Notes on the Music 4 - Rings on My Fingers, Birds on Her Hat

[The fourth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Blanche Ring (yes, really) introduced this in the 1909 musical The Yankee Girl. The composer of record for the show was Silvio Hein, although that didn't stop the producers from inserting this song as well as a Sousa march. What it has to do with Yankees in general or Yankee girls in particular is obscure, possibly because Broadway shows back then were often little more than long-form musical revues, in which the plot was only an excuse for the songs and specialty acts. Those familiar with the song in its original form will note that I have taken a couple of minor liberties with a lyric which, in its original form, has somewhat racist overtones.

Arthur J. Lamb / Alfred Solman: The Bird on Nellie’s Hat (1906) – Women were, by any definition of the term, an oppressed group a century ago, but that didn’t stop smart, savvy women from showing up in songs like this one or the somewhat ruder “Cows May Come and Cows May Go But the Bull Will Go on Forever”. “Nellie’s Hat” was embraced by a number of female vaudevillians as well as by British music hall star Ada Reeve (pictured), whose picture graces the cover of the only copy of the sheet music I was able to locate (at an Australian library; let’s hear it for the Internet).