My Melancholy Baby

This book offers a detailed biography of ten influential American popular love ballads, from “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home” (1902) to “You Made Me Love You” (1913). These became models for over forty years of great songs. In an innovative combination, they fused jazziness with intimate, personal qualities that were further revealed in the late 1920s with the advent of the torch song genre—and microphone crooning techniques, which linked them to the lullaby. They were a product of collective innovation by both famous figures like Irving Berlin and forgotten songwriters, including women and those from minority groups. Further, the performers, arrangers, and publishers changed the original songs, in a process similar to the oral folk music tradition. All these songs were fit into narratives—movies, plays, histories, scholarly works, and literature—which continually redefined them. The book analyzes the songs and how they were interpreted, featuring full music scores, musical excerpts, and forty illustrations. This study strips away the myths behind the creation of these ten core songs, revealing the even more colorful true stories. The discussion proposes a fresh definition for the torch song, as one making the listener aware of the flame of love within their heart. It includes an introduction to the New York music publishing industry, Tin Pan Alley, and operates as a listening guide and viewing companion for the Great American Songbook. Through the stories of individual songs, this history supplies a panoramic collage of the golden age of American classic pop.