robbins New Price! 25 Cents" starburst printed over the original thirty-cent price, a small artifact of the Depression in the sheet music trade. Copyright by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation, which had acquired Robbins in 1929. Back cover carries a Robbins advertisement with musical excerpt for "The Voice in the Old Village Choir" by Gus Kahn and Harry Woods.