The NRR Project #19: 'Casey at the Bat' (1906)

‘Casey at the Bat’

DeWolf Hopper

Recorded 1906

4:36

What can you say about “Casey at the Bat”? That’s fresh, I mean. It’s engraved on our collective consciousness. Everyone knows it; it’s part of American mythology. We’ve all recited it, or heard it recited. It’s been performed, recorded, adapted, parodied thousands upon thousands of times. It’s on short list of “America’s best-loved poems,” along with “The Night before Christmas,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and homiletic narratives such as those of Edgar A. Guest (“It takes a heap o’ living/To make a house a home”), et al. In other words, it’s annoying.

The facts are these – Ernest Lawrence Thayer, a 24-year-old humor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner (a Harvard classmate of millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst’s, who gave him the job), cranked out this mock epic as his last piece for that paper, on June 3, 1888. It was buried, like the piece of comic doggerel Thayer and everyone else took it for, at the bottom of the fourth column on Page 4 that day. It bore no byline. (Thayer received proper attribution years later, but never made an extra dime off his best-known creation.)

As a poem, it certainly works. It’s memorable, it tells an interesting story in an interesting way. Its pace is bouncy and fee, fun, and seemingly crafted to speak aloud, actually. It’s almost a parody, but not quite – “A straggling few got up to go in deep despair” is exactly how many baseball fans have felt when the home team was down late in the game. Ultimately, it’s a bit of a homily about tragic pride as well.

But then. Back in those days, casual pieces that were “evergreen,” or capable of being inserted at any time of year, migrated into other papers of the same chain, and rival publications as well. The sheer volume needed to fill the daily “news hole” meant that all kinds of material found its way into the pages, good, bad or indifferent. The New York Sun ran it a few weeks later. Writer Archibald Gunter read it, clipped it out and stuck it in his wallet. He had a friend who was huge ham who he thought might like it.

DeWolf Hooper reciting "Casey at the Bat" for an early synchronized-sound film, 1922.

DeWolf Hopper was one of the funniest men of Broadway. At 6’5” and 230 pounds, he was an adept comic actor who got his start with the proto-musical comedy team of Harrigan and Hart. Hopper wound up starring in more than 30 productions during the period. (He was quite a ladies’ man as well, with as many wives as Henry VIII, and the nickname ‘The Husband of His Country.’)

And he was a big baseball fan, or “crank,” as an adherent of the sport was termed then. He had already started interpolating freestanding comic baseball sketches and “bits” into his performances as early as 1885.

When Hopper glimmed this poem, something clicked. On August 14, 1888, Hopper recited the poem at a special performance of the comic opera Prinz Methusalem that was attended by the both the New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox. It was a huge hit. Hooper was uniquely suited to deliver this bombastic narrative of battle, stretching it out, embellishing it with rococo diction and gesture, and wringing every laugh possible out of it. (This usually took him five minutes and 40 seconds; he speeds up to fit it all in on one side of this Victor disc.)

Hopper claimed to have performed the piece 10,000 times, which would mean that he got up and performed it every day for seven months out of the year over the course of the 47 remaining years of his career. I’m glad that age could not wither nor custom stale his enjoyment of performing it, but I wonder if it got a little tiresome for others.

Oh, and I don’t know if any literary scholar has covered this last point but: Casey is a big fat jerk.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ’They Didn’t Believe Me.’

How to Get in Trouble: Activism 101

The Denver Women's March, January 21. [Photo by Brad Weismann]

This is a personal story. There’s no claim to objectivity here. If you’re not liberally inclined, this story is not for you. The question I asked myself after Trump’s election, after a weeklong coma of disbelief, was: what should I do, in the face of massive, reactionary assault on what I consider to be essential American values? What can I do? And as Chris Edelson put it bluntly in the Baltimore Sun the other day, “This is not a hypothetical question.”

“What should I do?” I commit journalism; people were asking ME what to do. I had no idea. I know what my convictions are. I am an unreconstructed guilt-ridden and bearded white male liberal, raised during Vietnam, the Space Race, the Civil Rights movement and the aspirations of the Great Society. I’ve read enough history to know what a national crisis looks like. So, I know that sitting on the sidelines and invoking a nonexistent sense of impartiality is pretty hard for me, loudmouth fool that I am. So, farewell, sidelines.

Though I’d reported on social-justice movements, actions, and figures, I had not a clue as to how these organizations were created or maintained. How did they formulate a plan for social action? What does it entail? Who teaches it? What works?

