Take Your Clothes And Go: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Sheet music for the song Take Your Clothes and Go. The front cover features a black and white image of a woman pointing at a suitcase full of clothes while a man looks at her. The black and blue type on the front cover is set against a white and blue background and reads: [A GENUINE RAG TIME COON ODDITY / TAKE YOUR / CLOTHES AND GO / SUNG WITH / UNBOUNDED / SUCCESS BY / GEO. WILSON OF / PRIMROSE AND WEST'S / MINSTRELS / LEW / DOCHSTADER / IRVING JONES / BILLY FARREL / JOHNSON AND DEAN / AND / OTHER WELLKNOWN / VOCALISTS / WORDS AND MUSIC BY / IRVING / JONES / 5 / LEAVE THIS HOUSE WHEN YOU GET YOUR TRUNK PACKED. / PUBLISHED BY JOS. W. STERN & CO / 45 EAST 20th ST / NEW YORK / FRANK DEAN & CO., 31 Castle St. Oxford St., W., London.]. The interior of the front cover has sheet music for several short songs. The interior of the sheet music contains five pages of musical bars and notes in black ink for the song Take Your Clothes and Go. The back cover has additional sheet music for several more short songs.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1897
• Composed by: Irving Jones, American, 1874 - 1932
• Subject of: George R. Wilson
• Published by: Jos. W. Stern & Co., American
• Owned by: Vernon Sugg McDonald, American, 1906 - 1982
• Owned by: Mary Elizabeth Sugg, American, 1839 - 1915
• Type: sheet music
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 14 × 10 7/8 in. (35.6 × 27.6 cm)
• Place collected: Sonora, Tuolumne County, California, United States, North and Central America
• Place printed: New York City, New York County, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Object number: 2014.275.10
• 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 displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.