 |  |  | | The music of the 1890s had a flavor all its own. It did not come from one particular style, for there were many different styles. The most popular theme of the nineties was love, from a new approach. In earlier years the only time a narrative was put to music was for a comical situation, but in the 1890s people were serious about love: broken love, illicit love, tragic love. The great master of the tragic boy-girl tale set to music was Monroe H. Rosenfeld, who rose to success in Tin Pan Alley, the mythical quarters of the popular music business. He called himself a melodic kleptomaniac, claiming that he stole some of his best tunes. Rosey, as he was known, had a proclivity for poker, women, and horse racing. And typical of his tragic love songs is Take Back Your Gold and Make Me Your Wife. | The new rhythm, ragtime, was also very popular. Frederick Allen Mills, known as Kerry Mills, was one of the pioneers in bringing syncopation to the dancing, singing public. Mills was a sheet music publisher, but many of the pieces he published were his own compositions. Mills had watched the development of “coon” songs and was unhappy about them. They bore no resemblance to authentic black music, but were written by whites for blacks to dance to. Black couples would strut and twirl through elaborate steps in a competition where one couple after another was eliminated by judges until only the winning team remained. The couple received as their prize a cake, and the choreography that the contestants executed became known as a cakewalk. Kerry Mills wrote some cakewalks of his own, the best known being At a Georgia Camp Meeting, composed in 1897. | The biggest hit of the 1890s was After the Ball, written by Charles K. Harris in waltz time. Harris said he got the idea for his song after seeing two young lovers in Milwaukee go home separately following a quarrel. The first performance of the song at a minstrel show was a complete failure because the singer forgot the words. But Harris persuaded a popular baritone named Libby to introduce the song in an extravaganza called “A Trip to Chinatown.” Among those who heard the song and liked it was John Philip Sousa, who played it daily with his band at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. “After the Ball’s” sales ultimately passed the five million mark.
|  |  |  | | The Midway was the World’s Fair’s entertainment center, boasting many food emporiums, a wild west show, exotic dancers, a giant ferris wheel, and other attractions. The dancers performed in a section called The Streets of Cairo. They might have been nautch dancers, but the gyrations of their supple bodies where called the Hoochie Coochie, and their most notorious performer was a seductive lady known as Little Egypt. Song writer James Thornton wrote, for his wife Bonnie to sing, a spoof on Little Egypt called The Streets of Cairo. | John Philip Sousa started writing in the 1870s and continued for almost half a century. His golden years were the 1890s when he composed not only “The Stars and Stripes Forever” but the “Manhattan Beach March,” “King Cotton,” and others. During this time he also wrote two operettas, “The Bride Elect” and El Capitan. The latter was written for a well-known comedian, DeWolf Hopper, best remembered for his performances in Gilbert and Sullivan shows. | The team of Edward B. Marks, lyricist, and Joseph W. Stern, composer, wrote sentimental ballads and published them themselves. Marks recalled one day when he was at lunch, a new waitress was the subject of some uncalled-for remarks by a couple of male diners. She burst into tears, exclaiming that she was a good girl who wished her brother was there to stand up for her. Marks and Stern set the episode to music on the spot, and the song, Mother Was a Lady, or If Jack Were Only Here, became an overnight hit. |
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