So, I started asking people around the area. The response was spotty – oddly, some of the more established rights organizations were the slowest to respond. Some I’m still waiting on.

One who got back to me immediately was Scott L. Levin, the Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League. The 104-year-old organization was founded to protect Jewish people, but has since broadened its scope to advocate and educate on and about civil rights issues, and to facilitate human relations.

Levin said, “We’re tremendously busy these days. The amount of hate incidents have gone up dramatically. (This was late December, three weeks before Trump’s inauguration.)

“There is a lot of hate that’s going on online, and I think people need to call it out in real time when they see it. We have to take whatever steps are necessary not to normalize this behavior. We can speak up, we can continue to call on our leaders. It’s not who we are in Colorado.

“We try to tell people that words matter. The ADL has one of the state’s biggest anti-bullying program, in 50 schools. This is about changing the culture.”

I asked him how someone with zero knowledge could start.

“I think there are lot of things they can do,” he answered. “Engagement has to be done on a person-to-person level. Just even getting together with friends and acquaintances, talking through the issues of the day, gives you a place to start. Plus, it’s therapeutic. From that, you develop a group of like-minded people, then come up with a mission statement. In a very public way, too. We’re seeing all these public communities come together -- communities of color, LGBT – and when we unite we maximize and leverage our influence. This is a kind of time that we haven’t seen in our country for a few decades. A level of activism is called for beyond the normal. We’ve got to be prepared and do our work NOW.”

Then I talked to Evan Weissman (no relation – the question has come up before). He’s a nice, smart guy, who worked for years with Buntport Theater Company in Denver. He came up with the idea for Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a hybrid of civics and interactive fun that’s been holding events in Denver since November of 2012. The best description I can find of their methodology is in a previous interview I did with Evan:

“Of the Warm Cookies inspiration, he says, ‘I kind of was over the idea that we had to do things the way we had been. Protesting and organizing are important, but this is a different way to attract more people.

‘We want to have fun, but we don’t want it to be hokey – we don’t want to hoodwink people, or hit them over the head with a message. It’s a tough balance to work out – engaging ways to discuss important issues.’”

Warm Cookies has covered all manner of topics – voting, immigration, financial policy, and so – framed in participatory, un-stodgy ways. The group’s development now seems prescient. I got hold of Evan before the January 29 edition of the group’s “Sunday School for Atheists” informational meeting. The featured speaker was Dr. Erica Chenoweth of the University of Denver, an expert in international studies who made a quantitative study of political action, violent and non-violent, and their relative effectiveness.

“I’ve been incubating this recess,” he said in early January, as life started to crank up again for everyone after the holidays. “I don’t know where the story is or where it’s going. I have hope. Hope is what allows us to do action, otherwise we fall prey to cynicism, which is just retreat.”

OK, was he worried? “It depends how much stock you put into a national election,” he said. “That’s not the litmus test, however much they tell us that. The campaigns are run by people who get us to shop – and I don’t know that I buy that.

“I think we need to take it out of the realm of where people’s minds are set. We forget about our ownership. We own the community. If I say to you, ‘Make a list of everything you own,’ no one says the sidewalks, the radio waves, the library -- we just don’t l think like that. If we remember that we own these things, we can decide what is done with them.”

(I think about those thousands I marched with on January 21. It was a huge and impressive event, far larger than anyone had anticipated. How many were there – 100,000? 200,000? People kept streaming in that day, from all points of the compass, into Civic Center Park, walking in from farther and farther out as the parking lots and spaces filled, the trains and buses disgorging throngs, most bearing homemade signs – properly spelled and punctuated, for once. At least liberalism has that! An astonishing and peaceful display of commitment. But I worry, too. That was a cinematic kind of protest, that spontaneous outpouring of mass feeling that swells up right before the movie ends. Would less dramatic efforts be as well-peopled?)

“It’s about activating a sense of responsibility. I think the key,” he said, “is that’s all incremental. You have to start small. You have to do what you can do. If you’re trying to do the perfect thing, you’ll never get anything done.

“It’s like that saying, ‘Learn one thing and you learn everything.’ So you want to get in there and mix it up. The joy is in the struggle, when you’re working with people. Enjoy the rebellion.”

The Sunday School for Atheists session on “The Science of Effective Resistance” on January 29 was held in the McNichols Building at 144 W. Colfax. It was packed to capacity. There was child care, there were Spanish translators. Collapsible buffet tables at the rear of the space held multiple sign-ups sheets, surveys, requests for ideas, and information from a number of social-action causes. Off to the side was a massive array of treats, a kind of inspired potluck (hey, the group’s guarantee the presence of cookies is right there in its title) that kids and others made short work of.

