Rock-A-Bye My Baby Blues: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Sheet music for the song Rock-A-Bye My Baby Blues. The front cover of the sheet music features an image of Billy Elliott in blackface makeup. A caption under the image in blue type reads: [Successfully Introduced By / BILLY ELLIOTT]. A green and blue silhouette of the moon behind a house appears in the background of the front cover. Blue and green type the top of the front cover reads: [ROCK-A-BYE MY BABY BLUES]. A text box, next to the image of Elliot, has blue type that reads: [WALTZ / BALLAD / by / BILLY HILL / AND / LARRY YOELL / Writers of / The West, A Nest and You]. A logo for the publisher in a white box with blue type reads: [Sherman, Clay & Co. / SAN FRANCISCO]. White type at the bottom of the front cover reads [P O M/ GRIFFITH]. The inside of the front cover contains sheet music for a song titled [The West, A Nest, And You]. The interior of the sheet music contains three pages of music bars and notes in black ink for Rock A Bye My Baby Blues. The back cover features sheet music in blue ink for the songs titled: [I DON'T KNOW WHY] and [ORIENTAL LOVE DREAMS].

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1923
• Composed by: William Joseph Hill, American, 1899 - 1940
• Written by: Larry Yoell
• Subject of: Billy Elliott
• Published by: Sherman, Clay & Co., American, founded 1870
• Owned by: Vernon Sugg McDonald, American, 1906 - 1982
• Type: sheet music
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 12 × 9 in. (30.5 × 22.9 cm)
• Place collected: Sugg McDonald House, Sonora, Tuolumne County, California, United States, North and Central America
• Place printed: San Francisco, California, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Blackface
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Topic: Stereotypes
• Object number: 2014.275.4
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Sylvia Alden Roberts
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.