Cigar Music Sheets

A National Cigar History Museum Exclusive 

Text and illustrations © Tony Hyman, all rights reserved



Latest addition January 7, 2013

         Wine, women and song. All that’s missing is a good cigar! 

        As cigars became more and more a part of everyday life, from the spurt of interest in the 1820’s through the depression of the 1930s, songs were written about enjoying them.

        A complete catalog of cigar songs has never been compiled (until now), and this probably isn’t one, though it includes all the titles I’ve been able to find, from music-hall parodies to corporate exhortations to smoke more.

        At the end, I’ve included a list of those song sheets I would like to buy.

Smoke Your Troubles Away  aka  Henry George Theme Song

     In 1930, Consolidated Cigar Corp, NYC, sponsored the

Henry George program on Monday nights on the Columbia

radio network. Three different covers and no indication of

the order in which they were issued. The most common one

is on the right, the most rare at left. It doesn’t specifically

say so on the music but these were apparently given away

considering the large number of copies that appear on ebay.

The back covers provide photos of the cast and orchestra,

which changes over time.

 

A-Smoking His Cigar  (General U.S. Grant’s unofficial campaign song)

http://www.8notes.com/scores/4890.asp?ftype=gif


   Text, music and a demonstration of how it is played can be found at the website above. Music and lyrics are provided for information only; not intended to circumvent any © others may have.

.


At Donelson the rebel horde

Had gathered in their might,

Determined there with fire and sword

To make a dreadful fight.

But gallant Foote with his command

Went in by water route,

While Grant besieged upon the land,

And smoked the rebels out.


cho: Where volleyed thunder loudest pealed

Along the front of war;

The Gen'ral calmly viewed the field

A-smoking his cigar.


And Beauregard did swear, methinks,

Upon his bended knee

That his good horse should have some drinks

All from the Tennessee.

But ah! a "slip 'twixt cup and lip"

that sweet illusion broke;

For Grant just smote them thigh and hip

And made the rebels smoke.


The doughty Pem, at Vicksburg, too,

Did naught of Yankees fear;

Grant passed his guns in quick review

And gained the city's rear.

He pitched his tent, deployed his force

And lighted his cigar,

Said he, "Misguided lads, of course,

You know just where you are."


And now, let politicians wait

There's work for men to do;

We'll place one in the Chair of State

Who wears the army blue.

The people know just what they want

LESS TALK, and no more war

For PRESIDENT, ULYSSES GRANT

A-SMOKING HIS CIGAR!



 

Unitus


[13171]

Don Caesar de Bazan March & Two-step

 

John Hay March



 

I Love My Pipe But Oh You PIPPIN!

 

Jethro Tull’s  “A Small Cigar”

A small cigar can change the world

I know, I've done it frequently at parties

Where I've won all the guests' attention

With my generosity and suave gentlemanly bearing

A little flat tin case is all you need

Breast-pocket conversation opener

And one of those ciggie lighters that look rather good

You can throw away when empty

Must be declared a great success

My small cigars all vanish within minutes


Excuse me, mine host, that I may visit

A nearby tobacconist

To replenish my supply of small cigars

And make the party swing again


I know my clothes seem shabby

And don't fit this Hampstead soiree

Where unread copies of Rolling Stone

Well-thumbed Playboys

Decorate the hi-fi stereo record shelves

If you ask me they're on their way

To upper-middle-class oblivion

The stupid twits, they roll their only

One cigarette between them

My small cigar's redundant now

In the haze of smoking pleasure

Call it a day

Get the hell away

Go down the cafe

For a cup of real tea


By the tube station, there's a drunk old fool

Who sells papers in the rush hour

I hand to him ten small cigars

He smiles, says, ``Son, God bless you''


A small cigar

Has changed his world, my friend

A small cigar

Has changed the world again


A small cigar . . .


      Rocker Jethro Tull’s poem should not be copied or recorded without permission. It is reprinted here so you know of his work and are encouraged to purchase it.

