The Blue Melody. Society’s Latest Syncopated Walk. As First Played by Sophie Tucker’s Five Kings of Syncopation

Omaha, Nebraska: Maceo Pinkard Music Publisher, 1917. Folio sheet music, 11 x 14 inches, 3 pp. plus cover. Light edge wear and small creases; a couple tiny tears to margins, very good with strong color and excellent internal condition.. An early jazz-era composition by the important African American songwriter Maceo Pinkard (1897–1962), issued from his short-lived Omaha publishing venture during the first years of the national “jass band” craze. The cover advertises the piece as a “1917 ‘Jass Band’ Craze!” and features a photograph of Sophie Tucker’s Five Kings of Syncopation, the ensemble associated with the immensely popular vaudeville star Sophie Tucker during the years immediately preceding American entry into the First World War.

Pinkard, born in Blue Springs, Nebraska, emerged as one of the most important Black popular songwriters of the early twentieth century. As a teenager he worked in Nebraska theaters and dance orchestras before forming a publishing firm in Omaha while still barely twenty years old. His early Midwestern publications—including pieces such as “The Blue Melody”—show him operating within the ragtime and syncopated dance music tradition that was evolving into early jazz. Within a few years Pinkard relocated to Chicago and New York, where he became a major Tin Pan Alley figure, later composing standards such as “Sweet Georgia Brown” (1925). The piece is respectfully dedicated to “Sophie Tucker’s (5) Kings of Syncopation,” reflecting Tucker’s role as one of the most influential vaudeville singers of the 1910s. The interior advertisement reproduces a sample chorus of Pinkard’s hit “I’m a Real Kind Mama,” another early jazz-age success associated with Tucker’s repertoire.