Baseball's Greatest Hits

BASEBALL’S GREATEST HITS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BASEBALL MUSIC AND SONGS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Revised edition by Susan Clermont & Katherine Walden 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction …………………………………………………… 3 Notes on the Bibliography …………………………………….. 8 Selected Library Resources …………………………………… 10 Selected External Resources ………………………………….. 11 Bibliographic Resources ………………………………………. 12 Citation Components and Abbreviations ………………………. 15 Abbreviations …………………………………………………… 16 Main Bibliography………………………………………………. 17 Appendix A: Chronological list of works ………………………. 176 Appendix B: List of Keyword/Subjects ………………………… 215 Source Nomenclature …………………………………………. 249 Appendix C: List of Verified Titles for music …………………. 250 not in the Music Division Appendix D: Sample selection of PAU song titles ……………… 266 in the custody of the Copyright Office Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………. 271 ************************** 3 INTRODUCTION: The intersection of baseball and popular music is a rich component of the sport’s history and significance in American popular culture. Baseball music, when examined as a group, reveals the remarkable congruence between the evolution of the sport from before the Civil War to the present, and the musical counterparts that have chronicled in song baseball’s greatest moments. While the music associated with baseball has grown to span a number of musical genres since the 1850s, the sport’s intersection with popular music was solidified in New York’s Tin Pan Alley publishing houses. From the late 1800s through the Great Depression, the sheet music produced by Tin Pan Alley composers, lyricists, and publishers defined the American popular culture/ entertainment landscape. While radio broadcasts and sound recording technology would eventually dethrone the sheet music industry, baseball songs from this era represent the earliest widely-distributed baseball collectibles. The cultural significance of these objects lies in their Music publishers' buildings on West 28th Street in New music and lyrics, as well as their elaborately illustrated York City - the location of Tin Pan Alley, ca. 1910. covers, which furnish a factual and cultural history of our national game, its fans, and their heroes. In addition to songs that are explicitly about the game of baseball, many songs in this bibliography reflect the interpellation of baseball into other cultural arenas. Titles like “You’re Hitting a Thousand in the Game of Love,” “I’m Making a Grand Stand Play For You,” and “I Can’t Get to First Base With You,” reflect the degree to which baseball’s vocabulary and rhetoric became part of 1935 sheet music featuring New mainstream twentieth-century American popular culture. York Yankee Lou Gehrig. 4 Baseball-related sheet music from the Tin Pan Alley era offers many insights into the game’s significance for early American fans, but these song titles also shed light on the complex relationship between organized baseball and notions of being and becoming “American.” In 1907, immigration to the United States reached its highest level to date, led by migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. By making a claim for “national pastime” status, baseball became a highly visible space in which debates about who can become an American and what constitutes being an American took place. Motivated, at least in part, by the grassroots popularity of baseball in immigrant communities, the “national pastime” was a place where a range of European immigrant groups could display ethnic and cultural pride while also becoming part of the American multicultural landscape. As print media, photography, and emerging radio technologies facilitated the dissemination/promotion of baseball across the United States, baseball players enjoyed new- found celebrity status. Players including Mike “King” Kelly, Rube Marquard, and Mike Donlin parlayed success on the baseball diamond with generally successful vaudeville careers. By the time “Babe” Ruth emerged on the baseball landscape, film and radio technologies made it possible for a baseball player to benefit from the economic opportunities of emerging celebrity culture. While baseball in the African American community is largely underrepresented in baseball-related sheet music that came out of Tin Pan Alley, a number of newly-found works in the Library’s collections highlight early connections St. Mary's Industrial School 1927 edition of “Batterin' Babe.” The song was initially between baseball music and black communities. From one published in Boston in 1919 for a fundraiser. perspective, having songs about African American communities created increased awareness and visibility within mainstream American popular culture. However, these representations most often were created by white composers and lyricists, and existed during a popular culture era in which blackface minstrelsy caricatured and parodied black identities and experiences. One noteworthy exception is a newly discovered and relatively obscure 1888 schottische composed for the Cuban Giants, who were considered the 5 first African-American (not Cuban!) professional baseball club years before the Negro Leagues successfully organized and remained one of the premier Negro league teams until the end of the nineteenth century. Although sheet music’s golden age began to wane in the 1920s, baseball and music intersections continued to proliferate. Songs about Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, and Branch Rickey celebrated integration’s arrival in American professional baseball, simultaneously broadening the genre diversity within baseball music. In spite of continuing racial inequality, the contrast between earlier problematic representations of black baseball coming from the predominantly white Tin Pan Alley industry and later titles like Count Basie’s “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” from 1949 or Sister Wynona Woodrow Buddy Johnson's hit "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" covered by Count Basie’s Carr’s 1952 “The Ball Game” emphasizes the Orchestra. Unpublished copyright deposit, 1949. important role baseball has played as a space for disproving racial and ethnic stereotypes and expanding constraints on American identity. While a significant majority of baseball songs focus on professional teams and players, a number of titles in this collection reflect the significance and popularity of collegiate, little league, and legion baseball. Additionally, as the variety of American entertainment forms grew and baseball became an established cultural institution, new avenues opened for baseball music. Sound technology in film created an entire genre of film or soundtrack music, and the development of the radio or television show genre, as popularized by figures like Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, also created new avenues for baseball to intersect with American popular culture. Items in this bibliography include conductor’s scores and orchestral parts for multiple Danny Kaye shows as well as Bob Hope’s 1978 salute to the 75th anniversary of the World Series. Additionally, single titles and conductor’s scores from baseball films and television broadcasts 6 included in this bibliography, from the 1951 Angels in the Outfield to Walt Disney’s 1954 “Casey Bats Again” animated short, reflect baseball’s continued presence in American popular culture across a shifting technological and entertainment landscape, as well as its continued popularity for American consumers. Western classical music related to baseball represents a small portion of this bibliography, but from ensemble arrangements to original compositions, the classical music selections that do appear again emphasize the diverse array of musical genres that have been influenced by baseball, from William Schuman’s 1953 opera The Mighty Casey to more recent discoveries like Charles Ives’s (composed in 1907 and published in 1977) Five Take-offs dedicated to Mike Donlin, Johnny Evers, and Willy Keeler, or Richard Danielpour’s 2012 Pastime for narrator and orchestra highlighting players Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Josh Gibson. A new baseball opera, The Fix, composed by Joel Puckett with a libretto by Academy and Tony Award winner, Eric Simonson, will premiere in March 2019. Commissioned by Minnesota Opera, this work The original 1908 copyright deposit for baseball’s commemorates the one hundredth anniversary of the greatest hit. notorious World Series scandal of 1919. The goal of this baseball music bibliography is to provide a useful and engaging resource for a range of potential researchers. No other sport has come close to rivaling baseball—our National Game—in capturing the attention and interest of so many artists and composers across American music history. The Music Division’s original 1994 baseball bibliography included entries for 423 musical works with another 300-plus confirmed pieces that could not be located among our collections. In this updated edition, nearly 600 new entries have been added along with dozens of new verified titles for items located outside of the Music Division’s collections. Altogether, this bibliography includes over 1400 citations of baseball-related music! 7 In an 1889 conversation with Horace Traubel, American poet Walt Whitman mentioned Albert Spalding and his players had returned from their world tour. “How I’d like to meet them—talk with them: maybe ask them some questions.” He went on to describe baseball as “our game…America’s game…as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as

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