 

Brad Paisley’s humorous “Cigar Song” 

www.lyrics007.com/BradPaisleyLyrics/TheCigarSongLyrics.html


Well I'm a sucker for fine Cuban cigars

The problem is I can't afford 'em

But last year I went and got myself a whole box

And just to be safe I insured 'em


Chorus

I took out a policy against fire and theft

And then I on hurried home

With a fifty-cent lighter I sat on my back steps

And I smoked 'em one by one


Two weeks later I went to see that insurance man

And I handed in my claim

With a straight face I told him that through a series of small fires

They'd all gone up in flames


2nd Chorus

They reviewed my case and they had no choice

But to pay me for what I'd done

And I took that check and bought a whole new box

And I smoked 'em one by one


Two weeks later this detective shows up

Tells me that company's pressin' charges

One speedy trial later they locked me up

On twenty-four separate counts of arson


3rd Chorus

And now I sit and stare at a blank brick wall

Lookin' back on what I've done

To pass the time I've got some ten-cent cigars

And I smoke 'em one by one

Yeah, I smoke 'em one by one


    Clever songwriter Brad Paisley made this song based on a joke that circulated through email for nearly a decade (and was offered as a true news story by the truly gullible).


     If you like it, you can turn it into a ring tone or download it to your iphone or other music device. Go to the url provided above.


    Paisley’s song should not be copied or recorded without his permission. It is reprinted here so you know of his work and are encouraged to purchase it.


 
I Don’t See Your Name Stamped on Any Cigars

    This very clever 1903 music hall satire has two verses about people seeking fame, a woman on the stage and a man in politics.  The chorus points out they haven’t achieved the notoriety of Lillian Russell or Della Fox on stage or Henry Clay and Henry George in politics proven by the fact “I Don’t See Your Name Stamped on Any Cigars,” the visible height of public acceptance. All four of the people mentioned had prominent cigar brands named in their honor, two of which lasted more than 50 years.


    This illustration is a photograph of a photocopy. This is not in the NCM collection. The National Cigar Museum would like to locate the original sheet music to this song. Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.

 

King V March and Two-Step

March The Y-B

 

Sweet Temptation 

    Written anonymously by “A. Puffer” for the American Cigar Company of Westfield, Mass., makers of the cigar by the same name. The music was free to smokers of TEMPTATION cigars. Inscribed “Compliments of The American House.” 

    Among the lines in this 1896 work are:

       “Temptations are many, on every hand.

        They gather from near and from far;

        But the sweetest of all, you’ll know by the brand,

        ‘tis the famous Temptation cigar!”

    This American Cigar Company

is not the company that was an

arm of the Tobacco Trust, though

the right to the name came

from absorbing them.


[13126]

 

Old Abe

 

My Last Cigar  or  ‘Twas Off the Blue Canaries

 

The Light Cigar


  The earliest (known-to-me) cigar-centered sheet music is THE LIGHT CIGAR, an 1820’s or 1830’s ditty made popular by three music hall parodists who are best thought of as the Weird Al Yankovichs of their day.


    Harley, Matthews and Liston (pictured) were low comedy satirists who were crowd-pleasing favorites at London’s Drury Lane theater, where they were best known for their take-offs of popular songs. They are depicted in character, drinking and smoking, on the cover.


    J.H. Bufford was the lithographer. Illustration is by J.W. Gear.


[13180]

 

    Although not written as such, this became the unofficial campaign song during Grant’s 1872 bid

for the presidency.

The original sheet music is not in the NCM collection.

I’d like to buy it if you know of a copy for sale.

NCM Home        Accessories        Premiums

The Boys of Co. B  with  Give Me a Good Cigar

THE SECOND VERSE


Soon Bill arrived at Mary’s home

    his tale of love to tell.

And Mary sweetly answered yes

    as in his arms she fell,

And then they sat upon the porch            

    but neither of them spoke

Of anything but love until she

    said “Why don’t you smoke?”

But Bill replied “Oh no, my dear,

    it would be impolite

To smoke my unromantic pipe

    beneath this soft moonlight.”

But Mary slipped into the house,

    and back a gain came trippin.

