Talking machine west: a history and catalogue of Tin Pan Alley's western recordings, 1902-1918

Cranking Up My Talking Machines -- The Phonograph and the West, 1877-1902 -- The Talking Machine West, 1902-1918 -- A Chronological Catalogue of Western Recordings 1902-1918.;Many associate early western music with the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but America's first western music craze predates these "singing cowboys" by decades. Written by Tin Pan Alley songsters in the era before radio, the first popular cowboy and Indian songs circulated as piano sheet music and as cylinder and disc recordings played on wind-up talking machines. The colorful fantasies of western life depicted in these songs capitalized on popular fascination with the West. The talking machine music industry, centered in New York City, used recording and printing technology to produce and advertise songs about the American West. This book brings together the variety of cowboy, cowgirl, and Indian music recorded and sold for mass consumption between 1902 and 1918. It explains how this music reflected the nostalgic passing of the Indian and the frontier while incorporating modern ragtime music and the racial attitudes of Jim Crow America. Hardly Old West ditties, the songs gave voice to changing ideas about Indians and assimilation, cowboys, the frontier, the rise of the New Woman, and ethnic and racial equality. Ths book also offers a chronological catalogue of fifty-four western recordings provides the full lyrics and history of each song and reproduces in full color the cover art of extant period sheet music. Each entry also describes the song's composer(s), lyricist(s), and sheet music illustrator and directs readers to online digitized recordings of each song.