Songs by the score

Historic sheet music collection with ties to Arkansas runs deep, wide

John Miller, music coordinator for Arkansas Sounds, shows off an example of the sheet music in a collection at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The collection, donated by Ron Robinson, has many examples of music and illustrations that show how the world viewed Arkansas.
John Miller, music coordinator for Arkansas Sounds, shows off an example of the sheet music in a collection at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The collection, donated by Ron Robinson, has many examples of music and illustrations that show how the world viewed Arkansas.

Before the digital music revolution -- way before -- there was the piano.

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Hot Springs gets its due in the song “Land of the Sleepy Water,” a piece of sheet music in a collection at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The collection, which has 200 pieces, dates from the middle of the 19th century into the latter part of the 20th.

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Some showed their support of embattled Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus by writing a song in his honor. The sheet music is part of Arkansas Sounds, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

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A mention of Little Rock is good enough to get "A Little Girl from Little Rock" into the Arkansas Sounds project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

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"Arkansas," the official Arkansas state song. The sheet music is part of Arkansas Sounds, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

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Vintage sheet music with Arkansas connections is part of the Arkansas Sounds project, which is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Arkansas Traveler sheet music has through the years taken on different looks, this one as arranged by Mose Case.

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Vintage sheet music with Arkansas connections is part of the Arkansas Sounds project, which is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Arkansas Traveler sheet music has through the years taken on different looks, including this stylized version.

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Australian rock band Axiom recorded a protest song about a soldier from Arkansas. The sheet music is part of Arkansas Sounds, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

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Vintage sheet music with Arkansas connections is part of the Arkansas Sounds project, which is a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. The Arkansas Traveler sheet music has through the years taken on different looks, this one featuring Patsy Montana.

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The Arkansas Woodchoppers sheet is part of Arkansas Sounds, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

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Sheet music that is part of Arkansas Sounds, a project of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.

"The parlor piano was an institution in 19th-century America," David Stricklin said in his office at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock.

"Just about every family that could afford a piano had a piano. There had to be an industry to feed that."

That industry was the writing of music, represented most famously by New York's Tin Pan Alley, the printing of sheet music and the sale of sheet music.

Spread out on a table in Stricklin's office was a collection of sheet music, all related in some way to Arkansas. The songs were either written by an Arkansan, recorded by an Arkansan or with Arkansas in the name.

Here's an example. A really bad example.

"The Great Gang Song" or "Private Arkansaw Bill Yip-I-Yip -- and a Too-Ra-Le-Ay." The song was written by Lloyd Garrett and published in 1918 by Frank K. Root and Co. of Chicago.

Regarding Garrett, and many other songwriters represented in the collection, Stricklin said, "Bet you $100 he never set foot in Arkansas."

The Butler Center collection was donated by Ron Robinson, a longtime advertising and public relations executive in Little Rock who has amassed about 15,000 pieces of Arkansas memorabilia. Some of it, like the sheet music, he has already donated to the Butler Center. More is on the way as time goes by, Robinson said.

"All my life I've been a collector," Robinson said. "I've focused over the last 50 years on Arkansas. I collect Arkansas' past because it's so rich and very few people had collections of Arkansas material. The thing about Arkansans is they love their state, they have a lot of pride, but they don't know anything about their state.

"I try to collect Arkansas material so it will be saved, so people can enjoy it and learn from it and realize what a rich heritage it is. The sheet music is something I was attracted to because someone gave me, years ago, some Arkansas songs."

The collection has 200 pieces of sheet music, Stricklin said, now kept in archival storage. That includes 10 copies of the "Arkansas Traveler" folk tune of the early 19th century, plus several copies of "Arkansas," written by Eva Ware Barnett and which was once the one and only official state song. (More about this later.)

Arkansas is a catchy word, Stricklin said, something a songwriter could work with.

"A lot of the songwriters were sophisticated musicians," he said. "But they had to be careful. You wanted something catchy. I'm not saying these songs were dumbed down, but they didn't want to shout over the head of their market."

'BREAD AND BUTTER'

Little Rock musician Bob Boyd recalled that market.

"Sheet music sales were the bread and butter of the music stores," Boyd said. Even dime stores kept a piano player on site. Woolworth's in downtown Little Rock sold sheet music and employed a pianist, "an old lady who could play anything you put in front of her."

Boyd was in the sheet music sales business for many years. He's 80, and has been a professional musician since 16. He recently played three of the tunes from Robinson's sheet music collection at a program at the Darragh Center of the Central Arkansas Library System. He had never heard of many of the songs in the collection.

A leading candidate for most forgotten is "Goodbye My Soldier Boy" by June Bauer, published by June Bauer Inc. in 1918 in Judsonia. The cover features a doughboy, a beautiful girl, a dock and in the distance a ship, whose mission no doubt is to ferry that fellow to France.

