Category Archives: History

WWI Insignia Decorating Sheet Music

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Cover with the emblem of section TM 499 responsible for transporting material during WW1 in France. ‘Le Cafard‘, a tango by Paul Fauchey, published by Clapson in 1919 – Illustration attributed to Benjamin Rabier.

We recently found the historical explanation for an unusual series of sheet music covers that we have been collecting for years.

At the outbreak of the First World War the French army requisitioned private cars, commercial vans and trucks, taxis and all Parisian buses and their drivers. The military Service Automobile started with only a few dozen cars in 1914, and counted almost one hundred thousand (!) vehicles at the time of the armistice. It transported soldiers and provided the army with food and munitions. The Service Automobile was divided in sections, each with a specific task. The more than thousand Parisian buses of the RVF (Ravitaillement en Viande Fraiche) carried fresh meat to the war zone. The seats were taken out of the buses and meat racks were installed. The windows were replaced by canvasses. There was no refrigeration. A single bus could contain the meat for a whole regiment of about three thousand men.

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Parisian De Dion Bouton bus transformed for the RVF section responsible for the transportation of fresh meat.
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Bus transporting meat to the front during WWI

Other sections were charged with the transport of the wounded (the Sanitary Sections or SS), ammunition for the artillery (SMA), material (TM), or staff (TP). Every section was identified by it’s initials and a number, for example TM 670. Because this wasn’t easy to communicate, one soon began to use nicknames to indicate certain sections. For example ‘the lady bug’ or ‘the polar bear’. And in 1916, although against regulations, the sections began to paint their symbol in vivid colours on their trucks in order to be easily recognised. The inspiration for these nicknames and insignia was limitless: animals, soldiers, nurses, playing cards, geometric shapes, daily life, …

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Examples of insignia from the Automobile Section (from l’Album de la Guerre 1914-1919 – L’Illustration 1927)
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Insignia of a dragon on the canvas of a truck of the TM section.

Shortly after the war, 155 of these insignia were exhibited in Paris in honour of the Service Automobile and sold for charity. At the same time the Parisian composer and publisher Clapson edited a series of musical compositions (at least 35) on cheap post-war paper in remembrance of the Service Automobile. Each cover was illustrated with the emblem of one of the famous sections. The music was performed in the renowned Parisian venues such as the Casino de Paris, l’Olympia or Les Folies Bergère.

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Left, press photos of 4 insignia of the exposition in 1919 (source: Bibliothèque nationale de France). Right, the 1919 ‘Le Singe à l’huile‘ sheet music cover published by Clapson, and illustrated by Benjamin Rabier.

Two symbols in the press photo above, the ape and the cow, were drawn by Benjamin Rabier and were later used by Clapson to illustrate his sheet music. The head of the ape (the insignia of the section RVF B20) adorned the cover for the music of Le Singe à l’huile or Bully Beef. Tinned corned beef or bully beef was – and still sometimes is – translated in French as singe (singe being the French word for ape). This must have been a joke as the RVF only transported fresh meat. In a following post we will discuss the insignia of the laughing cow’s head, nicknamed la Wachkyrie.

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Left, the press photos of 4 insignia of the exposition in 1919 (source: Bibliothèque nationale de France). Right, the sheet music cover for ‘La Souris Blanche‘ illustrated by M. Carvallo.

The red cross on the cover of La Souris Blanche leaves no doubt that this white mouse was the insignia for one of the sanitary sections.

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Covers illustrated by P. Garnier, de Scevola, Fetaz, Benjamin Rabier, Circa, Roubille and E.S. 1919-1920

On the left side of the second row in the above collage of Clapson’s songs is The Pelican. The cover was drawn by the Fench painter Guirand de Scévola. He is considered one of the inventors of military camouflage during World War I. The Pelican, a foxtrot composed by Clapson, was the biggest hit of the series. You can listen to this popular tune now, as if you were celebrating the end of The Great War at a thé dansant in the Savoy Dancing Club yourself.

The Mammy Stereotype

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The sheet music for ‘Coal-Black Mammy‘ by Ivy St. Helier and Laddie Cliff (Francis, Day and Hunter, London, 1921).
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The cast of the Co-Optmists revue at the Palace Theatre of London. Author Laddie Cliff stands third from the right.

Coal-Black Mammy was written by comedian Laddie Cliff and composed by actress and singer Ivy St. Hellier in 1921. Although the author was born in Bristol (UK), he adapted the American South’s archetypical Mammy for the successful ‘Co-Optimists’ London revue.

A photograph of author Laddie Cliff when young, and the obituary in the Glasgow Herald
A photograph of author Laddie Cliff when young, and his obituary in the Glasgow Herald of 1937.

The Co-Optimists revue combined in its name two political keywords of the time, optimism and co-operation.  It was a sequence of short sketches, performed by musical comedy and variety artists dressed in pierrot costumes. The show ran for six years at the London Palace Theatre and went on tour along British seaside resorts.

View of the Palace Theatre across Cambridge Circus, London, 1910
View of the Palace Theatre across Cambridge Circus, London, 1910

In 1929 it was made into a film, co-directed by Laddie Cliff.  A filmed extract from the stage musical brings the photo on the sheet music cover literally to life.

Salabert published Coal-Black Mammy in France and Roger de Valerio illustrated its cover. Mammy characters were a staple of minstrel shows, so they were certainly known in Europe at that time.

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Coal-Black Mammy‘, illustrated by Roger de Valerio (Francis Salabert, Paris, 1921)

But, in picturing the mother with her own baby de Valerio proves that he did not correctly grasp the Southern archetypical meaning of the Black Mammy. Unlike the happy mother on the cover, she did not have time to care for her own children. The Mammy in these shows and comedies is a racist stereotype: usually an overweight, large-breasted, maternal woman. Moreover she is a neat and clean, domestic, non threatening to white people, and always busy attending to the needs of the master’s children. She is the one person on whom all (white people) depend when in need.

