Any Old Place in Yankee Land Is Good Enough for Me. From Bandanna Land

New York City: Gotham-Attucks Music Co, 1908. Folio sheet music, illustrated color pictorial cover with inset photographic portrait of the Robinson Trio. 5 pp. (including cover). Approximately 13 ½ x 10 ½ inches. Several small edge tears and light wear to margins; good to very good overall.. An early sheet music publication from the African American musical Bandanna Land, the 1908 stage production starring the celebrated comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, two of the most influential Black performers in American theater at the turn of the twentieth century. The cover illustration depicts a figure gesturing across a map of the United States, accompanied by the bold title “Any Old Place in Yankee Land Is Good Enough for Me,” while an inset photograph identifies “The Robinson Trio,” a Black vaudeville act likely consisting of James B. Robinson, Stella Wiley, and Dan Michael.

The music was written collaboratively by two major African American composers of the ragtime era. Will Marion Cook (1869–1944), a classically trained violinist and composer who studied at the Oberlin Conservatory and later in Berlin, was one of the most important musical figures in early Black musical theater. He worked closely with Williams and Walker on several productions and helped develop a distinctive style that blended ragtime rhythms with elements of operetta and popular song. Co-composer Chris Smith (1879–1949), best known for the widely popular dance song “Ballin’ the Jack,” was another prominent Black songwriter associated with early twentieth-century musical theater and vaudeville. The lyrics were written by Alex Rogers (1876–1930), one of the most prolific African American lyricists of the period and a frequent collaborator with Cook. Of the handful of copies of this sheet we have been able to locate, this is the only one we found with the Robinson Trio inset.