The buzz was lively and friendly. Long-time local musician and activist Jamie Laurie got the crowd’s attention focused with some call and response action. Chenoweth’s presentation was brisk, engaging, and convincing. Evidently no one had ever done a study of the relative effectiveness of violent versus non-violent protest. Using a sensible methodology and wielding and impressive array of metrics, Chenoweth asserted that success rates of non-violent social actions were double those of violent ones. 

Reasons? First, the barrier to participation is lower. It takes a peculiar set of qualities to motivate someone to pick up arms, and inevitably aligns them with a group of like-minded individuals. “Participation in non-violence is easier for non-risk acceptant individuals,” she said. “Also, this allows for participation on a day-to-day basis. There are not a lot of casual insurgents.”

There’s a lower “cognitive barrier” as well. “This is not about converting people, melting hearts,” she said. “It’s about creating a coalition – and if you’re comfortable with everyone in your coalition, you don’t have a coalition. If you form a group, you will probably form an agreement in terms of goals and methods. Trust me – you will spend 95 percent of your time in meetings figuring those things out, and 5 percent in the actions.

“Instead of pushing at an issue, it’s more about pulling. You are pulling neutrals over to the role of passive allies, then to active allies.” (Funny, this is the same methodology used to get people to become season subscribers to arts organizations.)

“Eventually, you create links with those who constitute pillars of support for what you are opposing.” (As activist Srdja Popovic puts it in his 2015 book Blueprint for Revolution, “it is awfully hard to shoot people you know.”)

She had more advice for activists. She cited the example of activist and teacher of non-violence James Lawson, who before organizing spent nine months to a year visiting the people he wanted to help, going from door to door and “finding out what people care about, personally,” Chenoweth emphasized. “What were they ashamed of? What were they afraid of?” This approach ensures that the reasons and motivation for change come from the community itself, instead of being imposed from the outside. Developing communication and trust, and modeling the concept of taking care of one another, proceeds from this approach as well.

Chenoweth heartened the crowd with her estimate that it only takes the participation of 3 ½ percent of a total given population to create a critical mass that mandates change. “And, we never know when something might make a difference, so we have to keep doing it,” she added.

Meanwhile, organizations keep popping up everywhere, and it seems like show people definitely have an advantage in creating something that works in record time. A few weeks ago, theatrical stalwart Mare Trevathan innocently put out a query on her Facebook account wondering how she could set up a civics-education class. Her friends GerRee Hinshaw and Rebecca Aronauer had formed the group Said & Done for the implementation of one social-action event after the Women's March, and they invited Trevathan to build on their existing platform. Within a few days, two Civics 101 sessions were organized and completely filled. The two-hour sessions (the first one took place in Longmont last night) cover the three branches of government, what local involvement in the political process looks like, a rundown of basic rights, effective activism, and facing fears about taking action.

“We plan to put something of a ‘franchise’ plan (without the $ part) – a template people can take to make one of these themselves,” Trevathan wrote. Already, the production of similar events across the state and region are planned.

So, guess what? Resistance is highly doable. One act lays the foundation for another. Given who our current president is, the barrier has never been lower for political involvement. Any action helps. Remember how we were told that the sharing of partisan information digitally during the election just created an “echo chamber” that had no effect? Bullshit. Relaying and amplifying messages are good, though they are no substitute for in-person, analog, real-world actions.

So start something. Pick something, stay focused on one topic --reacting to every outrage leads to exhaustion – and every issue is intertwined with others, ultimately. Communicate; find common grounds, build coalitions. Persist. Progress is incremental and never guaranteed; sometimes the most mundane actions bring about the greatest change. And don’t be so damn serious – in today’s America, you are already in trouble with many of your fellow citizens, simply for believing what you believe. It’s going to get worse before it gets better – you might as well have as much fun as possible.

“Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” Deuteronomy 30:11-14

RESOURCES

The sheer volume of information for would-be activists is cascading through the social system right now. Here are some places and works I found useful:

Anti-Defamation League

American Civil Liberties Union

Warm Cookies of the Revolution

For questions and information about the rapidly developing Said and Done: Civic 101 project, please contact Mare Trevathan at MareTrevathan.gmail,com.

Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Administration

This guide, compiled by former coongressional staffers, is free and readily available online.

