Michael G. Garber

Abstract
Supporting a new methodology for the study of classic American popular songs, this article offers a history of both the print editions and recorded versions of “Some of These Days” (1910) by Shelton Brooks. This saga commences with a hitherto unanalyzed precursor to Brooks’s famous song that shares nearly the same opening words and melody, the 1905 “Some o’ Dese Days” by Frank Williams. It continues through nine major print editions and numerous recorded performances, of which this study examines forty-six, including ten as the theme song for Sophie Tucker. Performers are clearly influenced by both performed and printed variations; more surprisingly, print editions are also influenced by performers. Thus, Tin Pan Alley songs are best viewed as products of collaboration within a community of songwriters, publishers, and performers. Brooks fills “Some of These Days” with compositional details that are conducive to effective performance variations. This elusive intrinsic adaptability represents, for 1910, a modern, innovative quality and is central to any understanding of this song genre. Oft-neglected, such early popular standards—poised at the juncture of musical cultures, oral and print, amateur and professional, live and mediatized—help the critical historian pinpoint aspects that make this repertoire valuable.

Songs about entertainment, such as ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ (Annie Get Your Gun, 1946), abound in the American musical from at least the late 1890s, and they reveal important aspects of the genre. Jane Feuer notes the self-praise in such songs, as well as the nostalgia for past entertainment traditions. In addition, however, musicals feature a strong, heretofore neglected propensity towards satire of a wide range of artistic culture. Specifically, the American musical is frequently self-mocking. Parody, burlesque, and irony are long-standing conventions of the genre; and they imply a sophisticated reception process that encourages a sense of community. This paper illustrates these tendencies by analyzing songs about entertainment dating from both the mid-century period so often dubbed the Golden Age of the American Musical and also, crucially, from the formative decades of the early twentieth century that are frequently neglected in critical analyses of the genre.