Songs of the Show Boat

Maxwell House Coffee/General Foods Corp. , 1935
Reviewed by Tom Vogt

- Lanny Ross and Muriel Wilson perform a duet - "Tell Me That You Love Me Too" - filmed in 1933 as a segment of "Captain Henry's Show Boat": dailymotion.com/video/x21jpnk

A 1935 song book that includes "Happy Birthday," "Dixie," "Silent Night" and a Schubert-Shakespeare collaboration warrants some attention ... but that discussion will have to wait just a bit.

What initially caught my eye was the cover of that book when it emerged after 30 years in our basement. Velma, a teen in eastern Washington, wrote her name on the cover of "Songs of the Show Boat." Just below, she wrote the name of her rural high school.

It was enough information for me to find her family, and I was able to contact Velma's daughter Linda. (I'm only using first names.) I had read about this sort of literary lost-and-found project: People find a note or inscription in an old book and try to track down the original owner or a family member.

My opportunity popped up after a recent downpour, when the basement of our home in Vancouver, Wash., sprang a leak. We brought up several boxes of sheet music and songbooks that my wife, Kathy, a music teacher, had collected. She inherited some of the material from her grandmother, a pianist who accompanied silent movies in Spokane theaters a century ago.

As we sorted through the rescued items, I checked publication dates, with some material going back to 1915. And then I saw Velma's name on the cover of "Songs of the Show Boat." Through Google, I found a photo with a caption that included Velma's maiden name, which I already had, as well as her married name. That led to her 2010 obituary, which listed Velma's children. Less than an hour after I started, I was talking to Linda.

Turns out that Linda and my wife were born in the same Whitman County hospital, about a year apart, so we have that in common. But we will never know how our family acquired Velma's song book.

The "Maxwell House Show Boat" radio program aired on NBC from 1931 to 1935. There was no boat, by the way. The show was a studio production, and the riverboat photos in the book came from the 1929 film "Show Boat".

The book features folk songs, traditional hymns, patriotic favorites and even light classics such as "Who is Sylvia?" (Franz Schubert paired his music with a William Shakespeare verse from "Two Gentlemen of Verona.")

The song book includes performer profiles. One photograph illustrated a cringeworthy aspect of 1930s entertainment. The program's comedy team was a blackface act, Molasses and January, portrayed by two white vaudevillians. (That was when "Amos 'n' Andy" was the most popular show on radio, drawing 40 million listeners at its peak.)

Another performer, baritone Conrad Thibault, grew up singing in a church choir in Northampton, Mass. The 14-year-old was encouraged to seek a music scholarship by fellow townsman Calvin Coolidge, according to the profile. (Thibault performed in front of another president years later when he sang at one of Dwight Eisenhower's inaugurations.)

The Maxwell House promotional department even created an origin story for the song book. As the skipper, Captain Henry, explains on the inside cover, the crew has been collecting the favorite tunes that people sing up and down the river. "Lanny said, 'Captain Henry, why don't we have these songs printed, and make it possible for our friends who listen in every week to have them?' And so – here they are!"

Lanny was the featured tenor. And after a busy night on the Internet, Lancelot P. Ross turned out to be the most interesting part of the "Show Boat" story. The Seattle native and son of a Shakespearean actor graduated from Yale, where Ross sang in the university's world-renowned glee club. He worked his way through Columbia Law School as a staff singer at the NBC studio in New York. His career path changed when Ross realized he could make more money as a tenor than an attorney.

Ross performed on Broadway and appeared in several movies. During World War II, he sang in the morale-boosting film "Stage Door Canteen," which drew an Oscar nomination for best musical score. The ballad Ross sang near the end of the film, "We Musn't Say Goodbye," received an Oscar nomination for best song.

He was a regular on "Your Hit Parade," a program with a roster of singers that included Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Doris Day. After his death in 1988, an obituary noted that the tenor was one of the most frequently heard voices during the golden age of radio. Ross is still making contributions to music; his estate is funding the director positions for Yale's concert band and its symphony orchestra, as well as other college music programs.

And Ross, shown in the song book holding a steaming cup of Maxwell House coffee, will make a bit more money for his old radio sponsor. I buy most groceries on the basis of price, not brand name. But the next time coffee is on my list, I'll pick up a can of Maxwell House.