Vintage Sheet Music Covers

My sister and I were fortunate as kids because our parents were good amateur musicians who, in the days before TV, would often play together as a way to end the evening: our mother on violin, our dad on piano. I have multiple memories of falling asleep on the couch as a child listening to them play the song pictured above. That copy of the sheet music is the actual music they played from: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. It’s one of my favorite covers, not just because of the personal memories, but also its beautiful, period style of graphic design.

St. Petersburg seems to be a hotbed of vintage and antique shows and shops…I guess that’s because there’s so many antiques living here (such as myself)! One of my friends haunts these shows even more than I do and she’s kindly picked up copies of vintage sheet music she knew I’d love. The four covers above, There Are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden, Way Down in Florida – That’s the Place To Be!, Buddha, and Nola were gifts from her. The first one was an amusing favorite of a dear friend; the second has value simply for its appalling lyrics; the third was an acknowledgment of my having taken lay vows as a Buddhist several years ago; and, the last was a piece I’d been looking for for years, a piece that I played constantly as a kid, driving my parents nuts.

The group pictured below, Galway Bay, The Last Round-up, San Antonio Rose, and Mexicali Rose, are more pieces our folks used to play in the evenings. Easy to see where I developed my eclectic musical tastes (or some might say, lack of taste!). I’m sure at least some of these are “collectibles,” but their value to me is entirely personal significance. It is fun, however, to rummage through the bins of vintage music to see how much some copies bring.

As we prepare to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in 2010, here’s the cover of one of my favorite songs when I was a kid (a song that I sang over and over and over, maybe even more times than I sang Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz a Bear), So Long It’s Been Good To Know Yuh.