Songs my Grand-Mother Taught Me (Songs of Carrie Jacobs-Bond)

The life of composer, poet, artist and publisher Carrie Jacobs-Bond reads like a classic American rags-to-riches success story. Hailed during her lifetime as the "James Whitcomb Riley of Song," many of Bond's 400-some "home" songs have become standards in the popular repertory and have been near and dear to the hearts of generations of listeners. She was born in a small town in southern Wisconsin and enjoyed some celebrity as a child because of her ability to play the piano. She received minimal formal music training. After a first failed marriage, during which she had her beloved son Fred, she married her childhood sweetheart Dr. Frank Lewis Bond and moved with her young son to Iron River, Michigan. It was here she began to compose her songs, but sadly, after only seven years, her husband died, leaving her almost penniless. To support herself and her son, she "peddled" her songs. She founded her own publishing house "The Bond Shop" and it was run by her and her son until he committed suicide in 1929. Here is how she was described: "In a voice drenched with tears, almost basslike in quality, she would sit at her old grand piano and intone these quaint melodies for us. These were certainly not distinguished compositions, by any means, but there was a quality about them, a wistfulness that was part of her nature, that made each new song seem a revelation." A composer of American melodies in the tradition of Stephen Foster, Carrie Jacobs-Bond's songs epitomize the Victorian and post-Victorian parlor song: unapologetically sentimental, yet displaying a genuine lyric gift. In the words of one biographer, her songs "represent a final flowering of the 19th century genteelly sentimental song in American popular music."