Nora Bayes \"Cheer up! Eat and grow thin\" (composer is E. Ray Goetz) 1916
Reference books state that she was born Dora or Leonora or Eleanor Goldberg--perhaps in Chicago, Joilet, Milwaukee, or some other Mid-West location. Nothing is known of her early life, and the name Goldberg was possibly a fabrication that Bayes herself fed to reporters. She never disclosed where she was born or raised, perhaps because of unhappy memories. She gives this information about her background in an article titled \"Why People Enjoy Crying in a Theater,\" published in the April 1918 issue of The American Magazine: \"I never would have been allowed to go on the stage if I had still been living with my parents, to whom the theater and all its works represented the lowest damnation and mortal sin. But I was married at seventeen and thus was free from parental discipline. I was first tried out at a vaudeville theater in Chicago. The Four Cohans were on the same bill...When I was a child of thirteen I had a phenomenal contralto voice.\"
The contralto had her Broadway debut in 1901 in The Rogers Brothers in Washington. She would not be in another Broadway show for a few more years but enjoyed enough popularity by 1904 to be among a dozen famous vaudevillians listed on the sheet music cover for \"Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis\" (\"Also Sung With Great Success by...Nora Bayes\").
She performed in The Follies of 1907 (the first in the series--Flo Ziegfeld's name was not yet part of the title of shows) but did not enjoy great success until appearing with Jack Norworth in The Follies of 1908, which opened in New York City on June 15. They married in 1908 and divorced in February 1913. He was previously married to singer Louise Dresser. Nora had already been married to Otto Gressing of Chicago and she had three other husbands after she divorced Norworth.
Bayes and Norworth wrote a few popular songs, most notably \"Shine On, Harvest Moon,\" introduced in Ziegfeld's 1908 show. They cut it for the Victor Talking Machine Company during their first recording session--on March 7, 1910--but the take was not issued, presumably because it would have competed with a version sung by Harry Macdonough and Miss Walton on Victor 16259. In 1909 Billy Murray and Ada Jones cut the Bayes-Norworth composition \"I'm Glad I'm A Boy--I'm Glad I'm A Girl.\" Bayes and Norworth did not record it. Victor did not generally issue competing versions of popular songs.
From 1910 to 1914 a total of 17 Bayes performances were issued in Victor's single-sided purple label series (purple labels had been introduced in early 1910--around the time Bayes had her first session--with over a dozen Harry Lauder discs). Some titles were reissued in Victor's double-sided blue label series. On April 24, 1911, she recorded the Bayes-Norworth composition \"Strawberries,\" which was from her show Little Miss Fix-It, which had opened at the Globe on April 3, 1911. She discusses the song in her article \"Why People Enjoy Crying in a Theater\": \"If you can make anybody cry, you make them forget themselves. The minute you make them forget themselves they are being entertained...Why, the most effective comedy songs I have ever had were those with a pathetic or sentimental theme...The idea that made 'Strawberries' so popular was that the first line of the verse was simply the cry of the strawberry man in the street...It dramatizes the street cries that everyone knows.\"
She made no records for Victor in 1915 but instead cut three titles for Columbia, none of which were issued. In 1916 and 1917, 16 new Bayes performances were issued in Victor's double-sided blue label series.
On May 4, 1916, she cut \"Homesickness Blues,\" one of the first vocal records to include \"blues\" in the title. Though Morton Harvey recorded \"Memphis Blues\" for Victor in 1914, it did not begin a craze for songs with \"blues\" in the title, so in 1916 \"blues\" was still a novel word in popular music. She cut other songs with \"blues\" in the title--\"Regretful Blues\" (1918), \"Taxation Blues\" (1919), \"Prohibition Blues\" (1919), \"Singin' The Blues\" (1920).
Victor 45130 was her most popular Victor disc but it was also her last for the company. The A side was \"Laddie Boy (Goodbye, and Luck Be With You),\" written by her piano accompanist of four years, Harry Akst. The B side featuring George M. Cohan's \"Over There\" proved more popular. Cohan composed it in April 1917 immediately after America declared war, and Bayes recorded it on July 13, 1917. She became associated with the song. At the 39th Street Theatre in New York City she introduced it to audiences and her photograph graces the cover of the sheet music. But hers was not the first record of the song to be issued. In September 1917 Victor issued a version by the American Quartet (18333), Columbia issued a version by the Peerless Quartet (A2306), and Imperial issued a version by Francis Carroll (5477).
