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Object Timeline
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1927 |
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2017 |
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2024 |
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Sheet Music, Black and Tan Fantasy
This is a Sheet music.
This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives as part of The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
This is the first published edition of the famous jazz composition Black and Tan Fantasy. A musical arrangement for the foxtrot, a popular dance starting in the late teens, it was ideal for nightclubs in the jazz age.
It is credited Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, M1366.E44 B53 1927, Gift of Stephen Van Dyk.
- Textile, Americana Print: Rhapsody
- silk.
- Gift of Marian Hague.
- 1937-1-3
- Orchestra Bracelet
- diamonds, platinum, cabochon sapphires, carved onyx.
- Neil Lane Collection.
- 59.2016.20
![A painting of a convivial, crowded scene of diverse couples dancing, musicians playing, and seated people drinking. In the center of the canvas is a dark-skinned man in a brown suit, back facing the viewer. His head is in profile with his left arm raised and he is dancing with a beige-skinned woman whose smiling face is in full view. The woman holds a cigarette behind the man’s back. The angle of her arm points to a nearby dancing couple, a pale-skinned woman and a tan-skinned man. The pale-skinned woman wears a bright red, short dress with white tights and a long necklace of small pearls. She dances with the tan-skinned man dressed in a black jacket and mustard-colored trousers, whose back is to the viewer. In the bottom left corner seated musicians of mixed skin tones, wearing black, play a mandolin, clarinet, trumpet and trombone, their instruments extend outwards between the dancing couples. In the background groups of people dressed in bright colors sit at white, round tables drinking wine and cocktails. The figures in the piece are stylized, with smiling expressions and a sense of animation. The overall scene has a flat perspective, such that the figures fill the frame completely, are overlapped, and some are cut off by the canvas, giving the sense of a crowded, joyful scene. In the bottom right corner, the artist’s signature, the location of the piece, and the date [A.J. Motley Jr. Paris 1929] are inscribed in black paint.](https://images.collection.cooperhewitt.org/325265_ec56d76c9a96179d_n.jpg "Blues")
- Blues
- oil on canvas.
- Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne.
- 57.2016.1
Our curators have highlighted 2 objects that are related to this one.
![Here we have a print of a figure in dramatic costume. Stylized in body form and fabrics, the figure stands center left in the foreground, wearing a large white skirt and a large hat in front of swaths of curtains and fabrics and colors. The skirt is large and umbrellas outward in ovular teardrop and feather-like draping, with various diamond, triangular, and dotted decoration from the waist to the peacock train along the side of her. She holds a long cane in her right hand with angled straps of fabric on her torso and hanging arm drapery on her outstretched, languid arms. Her small face is made of closed eyes that are simple strokes of red and her lips a triangle of red. On her head is a large, ovular hat, nearly the size of her dress, with swirling fans and concentric circles arranged around a blue center, just around her head. In the background, repeated arches and various curtain-like fabrics swoop and angle around her outline and the title text. To the right of the hat in big letters reads [Vanities] in diagonal block writing, with smaller letters [7th edition] underneath. To the left of the hat and just above the word Vanities reads the name [Earl Carroll] in bold maroon on top of a red and white banner shape. The very top line of text, surrounded by a white frame with blue triangles on both sides, reads [Once in a Lifetime / lyric by Raymond Klages and Music by Jesse Greer.] To the right of the figure is a small text box with white background and blue strips of rectangle giving a 3-dimensional effect that reads [Once in a Lifetime / Blue Shadows / Raquel]. Just above that text box reads [Dances and Ensembles by Busby Berkley], and in small cursive script next to the dress tail says [with Ukelele Arrangement]. Along the bottom in small text on a maroon background reads [Robbins Music Coroporation, New York] and [Made in USA].](https://images.collection.cooperhewitt.org/325941_c33ece5ff64822fd_n.jpg "Sheet Music, Cover, Once in a Lifetime, 1928")
- Sheet Music, Cover, Once in a Lifetime, 1928
- printed paper.
- Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, M1508.G74....
- 43.2016.14
![Here we have a sheet music cover. It has two figures under a rounded archway supported by two Doric columns with a blue sky in the background. The taller of the two figures is wearing a white headscarf and white robes while they hold the other figure. The other, wearing white with long red hair, lays in the other's arms and gazes up at the taller figure. The title text is written, [The Sheik of Araby] along the curvature of the archway in red and blue font. On the left, [Words by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler], and the right, [Music by Ted Snyder].](https://images.collection.cooperhewitt.org/325938_be158730a494d9a0_n.jpg "Object ID #907214041")
- Object ID #907214041
- printed paper.
- Smithsonian Libraries, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, M1622.S688....
- 43.2016.11
Its dimensions are
H x W: 26.5 × 17 cm (10 7/16 × 6 11/16 in.)
"Black and Tan Fantasy," Duke Ellington (1927)
“Black and Tan Fantasy” is a pivotal composition by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley. The initial bluesy, minor theme was written by Miley, and the contrasting major theme—more lyrical in...
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.
