Songs, Stories

"The story behind the song is sometimes more romantic than the song itself. Who knows, for instance, that the two great Southern songs, "Dixie" and "Old Folks at Hame," were both written by Northerners, and that the author of the latter never saw the Swanee River, but found it in an atlas? Or that the author of the pretty "On the Banks of the Wabash," and other sentimental songs, was the brother of Theodore Dreiser, most realistic of modern novelists?--Or that "Sweet Adeline" started life as "Sweet Rosalee?"

Thus queried the New York Herald Tribune News syndicate advertising in the pages of the Editor and Publisher, a series of "feature articles" by one J. J. Geller entitled "The Story Behind the Song."