Girl of My Dreams Sunny Clapp Parisian Red Heads

Girl of My Dreams by Sunny Clapp
Vintage Sheet Music

Girl of My Dreams
Lyrics and Melody by Sunny Clapp
Ukelele arranged by M. Kalua
Cover Art: Perret

Jack Mills, Inc., 1927

Listen to a vintage performance of Girl of My Dreams on youtube.com.

This vintage sheet music edition of Girl of My Dreams is representative of the era during which it was published in multiple ways.  Looking at the cover, my first observation is the shade of green along with the floral design on the black columns.  I recognize immediately as traditional in sewing circles even today through reproductions of depression era feedsacks which were use for clothing and household articles and called simply, 30s fabric.  Sometimes called jadite green, the color was used in the home, advertisements, and elsewhere.

 

Silhouette in Oval Rosebud Frame
Woman playing Ukelele

As popular as the guitar is today and has been for the last 50 years, during the 1920s and 1930s, the ukelele was the stringed instrument of choice, and most sheet music sold to the general public included charts for the ukelele, with some sheet music having a separate page arranged for Hawaiian ukelele. This copy states the arranger near the top, on the right side of the oval cameo silhouette, a woman who is playing a ukelele.  We may speculate that M. Kalua was a fairly well known ukelele artist since the name would be placed prominently on the front cover as a selling point.

In the early 1900s a unique performance phenomena was the all-girl bands and all-girl orchestras.  We need not say much about the adjective girl as descriptive of the women who participated other than as much as we might think it derogatory in the 21st century, at the time it was not.  The notion of the women participating in such a non-traditional role was tempered by the fact that their independence was often curtailed at the point of marriage.  Scroll down HERE to the article titled, Cupid Plays Havoc in Band published July 25, 1908, in the Kansas City Journal, an article about another women's band, The Navassar Band.  This LINK will take you to a short video located on my postcard blog sight during which I feature a postcard mentioning the Navassar Band's performance at Grand Island Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1904.

Parisian Red Heads
America's Greatest Girl Band

Please Note:  It seems that I have mixed up the all-women bands and I want to maker certain that incorrect information is not taken as fact.  A very kind and unfortunately anonymous donor of correct information left the following comment (Also posted below, but I want to be certain the corrections are noted.). 

A couple of corrections, though: the Parisian Red Heads were led by Bobbie Grice, not Babe Egan. Babe Egan was the leader of the Hollywood Redheads, a similar "all girl" band that predated the Parisian Red Heads. (In fact, the existence of the Hollywood Redheads was responsible for the Parisian Red Heads later changing their name, to "The Fourteen Bricktops" -- later abbreviated as "The Bricktops".)

The Twelve Vampires, though similarly all-female, were an unrelated band, formed by trumpeter Leora Meoux Henderson.

I am hoping to state this correctly, that these are three separate, independent bands, as follows:

Parisian Red Heads (later The Fourteen Bricktops), leader: Bobbie Grice
Hollywood Red Heads, leader: Babe Egan
The Twelve Vampires, formed by Leora Meoux Henderson

Corrected Text:
The cover photo inset on the edition features the Parisian Red Heads with their leader Babe Egan Bobbie Grice. Babe Egan, leader of a similarly named group, the Hollywood Red Heads threatened legal action over the name, which led the Parisian Red Heads to change their name to The Fourteen Bricktops.  The caption tells us that they were America's Greatest Girl Band.   The University of Iowa Digital Library Site show advertising for this group: it seems that one of the band's attributes was that they could put on a high-spirited performance the same as men. Ken Burns, in his PBS documentary film, JAZZ, spoke about the Parisian Red Heads from Indiana, one of the better known groups of the era. 

An interesting article, Lost Legends of Indiana Jazz may be found HERE.  The article includes information on the bands mentioned above.

If you would like to  read more on the fascinating subject of women in Jazz, you might consider obtaining a copy of Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazz Women by Linda Dahl.  Amazon.com through this link has shows used paperback copies as well as a Kindle edition.  You will also find copies on other book sites.

To find out more about Linda Dahl, author of Stormy Weather, I include a LINK to her website.  The colored background and colored type fonts are a bit difficult to read, but there you will find information about all of the books hse authored.

Girl of My Dreams is the the best known song in lyricist and composer Sunny Clapp's (or Sonny Clapp), repertoire of compositions.  He was born Claude Reese in Galesburg, Illinois.  His band played under the name, Band o' Sunshine.  Band o'Sunshine and Parisian Red Heads both belong to the group of traveling ensembles known as Territory Bands.  Click Here to hear the Band O'Sunshine on youtube.com.

One last note about this cover: take a look at the Jack Mills, Inc. logo at bottom center with its created-not-to-be-forgotten branding.  If you couldn't read, which you can because you have just been reading this blog entry, you could tell that is was about mills (windmill image) and music (lyre). 

This article was written by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.
This copy of Girl of My Dreams is available for purchase at QualityMusicandBooks.com.