Blueprint for Revolution

Srdkja Popovic

2015

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

Erica Chenoweth

2011

Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution

Andrew Boyd

2016

The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action

Michael N. Nagler

2014

The NRR Project #34: ‘Castles in Europe One-Step’

‘Castles in Europe One-Step’ aka ‘Castle House Rag’

Europe’s Society Orchestra

Composer: James Reese Europe

Recorded February 10, 1914

3:40

  

Here’s an unknown titan of American music for you, someone you should get to know. James Reese Europe was a composer, arranger, and bandleader who busted through all the color lines in his brief life. Eubie Blake called him “the Martin Luther King of music.” Why isn’t he better known?

When Europe was 20, he organized a large organization for black New York musicians called the Clef Club, which not only fielded an expert ensemble but served as union hall, booking agency, and meeting place. The 125-member Clef Club played Carnegie Hall on May 12, 1912, the first black group to do so.

Notably, they played what was recorded as “ragtime, blues, and minstrel songs,” in other words popular vernacular tunes instead of white compositions. American culture was just beginning to edge out from underneath the influence of Europe; “serious” black composers, with the exception of Scott Joplin, imitated the compositional techniques of “serious” white composers, who were aping European styles. “My success had come . . . from a realization of the advantages of sticking to the music of my own people.”

Europe’s decision to value and develop African American music was part of a groundswell of artistic assertion by important black composers. W.C. Handy published his “Memphis Blues” in 1912 as well, exploding a passion for blues in the general public. Jelly Roll Morton was touring the country at this time, working up his own repertoire.

Jazz was in the air, but this was not jazz. Europe headed a “society orchestra,” and that meant dance music. Enter Vernon and Irene Castle.

 Here was an innovative celebrity couple, a ballroom-dancing couple who revolutionized social dancing in America. The two were suave, slender, and stylish, setting an elegant tone that people wanted to imitate. They succeeded in vaudeville, in Paris nightclubs, then on Broadway (Irving Berlin wrote his first show, Watch Your Step, for them in 1914).They popularized the ubiquitous foxtrot, and women bobbed their hair just like Irene, and switched to simpler, less cumbersome outfits, as she had. Above all, they made dancing look easy and fun.

The Castles were so popular that they could make their own rules. (They had an openly gay manager, Elisabeth Marbury.) The Carnegie Hall concert got their attention; they hired Europe and his band to accompany them – an extremely risky move at the time, as many areas forbade white and black performers working on stage together. However, the combination worked, and worked well, for a few essential years.

This “One-Step” is misnamed – it should be titled “Castle House Rag,” but whatever you call it, it’s a fast and furious expedition through raggy territory. The sheer mass of instruments being played gives the recording a harsh, undynamic wall-of-sound feel, buts its lively syncopations, derived somewhat from older dance forms but harnessed to the new rush and earnestness. Of particular note is the wild drumming codas of Buddy Gilmore – the first percussive solos on record.

World War I interrupted their careers. Vernon Castle joined the Royal Air Corps, and died in a training accident in 1918. Europe joined up as a lieutenant with the infantry regiment “The Harlem Hellfighters.” His military band traveled all over Europe, spreading ragtime and blues and igniting awareness of these new musics in the minds of listeners and composers there.

Europe was known for his stubbornness in following his own artistic path, and in insisting on professionalism from his musicians. After the war, Europe came back to the U.S. and got busy performing and recording. On May 9, 1919, he got into an argument with a drummer between shows in Boston. The man stabbed him in the neck, and he died later that day. He was 39.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Klezmer! with ‘Casey at the Bat.’

The NRR Project #33: ‘Fon der Choope’

A typical klezmer ensemble of the turn of last century.

‘Fon der Choope’

Abe Elenkirg’s Yidishe Orchestra

Recorded April 4, 1913

3:15

  

Klezmer is secular Jewish music. Say what?

Here’s the thing. Traditionally, in Judaism, instruments are not played on the Sabbath – songs of praise are sung unaccompanied, usually to tunes, also known as prayer modes, in use for centuries. But hey, what culture doesn’t have music in it? And at weddings, parties, and the like, bands of musicians would play what developed into klezmer -- a vital, emotional, dance-oriented music that developed in the Jewish communities of Europe during the 19^th century, a hybrid of Romani, Turkish, and Russian influences, steeped in the melodic modes of the prayer services.

Here’s the first surviving recording of the genre made in America. It’s credited to Abe Elenkrig’s Yidishe Orchestra, about which not much is known. Abe was a barber, and played trumpet and led an ensemble on the side, performing for social occasions. The 10 sides he and his outfit recorded for Columbia shine light on the genre during one of its most obscure periods.