American illustrator Dorothy Dullin on the other hand, understood perfectly well how to draw a Mammy for the cover of the 1922 song Carolina Mammy: the Mammy is nurturing a white boy.

Carolina Mammy‘, by Billy James, cover illustrated by Dorothy Dulin (Publications Francis-Day, Paris, 1922).

The two songs mentioned above were also performed by black face par excellence, Al Jolson. In 1927 Walter Donaldson composed the ultimate Mammy song for the film The Jazz Singer: My Mammy. The song became a classic in Al Jolson’s version. For the French edition of the song the illustrator Deléage made a strong caricature of Al Jolson’s black face character.

My Mammy‘, by Walter Donaldson, sheet music cover illustrated by L. R. Deléage (Publications Raoul Breton, Paris, 1929).

The persistent Mammy stereotype extended well into the twentieth century in literature, films and TV series. In the cartoon Scrub me Mamma with a Boogie Beat from 1941, we see another archetypical image of the Black Mammy, kerchief on her head. Of course the entire cartoon is the epitome of stereotyping: black men living in Lazytown, doing nothing else than, well… being lazy. It is only when a sexy light-skinned woman appears, that they jump into action to dance and play their instruments.

Or to say it with a good old sheet music cover…

Lazin', Sheet music (Lazin', partition illustrée)
Lazin’‘, composed by Charles Tovey (illustrator unknown, Lawrence Wright, London, 1934).

Andrée, the Balloonatic – Another Tale of Hubris

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Vid Nordpolen‘, polka composed by Adolph Nordholm, published by Elkan & Schildknecht (Stockholm, s.d.), illustrator unknown

A Swedish sheet music cover shows a scene in joyous anticipation of Salomon Andrée’s balloon expedition to reach the North Pole. The starting point of the Arctic exploration was Svalbard, formerly known as Spitsbergen.

Vid Nordpolen detail

Happy Inuit, who were in fact not living in Svalbard at all, are dancing to the accompaniment of a small polar-bear orchestra to celebrate the departure of the adventurers. This merriment took place at the end of the 19th century when exploration was closely knitted with heroism, nationalism and scientific progress.

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Salomon Andrée. Photograph Grenna Museum, Andréexpedition.

To float over the North Pole, the Swedish engineer Salomon Andrée had invented a technique of guide ropes and sails for steering a balloon. However this approach had never proven to work: the heavy ropes got tangled with each other, got stuck on the ground or simply fell off.

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Departure of the Eagle from Svalbard. The guide ropes still intact. Photograph Grenna Museum, Andréexpedition.

Instead of using reliable Inuit equipment, Andrée took on his mission a canvas boat and sledges of his own design that he hadn’t yet tested. Besides he, nor his team, had any experience in surviving extreme weather conditions. Moreover Andrée discarded the fact that the balloon ordered in Paris was leaking too much hydrogen. All this should have been more than enough to cancel the expedition. But the Arctic was the world’s last mysterious destination and Andrée may have been dragged into this adventure by machismo or hubris.

Or was he perhaps unable to draw back? At that time, Sweden was driven by the international competition to reach the North Pole first, especially after 1896, when the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen had reached a record northern latitude. Andrée’s innovative idea to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen-filled balloon was backed by Alfred Nobel and the Swedish King. The story of his science-fiction-like plan was extensively covered by the (international) press. As was the cancelling of an earlier attempt in 1896 due to bad weather conditions after which Andrée experienced a lot of rebuffs.

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Nils Strindberg (left) and Knut Fraenkel

So by his second try in 1897, the strong-headed Andrée could not risk further reputation damage and had to sail polewards no matter what. Sadly he took with him two young men: the student and photographer Nils Strindberg (nephew of the playwright) and the engineer Knut Fraenkel.

‘An immense hurrah, four times repeated, was volleyed from every panting breast. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved frantically.’ And off they went in their balloon, the Eagle, together with 36 carrier pigeons who were supposed to take messages back to Svalbard. Only one message was ever received and after that… silence. A silence that would last for more than thirty years.

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The only survivor of the expedition. The pigeon was promptly shot by the crew of the steamer on which she landed. She carried a message: all is well and was stuffed afterwards.

It was in 1930 that seal hunters found the remains of the three explorers, together with their journals and camera film. This made it possible to reconstruct their terrible ordeal.

Right from the start the guiding ropes got tangled and they had to be cut off. The balloon became unsteerable. Soon they were immersed in a fog that froze on the silk of the balloon.

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The Eagle has landed – Photograph Grenna Museum, Andréexpeditionen

After bumping over the ice for four days and throwing out a lot of ballast they finally crashed a mere 460 km from their starting point. They decided to set up camp there during a week in preparation for their journey on foot, back south.

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The camp at the landing site. Photograph Grenna Museum, Andréexpeditionen

They survived on bear meat, algae soup, some of the tins they had not thrown overboard and a daily dose of opium.

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Fraenkel and Strindberg with a killed polar bear. Photograph Grenna Museum, Andréexpeditionen

They struggled with bad feet, diarrhea, a poor diet, a constant threat of the bears and bad weather. At last they reached an island (Kvitøya) and set up a ramshackle camp there: they must have been despaired and in great fatigue. Soon after arriving Fraenkel died, followed a few days later by his two fellow explorers.

‘Upp genom luften’ by Herman Ahlberg, published by Lundquist (Stockholm, sd). Illustrator unknown.

The tragic story of their failure has been the source of inspiration for books, films, music and art. Enjoy the fragment from Flight of the Eagle with Max von Sydow as Salomon Andrée