Musical Airs
Songs inspired by the early age of flight.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, February 19, 2009
.jpg)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Women raced to get their pilot’s licenses, including Elise Deroche of France (“Flying does not rely so much on strength, as on physical and mental coordination”); Russian Lidia Zvereva; the “Girl Hawk” Hélène Dutrieu of Belgium (who sparked a controversy by flying without her corset); and Blanche Stuart Scott, the United States’ “Tomboy of the Air.” The women met with opposition: Blanche Stuart Scott was told by none other than Glenn Curtiss—her teacher—that a woman’s place was on the ground, while Melli Beese of Germany gained her license despite her male colleagues’ sabotage prior to the test. Songwriters of the period seemed most comfortable depicting women as riding in airplanes as passengers, rather than being pilots, as in this 1912 song “My Little Loving Aero Man”:
Pretty little witty little Mary Snow,
Went with her steady beau,
To see an “Aeroshow,”
And when she saw a pippin dippin’ to and fro,
She sighed like girls will do;
Said she to him “I’m getting tired of motor cars,
They give you awful jars, I want to visit Mars;
So let’s imagine now that we’re among the stars,
In an aero built for two.”
Pretty little witty little Mary’s beau,
He went and got the dough and bought a Bleriot,
And after that to show her that he wasn’t slow,
He bought a parachute,
Said he “I got it Mary dear in case we fall,
You won’t get hurt at all,
So don’t you dare to stall;”
Said she “I will be ready ev’ry night you call,
And around the moon we’ll scoot.”
In 2003, the National Air and Space Museum recorded several of the songs in the Bella C. Landauer Aviation Sheet Music Collection for the exhibition "The Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age." Click here to listen to "My Little Loving Aero Man," and other musical selections.
| Tweet | Digg |
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Comments (2)
I believe that, from the final sentence of this snippet from the song, you can interpret that the song's lyricist intended the title to be a shortening of something like, "My bomber and I fly high in the sky." Other than that, I'm a long time fan of this site. Keep up the great work!
Posted by Mike Burkholder on February 25,2009 | 01:27 AM
I'm not sure how my submitted comment of 2/25/09 lost its first lines but, in them, I disagreed with the author of this article. "My bomber and me" would be the grammatically incorrect form. If one were to use a pronoun rather than "My bomber and I" that pronoun would be "we" as in "We fly high in the sky." In the same vein, "My bomber and me" would need to be replaced with "us" which would result in the grammatically incorrect "Us fly high in the sky." Although it is the more colloquially popular, "X and me" followed by a verb is still grammatically incorrect. I stand with Jay Garside and his lyrics. I hope that this comment does not make me appear to be a grammar goon because I don't normally point out bad grammar but, when I see correct grammar being identified as being wrong, I feel compelled to respond. Thanks for your great website!
Posted by Mike Burkholder on February 28,2009 | 01:11 PM