"Just Awearyin' for You" is a parlor song, one of that genre's all-time hits.
"Just Awearyin' for You" is a parlor song, one of that genre's all-time hits.
The lyrics were written by Frank Lebby Stanton and published in his Songs of the Soil (1894). The tune was composed by Carrie Jacobs-Bond and published as part of Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose in 1901. Harry T. Burleigh also composed a tune (copyrighted in 1906), [1] but it never approached the popularity of the Jacobs-Bond tune. Although Stanton originally wrote the lyrics in dialect ("Jes' a-wearyin' fer you") for a column in the Atlanta Constitution , the song has generally circulated with the more mainstreamed diction of the Jacobs-Bond version.
Sentimental yet artful, [2] "Just Awearyin' for You" has been recorded by numerous performers, including Elizabeth Spencer, Evan Williams, Anna Case, [3] Sophie Braslau, [4] Eleanor Steber, [5] Gladys Swarthout, [6] Thomas Allen and Malcolm Martineau (piano), [7] Johnny Hartman, [8] John Arwyn Davies, [9] Jane Morgan, [10] Peggy Balensuela (mezzo soprano) and William Hughes (piano), [11] Bing Crosby (1934 and 1945) [12] and Paul Robeson. [13] In 1934 Jay Wilbur and his band did a foxtrot rendition. [14] [15]
Set to the key of C, "Just Awearyin' for You" appears in Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method Grade 6. [16]
Along with "I Love You Truly" and "A Perfect Day", "Just Awearyin' for You" forms the triumvirate of works for which Jacobs-Bond is remembered. A dedicatory phrase "To F. B." atop the musical score (on p. 3 of the sheet music) refers to her second husband, Frederic Bond. [17]
Prior to publication with her tune, Jacobs-Bond was unaware that the lyrics were written by Stanton; she thought them anonymous as indicated in the Chicago newspaper from which she took them. Once the oversight became apparent, Jacobs-Bond resolved the situation amicably with D. Appleton & Company, which had published Stanton's Songs of the Soil, thus providing Stanton with a royalty stream that by his own admission brought him more revenue than everything else in Songs of the Soil combined. [18] "Linger Not" and "Until God's Day" are two other songs on which Stanton and Jacobs-Bond collaborated. [19]
"Misty" is a jazz standard written in 1954 by pianist Erroll Garner. He composed it as an instrumental in the traditional 32-bar format, and recorded it for the album Contrasts. Lyrics were added later by Johnny Burke. It appeared on Johnny Mathis' 1959 album Heavenly, and this recording reached number 12 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart later that year. It has since become the signature song of Mathis.
"Ol' Man River" is a show tune from the 1927 musical Show Boat with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The song contrasts the struggles and hardships of African Americans with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River. It is sung from the point of view of a black stevedore on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show. The song is meant to be performed in a slow tempo; it is sung complete once in the musical's lengthy first scene by the stevedore "Joe" who travels with the boat, and, in the stage version, is heard four more times in brief reprises. Joe serves as a sort of musical one-man Greek chorus, and the song, when reprised, comments on the action, as if saying, "This has happened, but the river keeps rolling on anyway."
Henry Thacker Burleigh was an American classical composer, arranger, and professional singer known for his baritone voice. The first black composer who was instrumental in developing characteristically American music, Burleigh made black music available to classically trained artists both by introducing them to spirituals and by arranging spirituals in a more classical form. Burleigh also introduced Antonín Dvořák to Black American music, which influenced some of Dvořák's most famous compositions and led him to say that Black music would be the basis of an American classical music.
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Parlour music is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of houses, usually by amateur singers and pianists. Disseminated as sheet music, its heyday came in the 19th century, as a result of a steady increase in the number of households with enough resources to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making. Its popularity faded in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common means for the spread of popular music.
Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular music from the 1890s through the early 1940s.
"The Christmas Song" is a classic Christmas song written in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé.
Eleanor Steber was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States.
"Ballad for Americans" (1939), originally titled "The Ballad for Uncle Sam", is an American patriotic cantata with lyrics by John La Touche and music by Earl Robinson. It was written for the Federal Theatre Project production, Sing for Your Supper that opened on April 24, 1939. Congress abolished the project on June 30, 1939. The "Ballad of Uncle Sam" had been performed 60 times.
Gladys Swarthout was an American mezzo-soprano opera singer and actress.
"Love in Bloom" is a popular song with music by Ralph Rainger and lyrics by Leo Robin, published in 1934. It was introduced in the film She Loves Me Not by Bing Crosby and Kitty Carlisle. It remained familiar for many years thereafter as the theme song of Jack Benny, played at the opening of his radio and television programs.
"Mighty Lak' a Rose" is a 1901 song with lyrics by Frank Lebby Stanton and music by Ethelbert Nevin. The lyrics are written in an approximation of an African American accent as a "dialect song", and the title thus means "mighty like a rose". It is sung by a black woman called "Mammy" to a newborn blue-eyed white boy in her care. It was common at the time for white families to hire trusted black women to care for their children.
"I Love You Truly" is a parlor song written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Since its publication in 1901 it has been sung at weddings, recorded by numerous artists over many decades, and heard on film and television.
"Smilin' Through" is a popular ballad with lyrics and music by Arthur A. Penn.
"The Lonesome Road" is a 1927 song with music by Nathaniel Shilkret and lyrics by Gene Austin, alternately titled "Lonesome Road", "Look Down that Lonesome Road" and "Lonesome Road Blues." It was written in the style of an African American folk song.
"A Perfect Day" is a parlor song written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862–1946) in 1909 at the Mission Inn, Riverside, California. Jacobs-Bond wrote the lyrics after watching the sun set over Mount Rubidoux from her 4th-floor room. She came up with the tune three months later while touring the Mojave Desert. For many years the Mission Inn played "A Perfect Day" on its carillon at the end of each day.
Frank Lebby Stanton, frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L. Stanton, was an American lyricist.
Elizabeth Dickerson Spencer was an American soprano during the later 19th century and early 20th century who is best known for the numerous early recordings she made for Thomas Edison.
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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is an LP album by Bing Crosby made for children by Golden Records in 1957. The Arthur Norman Choir and Orchestra provide support. The music was by Mary Rodgers and the lyrics by Sammy Cahn. The album has been reissued by various record companies sometimes in a different edited form. The song "I Love You Whoever You Are" was issued as a single by Kapp Records (KAPP195) in October 1957.