THESE FORLORN DAYS: WILLA CATHER'S 1908 PLAYLIST

These Forlorn Days: Willa Cather’s 1908 Playlist
Short Story: “On the Gull's Road,” Willa Cather, McClure’s Magazine, 1908

Playlist:
Frank Stanley: Any Old Port in a Storm
Lucy Isabelle Marsh: The Glow-Worm
Byron G. Harlan: There Never was a Girl Like You
Victor Orchestra: Sunbonnet Sue
Ada Jones & Billy Murray: Shine On, Harvest Moon
Peerless Quartet: Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming
Alan Turner: As Long as the World Rolls On

Music gives voice to what is indescribable, just as stories immerse us in their fantastical worlds. As creative outlets, music and writing are intertwined; this is especially encapsulated in the musical backdrop that complements Willa Cather’s story, “On the Gulls’ Road,” published in 1908, where the tone, themes, and literary language are reflective of each other. For this reason, enmeshing her story in music can reveal a lot about the historical influences on this art form.

To gauge the overall “mood” of music in 1908, I drew from the Top 100 songs, assuming that the popular music of the year appealed to the majority so that I could create a big picture idea of the types of topics, tones, and moods that defined the year. I used tsort.info, a website with these Top 100 songs, to determine the songs’ relative popularity. With a few exceptions like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” most of the songs’ titles were nostalgic and doleful, such as “Some Day You’ll Come Back to Me," while others had Southern connotations such as “The Small Town Gal” (Hawtin et al 2021). Most of the titles were poetic, sad, or sweet. I then listened to the songs whose titles matched the themes of Willa Cather’s story, which happened to be most of them; they had a similar tone and their lyrics were melancholic but hopeful. Many of them were brief, accompanied by quartets, orchestral music, and a “vintage," crackly sound, giving their singers’ operatic voices rawness and authenticity; there was a pleasant serenity in them despite the sorrowful lyrics. These songs were intended to be sung around the piano or played as a record disc or cylinder (Tyler 5). To contextualize further, I read an overview of the events of 1908, where things were “bigger, better, faster and stranger than anything that had happened before” as rapid changes in technology and possibilities followed (Rasenberger).

After listening, I started arranging the songs to reflect “On the Gulls’ Road” plot: Frank Stanley’s “Any Old Port in a Storm” was the beginning, when the narrator was on the ship and had met Mrs. Ebbling, Byron Harlan’s German song “There Never was a Girl Like You” translated to the days they got to know her, and Victor Orchestra’s cover of “Sunbonnet Sue” was for the days they had spent together “when the skies [were] blue, [where] I wanna hear you say I do/ For I’m in love with you, Sunbonnet Sue” (Hawtin et al 2021). Ada Jones and Billy Murray’s “Shine On, Harvest Moon” is also a cover where both sing of the “Little maid [who] was kinda afraid of darkness/ So she said, ‘I guess I'll go’/ Boy began to sigh, looked up at the sky/ And told the moon his little tale of woe,” summarizing the story from both perspectives, while Peerless Quartet’s “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming” is a reminiscence of their past love where “the fleeting joys of day/ My own love is sweetly dreaming/ The happy hours away” (Hawtin et al 2021). Finally, Alan Turner’s “As Long as the World Rolls On” is an acceptance and joy in experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime love like theirs “as heaven sent me just to love you/ Live and love you ages through/ As long as the world rolls on, dear/ There’s naught for me/ But to live for thee” (Hawtin et al 2021). All these songs are indicative of what types of themes were popular that year: a love to be remembered for a lifetime.

As for 1908 itself, it was a golden year: skyscrapers, the skies as the Wright brothers broke records for the duration of a flight flown, and Model Ts trundling down the road. Ambitious projects like the Great White Fleet, sixteen ships setting sail on a voyage around the world in a time of hostility with other countries–ending up promoting reconciliation–and traveling to the North Pole bewitched not only Americans, but the world with its semblance to fantasy. That year, the average American lived in a home with vacuum cleaners, electricity, and telephones, had a high income per capita, and lived in a newly wealthy country that emerged as a world leader. However, there were still tensions like tobacco farmers’ protests and violence against African Americans (Rasenberger).

