The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-14

widespread popularity, and by it's last
 ing qualities, has been 70 Promise Me, :" from the comic opera of Robin Hood. Mill lions of copies have been sold, and it still is one of the best sellers on the shelves of the music stores. It is astonishing what hardihood some songs show in sales. Music stores frequently have calls for After the Ball' and copies of 'Hot Time" are still in demand. So it is with Sweet Marie" and Sweet Bunch of Daisies"
 The best selling song of the immediate period Is Love Me and the World Is Mine" It's sales have reached the 3,00O,- GOO mark, and its singing and whistling and playing have become as all pervasive as the ertswhile After the Ball" and Annie Rooney.'' There is such multi plcation of so-called popular music now adays, however. that it is to be doubted if any song will again reach the height of the craze caused by After the Ball." whose author. Charles K. Harris, reaped d comfortable fortune from it's sales
 That comparatively small portion of the public which prefers Wagnef to Cole and Johnson is continually offended at the poor taste of the majority of the people in selecting whistling airs. One critic was almost driven to suicide a few years ago by the constant "Therell Be a Hot Time
 in the Old Town Tonight. But the great majority continues to whistle what ever may be the rage, and the critics are left to gnash their teeth in impotent anger It is interesting to note in this connection, however, that Down Went McGinty' and the bell motif in Farsi fal'' are both derived from a chorale of Bachs while Annie Rooney was also taken from Bach with a mere change of tempo Many others of the lightest of the street songs are stepchildren of the great composers.
 The popular songs of the day have formed the habit of coming and going in cycles. This is the result of the ef- forts of many ambitious writers and vau- deville managers to initiate anything that has made a chance hit. "The Georgia Camp Meeting started the cakewaliI craze and was indirectly responsible for a type of coon song that flourished long. Then came some real negroes and brought the Congo and~fhe weird drooning of the voodoo into the music, and the coon song was entirely changed. The number of vaudeville negroes who have been denied tho right to come home by q rent-paying wife is equal to the entire negro popula- tion of the Zanzibar coast, East Africa.
 One song about the noble North Ameri- can Indian-and lo there are scores, and those who keep up with the newest songs have tom-tommed and tomahawked and Tammanyed and Hiawathaed until the neighbors have screamed in agony. Then there has been the Dago song craze and no man may tell where things are liable to break out next What makes song popular no man has ever explained. Sometimes 1t is the air, sometimes the words, sometimes both. The fashions come and go, and from each generation one or two living songs are added to the repetory of English-speaking folk.
 While the two most popular of. all English songs of home, the third place in popularity and the first place inSthe hearts of the young is accorded to An nie Laurie.'' The language has come to America to find expression of it's love of home, 1t has gone 10 Scotland for the song to sing of the love of q girl. To William Douglas of Kirkcudhright was given the glory of writing Annie Laurie. The fair Annie married another man in the course of events, but the song is still here. and in 1t the love of Douglas still lives.
 The power and meaning of popular song lies in the fact that the songs that are known and familiar come to be the musical expression of the emotions oi those individuals who sing them. Almost everyone treasures some particular old song for it's traditions. As the soldiers in camp at night between two days of bat tie:
 ..They sang of love and not of fame, Forgot was Britain's glory,
 Each heart recalled a, different name, But all sang Annie Laurie
 Tomorrow-Butchers and the Price oi