“Fon der Choope” (“For the Wedding”) is a typical klezmer piece (ironically, the term wasn’t used until the 1980s – until then it was known as Yiddish music), the typical ensemble consists of trumpet, clarinet, violins, flute, accordion -- portability for traveling musicians. The high, keening melodies, based on sacred phrasings known as cantillations, give the music a penetrating feelingness.

The recording is fascinating in that it captures the music before jazz began to influence it. The first recording of jazz was four years away, and once it enters the picture it begins to perlocate into klezmer – and vice versa. A lot of the minor-key work, the vocal-style inflections, and the forthright emotionality found its way into early jazz, via practitioners such as Dave Tarras. Naftule Brandwein, and Ziggy Elman (Elman’s 1938 klezmer instrumental “Fralich in Swing” was Caucasianized into the hit song “And the Angels Sing” a year later.)

However, mainstream American Jewish culture was more interested in assimilation at the time. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the Klezmer Revival took place, which revived traditional approaches and inspired new hybrids as well. Now klezmer is inextricably wound into the DNA of American music – aren’t you glad?

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ’Castles in Europe One-Step.’ 

The NRR Project #31: Lovey’s Trinidad String Band

Lovey’s Trinidad String Band

Recordings for Columbia, Victor Records

Recorded June-July 1912

24 takes

What makes a music catch the ear of the public? Why this and not that, then but not now? Four years before jazz exploded onto the American scene, calypso came ashore.

It came in the persons of the uniformed members of Lovey’s Trinidad String Band, wielding waltzes and syncopated, swaying paseos. Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean was a hotbed of music generation in the 20^th century, and calypso was one of the genres. It was a full-bodied, orchestral kind of Afro-Hispanic dance music, based on violins and guitars, with some percussion and a few wind instruments thrown in for accents.

What makes calypso unique is its lyrics, none of which hare found on the Lovey (aka George R. Baillie) recordings. The rhythm in most calypso songs serve as a backdrop for freewheeling, improvised verse – extempo --, usually about sex, politics, or some other controversy. Sounds like rap? It’s a distant progenitor, whose offspring and relatives include The Dozens, toasting, and sanankuya. Calypso spread the news, lyrics were debated and records were banned. Without that edgy, alive word-battling aspect, these first known recordings of calypso are intriguing, but not riveting.

Lovey’s toured New York in the summer of 1912, and made exactly two dozen recordings, which can be heard on a finely curated compilation by Bear Family Records. Calypso’s singers would begin to record bodies of work in the 1930s, and in 1956 Harry Belafonte would spark a worldwide (and extremely sanitized) calypso craze with his recording of “The Banana Boat Song.”

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Castles in Europe One-Step.

The NRR Project #30: ‘Come Down Ma Evenin’ Star’

‘Come Down Ma Evenin’ Star’

Lillian Russell

Music: John Stromberg

Lyrics: Robert Smith

Recorded March 22, 1912

2:49

 This recording is the rarest of the rare – an unreleased test pressing discovered 31 years after it was recorded. It captures the presence of a lovely and talented link in the history of celebrity culture – the legendary Lillian Russell, the first American “sex symbol.”

Like her 19^th century predecessors Lola Montez and Lillie Langtry, she first won praise as a performer, then as an ideal beauty and glass of fashion. Finally she was celebrated simply for being herself – set so firmly in the minds of the public that she had endorsement deals.

She was the daughter of a newspaper publisher and a writer/feminist. She studied voice with the great Leopold Damrosch, and despite her mother’s disapproval she was soon the best-known singer of operetta in the country. She was classy, charming and voluptuous, embodying the ideal Victorian female figure -- large-bosomed, corset-cinched, topped with a round, cherubic face.

Like many prominent female performers, she had a tumultuous personal life, studded with four marriages and many affairs, mostly with rich and powerful men. Newspapers tracked her incessantly. When Alexander Graham Bell initiated long-distance telephone service in 1890, Russell sang over the line.

“Come Down Ma Evenin’ Star” was written for Russell by composer John Stromberg for her starring role in the popular 1902 review Twirly Whirly. He held it back from her, saying it wasn’t ready. He committed suicide weeks before opening night, and the music for the song was found in his pocket. His lyricist put words to it, and it became Russell’s signature song.