Country music titan Eddie Arnold is in the collection with "Texarkana Baby," a No. 1 hit in 1948, as is Floyd Cramer's "Last Date." Cramer was born in Shreveport but grew up in Huttig in Union County. The pianist is credited with helping create what's known as the Nashville Sound.

There are oddities, as well:

• The theme song, "Always You," from the 1920 musical comedy Joan of Arkansaw, the book and lyrics of which were by Oscar Hammerstein II, of all people.

• "Arkansas Grass," a 1969 composition published by Leeds Music of Sydney, Australia. It's an anti-war song straight out of the Vietnam era.

The Arkansas Woodchopper's World's Greatest Collection of Cowboy Songs, with yodel arrangement, published in 1909.

• "We Like Faubus," published in 1958 by Nick Morris. The sheet music has Gov. Orval Faubus, who was running for re-election, on the cover.

John Miller is the coordinator for Arkansas Sounds, a music project of the Butler Center. He sees the collection as a "snapshot of how Arkansans saw themselves and how others saw Arkansas."

'EVOKES A CERTAIN SOMETHING'

The word Arkansas, he said, is subject to rhyme and "evokes a certain something to songwriters who had never been west of the Hudson River."

Not to mention the art on the covers, some of which would be considered wildly wrong today, what with black-face minstrels and the worst kind of hillbilly caricatures.

"A lot of these songs haven't been played in decades," Miller said. "They're a signpost of where we've been."

Miller gives credit to Robinson.

"It's an amazing gift he's given us," Miller said. "It took him years to collect, and it's a gift that continually unfolds."

"People gave me things," Robinson said. "I'm on eBay, I do auctions and I was fortunate enough to contact the curator for the Grammys, Sandy Marrone, in New Jersey. I asked her if she knew anything about Arkansas music and over the years she has sent me artifacts, sheet music she's collected."

Robinson's collection includes recorded music, too.

"There are recordings that are part of the collection -- old cylinder discs. One of the things you can do by writing this article is find someone who has an Edison cylinder player, the old roller player, and have them donate it to the Butler Center. I'd like to hear them, too."

"Also there are old 78 [rpm] records with Arkansas music on them. Some of the cylinders go back to 1904 and the 78s pick up in the mid-1920s."

Stricklin holds out hope for a cylinder player, too.

The cylinders, he said, "look like a can of peas." The "Arkansas Traveler" is recorded on one of the cylinders, "but we don't have a player so we don't know how it sounds. I'd love to know of a player in Arkansas."

FROM BATTLESHIP

AND CRUISER

Robinson began to share his collections with the Butler Center in 2013. The center takes artifacts as it can assimilate them, he said. Some of the artifacts came from the battleship USS Arkansas and the cruiser USS Little Rock. His collection also includes art, movie posters, photographs, maps, souvenirs, letters and political memorabilia.

Given this cornucopia of Arkansas artifacts, what makes the sheet music stand out?

"I would say its diversity," Robinson said. "It has everything from minstrel songs to liturgical music to country-western to jazz to classical to pop. It crosses a broad spectrum of Arkansas life and so much of it is identified with Arkansas places. And that's where so much of the country and world has been exposed to Arkansas -- through its music."

Robinson recalls his involvement with the creation of one song in the collection.

"Back in the mid-'80s, when the sesquicentennial was coming on, I was account executive for Arkansas Power & Light in the advertising and public relations business," Robinson said. "We were looking for something AP&L should give to the state for the sesquicentennial. And that's when I recommended to [executives] Jerry Mauldin and Chuck Kelly that we create a song about Arkansas. That turned out to be 'Arkansas (You Run Deep in Me),' which is one of the official songs about Arkansas."

Robinson's roommate in college was Wayland Holyfield of Mallettown, Conway County, whose career in music led him to Nashville. Holyfield wrote numerous Nashville hits, including the immortal honky-tonk song "Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer."

"I called Wayland and asked if he would be willing for us to commission him to write a song about Arkansas. We wanted him to sing it, too. That was 30 years ago. On Thanksgiving week of 1985 we recorded that song at RCA Victor studios in Nashville."

The state Legislature designated "Arkansas (You Run Deep in Me)" as one of two official state songs. The other is Terry Rose's "Oh, Arkansas."

OFFICIAL STATE ANTHEM

Now back to Eva Ware Barnett.

In the Butler Center's sheet music collection are copies of what is now known as the official state anthem -- "Arkansas," published in 1916 by Barnett of Arkadelphia, and so designated by the state Legislature.

In a book recently published by Butler Center Books about the many official state symbols -- It's Official! -- state Capitol historian and author David Ware explained more about the musical machinations at the Legislature at the time of the sesquicentennial.

In addition to the three songs noted above, House Concurrent Resolution 1007 designated the old fiddle tune "Arkansas Traveler" as the state's official historic song.

This was too much for state Rep. Pat Flanagin of Forrest City, who voted against the resolution.

Arkansas, he said, "was loaded up with songs."

Style on 12/13/2015

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