This is a guest post by Pat Padua, one of the wordsmiths behind Sheet Music of the Week, a column on In the Muse, the Performing Arts blog of the Library of Congress Music Division.

I asked Pat to pick some of his favorite covers, and then I grabbed some of my favorite quotes from his posts.

You say it’s your birthday

"My Boy Bill" is one of Pat's very favorite sheet music covers, which he included in a 2009 post long before beginning the weekly feature. It's now one of my favorite sheet music covers too.

Sheet Music of the Week: No Longer Contagious Edition

"This week’s humorous tale of childhood disease is brought to you by a husband and wife songwriting team that is little known today, Irene Franklin and James Burton 'Burt' Green. The pair had a career in vaudeville, and Green had at least one silent film credit before passing away in 1922 of a kidney ailment that was then cheerfully named Bright’s disease, after a Doctor Richard Bright, but is now known as nephritis. Franklin, who had rushed home from a tour to be at her dying husband’s bedside, went on to a series of supporting roles in now forgotten films, playing women with colorful names like Goldie McGuffy (in Song and Dance Man), Flossie Cudd (in Timothy’s Quest) and Mrs. May Baglipp (in Married Before Breakfast..."

Sheet Music of the Week: Wildlife Edition

Sheet Music of the Week: Swimsuit Edition

"Who knows what the amorous couple in 'They Had to Swim Back to the Shore' are up to when into the ocean 'down they would go/way down below.' The songwriting team of James Monaco and Joe McCarthy are best known for 'You Made Me Love You' [...] performed on Sesame Street by Cookie Monster as he writes a love letter to his favorite cookie. The lyrics were adapted to the situation:

Give me, give me, what me cry for!

You know you’ve got the kind of flavor that me die for!

Alas, poor Cookie devours his beloved before he can send the letter."

Just a Baby's Prayer at Twilight

"...published in 1918, near the end of World War I, but the heartbreaking sentiment is perhaps tempered by that frightening baby doll on the little girl’s bed."

Sheet Music of the Week: Obsessive-Compulsive Edition

"'Puzzle March' is illustrated with the image of a refined gentleman hard at work on a puzzle whose solution would seem simple enough: to put the numbers one through fifteen in order. Our distinguished fop is nonetheless frustrated, frazzled, and finally driven mad by his inability to find the solution."

Sheet Music of the Week: The Birth of Cinema Edition

Sheet Music of the Week: Animals at Large Edition

"The 'Home Scenes' illustration, from the Philadelphia lithographer Thomas Hunter, depicts scenes from a strange home indeed, where various species appear to live in an almost constant state of war."

Dances discussed: "Bone of Contention Galop,” “Go Slow Mazurka,” and the peacetime offering “Delighted to See You Scottische“

Sheet Music of the Week: Mother’s Day Edition

"It would be remiss of us if we did not point out that the grammatically correct 'Mother is the only girl who kisses me now' is the title used inside the cover. Nevertheless, relative pronoun and subordinate clause agreement may be the least of this gentleman’s problems."

Sheet Music of the Week: Great Mustaches Edition

"...the cyanotype portrait of Santelmann floats on what at a distance may seem to be an abstract design inspired by textile designer William Morris. But upon closer examination the titular flower and insect appear, punctuated by an errant worker ready to fly off the page at any moment in search of pollen."

Sheet Music of the Week: Masonic Edition

"My research behind the pages has frequently taken me places I did not expect to virtually travel, and this week is no exception. Little did I know that an idle search in our database for 'owls' would lead me to a Masonic Order in the heartland of nineteenth-century America. A little digging proved that such was the explanation behind the mysterious inscription 'to the Hooters and Screechers of Nest No.8, Terre Haute, In.'"

Thanks Pat!

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