Vintage Sheet Music You Better Ask Me Goeffrey O'Hara Samuel Lover

Vintage Sheet Music: You Better Ask Me

You Better Ask Me
Music: Geoffrey O'Hara (1882-1967)
Lyrics: Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Publisher: Forster Music Publisher, Inc., 235 South Wabasha Avenue, Chicago, Ill.

Copyright 1925
Key: G Major
Meter: 6/8
Tempo: Brightly

This blog post by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.

Goeffrey O'Hara
source: Wikipedia

Geoffrey O'Hara was a Canadian born, naturalized American citizen, singer and songwriter associated with Vaudeville and much more. He worked for the U.S. Government recording and documenting traditional Indian songs and  as a singing instructor of patriotic songs for American troops during World War I.  The University of South Dakota honored O'Hara with an honorary doctoracte in 1947.

CLICK HERE to here a brief lecture given by Geoffrey O'Hara, recorded on cylinder in 1914. (Source: UC Santa Barbara Library)

To tell about Samuel Lover I will use an excerpt from the Preface of a biography by Andrew James Symington: Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch with Selections from His Writings and Correspondence published by Blackie and Son in London, 1880.  LINK to book on Archive.org.

Painter, Etcher, Lyric Poet, Musical Composer, Executant, Novelist and Dramatist!  Such an enumeration of amateur accomplishments, to say nothing of a formidable array of well-earned and acknowledged professional designations, seldom falls to the lot of one man.  Yet these were, each and all, fairly won by the late Samuel Lover, a brilliant, modest, self-reliant Irishman, who--dowered with versatile genius and a capacity for work--was every whit as good, genial, and lovable, as he was largely and rarely gifted. 

Samuel Lover
Source: Wikipedia

The grandfather of Samuel was the great musician Victor August Herbert, whose works include Babes in Toyland and Naughty Marietta.

What became You better ask me for O'Hara's music composition was written by Lover under the title, How to Ask and to Have. This poem may be found in The Poetical Works of Samuel Lover published in 1872 by D. and J. Sadlier and Company, New York. LINK to book in Google Books.

Goeffrey O'Hara's rendering of Lover's poem is written in a recitative style of three stanzas using a simple, through composed melody.  The drama and inflection of the performer would have add the interest necessary to make this a successful piece.  The score of four pages sits inside a tan folder of a heavier weight paper and displays a wonderful Art Nouveau border, and note the initials GHO in the upper left corner of the border.  Two music ads show on the back side for other songs by O'Hara: Stray Birds, lyrics by Roscoe Gilmore Scott, and When I Was Wi' My Dearie, lyrics attributed to Robert Burns.   

Additional Links
LINK to Wikipedia article about Samuel Lover
LINK to Wikipedia article about Goeffrey O'Hara