Songs That Live 1497 



styles \vc forget that clothing should indicate self-expression as well as 

 confonnity to mode. This second test of a song, " Will it live?" refers to 

 the modern song and includes an answer to the question, " Are there no 

 good popular songs?" 



1. TJie popular song. — The vogue of the present day popular song is 

 due to its " ragtime," pretty, often very pretty, and full of sprightliness 

 and suggestion. The word-maker knows this and the suggestive rhythm 

 of " ragtime " seems to be his license. The " ragtime " becomes the color, 

 gaudy but attractive, when skillfully used; the words -^ what do they 

 become in this song which is claiming a place in the home as expressing 

 the spirit of that home? Study them, read them separated from the 

 tune. You will know if that song be not the dime novel of music. Its 

 very tune, pretty as it may seem with its tinkly rhythm, is bad becavise it 

 suggests and supports words that should never have been printed, much 

 less sold or sung. 



Study again some of the songs and ballads that have lived. Many of them 

 were at one time so-called popular songs and " best sellers." Why did not 

 they, too, perish within the year of their birth ? Read their words separated 

 from their tunes. Now take the tunes and see if they were once popular 

 merely because they tinkled; is there not something more there than the 

 suggestion of a clog dance? Compare these century-old songs that were 

 once " best sellers " w^ith the popular songs of to-day that have crowded 

 them out. The result of this comparison will be a thinning out of the 

 songs on the organ or piano, and many of the latest hits will go to the 

 flames at once. 



2 . Other modern songs. — The unworthy popular song, though threatening 

 a defeat of our good sense and musical taste, does not claim the whole 

 field of modem songs by any means. Do you know Ethelbert Nevins' 

 melodies for Eugene Field's and James Whitcomb Riley's words? Do 

 you know the songs of Coleridge Taylor and of MacDowell, of Cowen 

 and Cowles and Buck and Homer and Denee, and of IMrs. Beach and 

 Margaret Ruthven Lang and Carrie Jacobs Bond? These names are 

 but a few from the list of modem song writers. Apply your songs-that- 

 have-lived yardstick to their songs and discover how well you invested 

 when you brought them, or the phonograph and victrola records of them, 

 into }'our home. Get more of the songs by these writers along with 

 the time-tried ones that " age has not withered nor custom made stale." 

 Remember that modem songs whether popular, semi-classic, or classic, 

 that merit the will-live stamp, will in time become songs that haA^e lived. 

 Remember, too, that we Americans are not always to be the people of 

 a new country, bearing the more or less just jibes put upon us for not 

 being able to sing a single American or national song through without 