It’s a sweet, wistful ballad of yearning, of a kind just ready to fall out of favor. Its sentimental strains were the last delicate gasp of the silk-and-lamplight niceties of the period. Russell made this recording in 1912, a decade after it became a hit, and eight years after Russell had stopped singing (but not performing) onstage.

Why did Russell record it? Significantly, she never allowed herself to be recorded live save for this disc, and a handful of film snippets. She didn’t need the income, certainly, being financially independent. Or the publicity. Perhaps she listened to the recording playback and found, like so many people, that her voice was unbearable. (She is a bit nasal and strained here.)

Interestingly, though, her performance here is technically top-notch, warm, clear, and expressive. It verifies the abilities of performer lost to popular consciousness, remembered if at all as a “sex symbol.”

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Lovey’s Trinidad String Band recordings.

The NRR Project #28: 'Some of These Days'

‘Some of These Days’
Composed by Shelton Brooks

Performed by Sophie Tucker

Recorded 1911

2:05

  

She was a shouter, a moaner, the Last of the Red Hot Mamas. Sophie Tucker marketed herself as a force of nature, a ribald female Falstaff, whose belted sass, sex, and schmaltz paved the way for Mae West, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and others.

She was Elvis before Elvis – a white singer who cribbed her style from African American culture. Her transformation from an Orthodox Jewish shtetl girl to a grand, big-hearted, bedecked pop idol is more extreme than Bob Dylan’s.

First she was Sonya Kalish, born on the run from Poland to America in the dead of winter, January 1887. A natural belter, she started singing in her family’s restaurant in Hartford as a kid. She eloped when she was 16, had her only child at 19, left her husband entirely and her son with her sister and began singing and telling jokes in New York wherever she could.

 Up until this time, lady singers were refined things, more suited to the parlor than the barroom. Women did not own up to sexual impulses unless they were fallen, or in the process of falling. Tucker really didn't give a damn about societal norms, and took her cue from the raw, bluesy kind of music that white culture wasn’t hip to yet. The minstrel show was still supreme, and she began as a blackface singer, as no one thought the crowd would buy her as anything but a novelty act. One night, she dropped the makeup and the Southern shtick, sang as herself, and began to catch on, singing rags, blues, novelty numbers, and ballads. (“Makin’ Wicky Wacky Down in Waikiki,” anyone?)

Tucker’s voice and temperament were perfectly suited to the new, lowdown boldness in music. In the pre-electric era, singers had to project over an orchestra into a house of indifferent acoustics. Vaudeville houses averaged 1,500 seats, so enunciation, tone, and sheer volume won the day. Singers such as Al Jolson and Nora Bayes were just loud. Tucker “got over” using a technique she learned from fellow performer Clarice Vance, another former “coon singer” turned popular performer. Vance’s half-talked, draggy style fed Tucker’s bantering, flirtatious persona. Tucker later befriended and learned from contemporary singers such as Mamie Smith and Ethel Waters -- two of the earliest popular black female recording artists.

More importantly, Tucker could transmit energy; she could “sell” any song. She didn’t hold back emotionally – she demanded your attention and got in your face. Her other surefire hit was the tearjerker “My Yiddishe Mama.” If she couldn’t get you with suggestiveness, she’d get you with the sentiment.

This, her signature song, was written by Shelton Brooks, the black composer who also penned “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone,” and many others. In the wake of W.C. Handy, Brooks and others were figuring out how to wrangle the new rhythms and harmonies of blues and proto-jazz into the more genteel, verse-chorus-verse conventions of the ballads of the period.

The version chosen for the Registry is her first recording of the work, although her best-remembered recording of it comes from 1926, backed by Ted Lewis and his orchestra. The 1926 version is more confident, and by this time she's strongly rooted in her stage persona. In contrast, the 1911 is a bit stiffer, but also more emotionally naked. Over a century later, there is still something undeniably sexy and powerful about the way she throws in a plaintive "ummm" before singing "You know honey/I let you have your way . . . "

The song is straightforward and effective, a simple blues lament. As delivered, it's also cathartic, the way that blues are meant to be sung, and a triumphal crow, the celebration of getting over something bad. It’s conceivable that somewhere, someone has sung it slowly and quietly, in the spirit of the hit “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now” of the previous year – but the song and Tucker’s hip-shaking, scarf-waving seismic delivery are for me inseparable. She came back to it repeatedly throughout her career, as she changed from being regarded as a transgressor to an innovator to a star to a beloved, nostalgic figure.

 The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Lillian Russell and ‘Come Down Ma’ Evenin’ Star.’