The American Songbag

1927. Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. His work found beauty and glory in the simple America that surrounded him: the farms, industry, landscape, culture, and most importantly, the American people. The book, which contains words and music to 280 songs, ballads and ditties which men have sung in the making of America, begins with a series of Dramas and Portraits, rich with the human diversity of the United States. There are Tarnished Love Tales Told in Song, or Colonial and Revolutionary Antiques, and Pioneer Memories from the human waves that have swept across the Alleghenies. There are groups of railroad, hobo, steamboat songs, songs from Kentucky, the Great Lakes, and from the camps of lumberjacks and shanty-boys. One section contains Barber Shop Chords, Close Harmony, and Darn Fool Ditties, another group are Irish lilts, emigrants to the States. A little series of exquisite musical fragments, light as gossamer mist are grouped under the title, Lovely People. The book closes with a section of spirituals called The Road to Heaven. A wonderful book of singable songs. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.