Yesterday I was driving south on St. Paul Street and noticed a sidewalk sale happening at the corner of 28th Street. I'm so glad I stopped! Inside a cardboard box I found a stack of sheet music with incredible cover art. Technically these aren't Goodwill finds, but at 50 cents a pop I think we can agree this purchase qualifies as Thrift Art.
At first I was ready to walk away with about 12 of these, but I want to keep my TA collection diverse so I whittled the group down to my two favorite covers: one for a song called "Hello Beautiful;" the other for a fox trot called "Cherie."
Hello Beautiful (listen here!)
1931
Music by Walter Davidson; Lyrics by Maurice Chevalier
Cover art by Frederick Manning
I love the Art Deco look of this cover. The repeated geometric motifs and perfect symmetry of Beautiful's brows, eyes, lips, earrings and bobbed hair are streamlined and curving, perfectly still and pulsing with movement all at once. The cover has a stamp from Day's Music Store of Elyria, Ohio on it, as well as a signature identifying a former owner as Ms. Hazel R. Castle (? illegible).
Cherie (listen here!)
1921
Music by Irving Bibo; Lyrics by Leo Wood
Cover art by Art Phillips
I'm not quite sure how to characterize the style of Cherie--very late Art Nouveau? Japanese woodblock print-inspired? She reminds me of an Aubrey Beardsley print, The Black Domino. Since I'm not an art historian, I'll leave the visual "analysis" at that! I love the combination of orange, black and grey colors, and the streaks raining down her cheekbones. Art Phillips really took the lyrics to heart when he crafted the come-hither smirk on Cherie's face:
"Far away in France there lives a sweet coquette,
She's a little dancing rascal you can bet"
On the back cover of Cherie is this post script: "Remember the title and the next time you go to a dance ask the orchestra to play it."
Or as two other lovely ladies put it: Hey DJ, keep playin' that song, all niiiiight, on and on and on....
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