Musically, it was a year of “la douleur exquise,” wistfulness, and longing. Almost all the Top 100 songs of 1908 I had reviewed revealed this amidst the spectacular surge of magical inventions the year held and the clouds that hung over it. Underlying the US being “buoyed by achievements… more confident in its genius and resourcefulness—its military might—and more comfortable playing a dominant role in global affairs,” by the window bright with electricity-powered lights and the cords of power lines on distant roads, far beyond the Great White Fleet plowing through the moonlit waters of the Atlantic, there were many lonely hearts dreaming of one day marrying their love beneath that moon; until then, they’d softly coax it to shine on in Ada Jones and Billy Murray’s soulful duet of “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and ask the stars in the silent night for those “little glow worm[s] to light the path below above and lead us on to love” in Lucy Isabelle Marsh’s “The Glow-Worm” (Hawtin et al 2021). By the seas, Frank Stanley’s “Any Old Port in a Storm” would murmur “out on the billows [where] the good ship tossed/ Where the heart of true love beats warm/ For the shelter there, is a haven fair/ Any old port in a storm” (Tyler 40).

Popular music in the year was characterized by nostalgic, pining limerences like Byron Harlan’s “There Never was a Girl Like You,” the beautiful comfort of love and the memories of past loves like Victor Orchestra’s “Sunbonnet Sue,” or joyous and serene ballads commemorating it like Peerless Quartet’s “Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming.” From these songs, people enjoyed listening to the transcendent or turbulent nature of love, and, even in its turbulent nature, there was always the lyrics of one day meeting their love at the altar, even if only in a song. Interestingly, in a year of optimism, the songs appealed to longing for something, which love seemed to fill or leave bereft.

Many of the ideologies and relationships in the songs’ lyrics demonstrated how the singers’ love for the person of their affection was highly idealized, with many mentions of marriage; for example, in “Sunbonnet Sue,” “The Glow-Worm,” and “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” the songs trill for those wedding bells, the “I dos,” and the happy love for the other to flourish. There was also an abstract contentment in reveling in these feelings or sighing about their love but nothing specific about them that they loved was mentioned, neither was their personality, individuality, or habits – just an elusive idealization of them, like summer haze.

Discovering how near-identical Willa Cather’s “On the Gulls’ Road” to the Top 100 songs in tone, imagery, and subject was telling of the atmosphere of media in that time and how greatly influential it was to her love story. One such instance is the imagery of light in songs like “The Glow-Worm” of “On forests dreaming/ Lovers wander forth to see/ The bright stars gleaming” and in “Shine On, Harvest Moon” of “The night was mighty dark so you could hardly see/ For the moon refused to shine/ Couple sitting underneath the willow tree; for love they pined” (Marsh, 00:00:18-00:00:29; Jones & Murray, 00:00:14-00:00:28). This imagery is reflected in the last paragraph of “On the Gulls’ Road,” where the narrator speaks of how Mrs. Ebbling’s lock of hair “gleamed, how it still gleams in the firelight!” (Cather 152). The turbulent nature of love is elaborated on “in the warm fluid that courses so surely within us… which comes up wave after wave and leaves us irresponsible and free… this flow of life, which continually impelled me toward Mrs. Ebbling” (Cather 148). The setting of the ocean as a symbol for ethereal, everlasting love is especially pointed out in “Any Old Port in a Storm,” a U.S. Billboard #2 song for four weeks, whose lyrics state “Out on the billows the good ship tossed/ But a brave little craft was she/ Tho' the thunder roared/ And the torrents pour’d,” the ship being symbolic of the boat and his lover (Hawtin et al 2021; Tyler 40). The themes of nostalgia, love, and exile from these songs translate strongly amidst a time of great changes in “On the Gulls’ Road,” showing how this atmosphere influenced the story’s own narrative.

After this process of researching and contextualization, I appreciated how such an ethereal love story like Willa Cather’s blossomed. The way Cather was able to convey the passionate, never-again love that the narrator and Mrs. Ebbling felt leaves an impact and compliments the 1908 songs’ themes. Both the sweeping emotions in the singers’ voices with their poetic lyrics found their way into the world of “On the Gulls’ Road” where their emotions came alive in the characters of the narrator and Mrs. Ebbling; we walk side-by-side on the journey both characters walk in their story, characters we can understand and whose non-abstract love we watch grow. The bittersweetness of the singers’ voices transcend like the suspenseful plot, which ends with a letter that satisfyingly states “Thank you for everything” (Cather 152).

In this paper, I’ve explained my research process and how I examined the broader picture of music in 1908 before pinpointing the details from the songs. I’ve also demonstrated how I’ve arranged the songs into a playlist according to the story and ‘essence’ of the year. Finally, I’ve explained the historical and contextual context of the music influencing Willa Cather’s story and the songs and story’s near-identical nature. Both capture the forlorn days of 1908.

Dheeksha Senthur studied biology and criminal justice at the University of Pittsburgh. She was previously an assistant editor for her college pre-health journal, The Pre-Health Spotlight. Her other interests include reading, painting, and calligraphy."