With joy Bill sang this chorus,

    as the handed him a Pippin.

I love my pipe, but oh you Pippin!

Sweet Violet Schottische


    Slick ad copy is the hallmark of this undated turn-of-the-century sheet given away by distributor Austin Nichols of New York. Ad copy on back reads:

    “One Sweet Violet Cigar inoculates with the germ “solid enjoy-ment;” the second one completely hypnotizes the smoker, and the third cigar makes him believe that he is in love with every pretty girl he meets. If you smoke the Sweet Violet five cent cigars, you do so at your peril and we can’t help it”

[13157]   [13158]

 

Love Is Like a Cigarette

When your days seem long and dreary,

There’s a way to make them cheery.

You can all afford a Henry George,

So smoke your troubles away.

Just a puff and your reaction

is a smile of satisfaction.

When you’re feeling bored

light a Henry George

and smoke your troubles away.

WHAT TITLES AM I SEEKING ?

    The answer is easy...any sheet music you don’t see in this Museum Exhibit that relates to cigars or cigarettes...especially those I’ve noted as missing.

    The titles below are titles with which I am familiar but don’t own. I few I have found pictures of, and have displayed in the Exhibit, but ...and I learn of new ones regularly. Those indicated as illustrated are seen in this exhibit, but I don’t own them, and would like to.

        • Free and Easy (published in 1825)

        • A Smokin' His Cigar (published late 1860s)

        • I Don't See Your Name Stamped on Any Cigar  (illustrated above)

        • Oh, that Box of Cigars!

        • Old Abe  (illustrated above)

        • His Cigar  (illustrated above)

  1.         UNITUS (the version with cigar advertising on the cover)

  2.         TAPS Parody by Thurber, Whyland Cigar Co (1890±)

        • The Boys of Company B  (with all 3 songs)  (cover illustrated above)

        • Mother’s Got the Habit Now

        • Cigarettes, Cigars  (from Ziegfeld Follies)  (illustrated above)

        • Mr. Churchill's Cigar  (published in 1954)

        • Cigarettes will Kill You

                        & a few other cigar, cigarette and tobacco songs.

Given today’s economy, you may want to sing this Depression era favorite:

The Label of Blue

Tobacco


Tobacco is an Indian weed,

Grows green in the morn Cut down at eve, 

It shows our decay,

Man's life is but clay,

Think of this when you're smoking Tobacco.


The Pipe that is so lily white,

In which so many take delight,

Is broke with a touch,

Man's life is but such,

Think of this when you're smoking Tobacco.


The Pipe that is so foul within,

Doth show man's soul is stained with sin,

For then the fire

It doth require,

Think of this when you're smoking Tobacco.


The smoke that doth so high ascend,

It shows man's life must have an end,

When the vapour is gone,

Man's life is done,

Think of this when you're smoking Tobacco.


The ashes which are left behind,

They serve to put us all in mind,

That unto dust,

Return we must,

Think of this when you're smoking Tobacco.


    Obtained in England, this rare piece of tobacco sheet music was composed and arranged in the 1850s by John Blockley (1800-1882). Blockey, a prolific creator of “favorite songs for male voices”

(often with a religious slant), was charged by music critics of ransacking the poetry of Longfellow and Tennyson before the ink was dry, a practice which put substantial money in his pocket.

[14615]

 

Ben Bolt  (Does My Sweetheart Smoke the Ben Bolt Cigar?)


     

  

Big Chief Battle-Axe

   

    This “comic Indian novelty” song told the romantic story of a cigar store Indian in love with the female cigar store Indian on the opposite side of the street. Love triumphed after he was discarded in the dump, where he mounted a hobby horse and rode to the rescue of his true love, ultimately carrying her “hundreds of miles away.”

    The song was sung “with tremendous success” in 1907 by Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels. The two copies were obtained a month apart; the only difference is the ad copy offering different songsheets on the back.

 

[16261 - 16265]


    This 1954 Freddy Martin Orchestra song with its “Why don’t you hold me tight ‘n kiss me sometime” inspired the Edie Adams smash hit TV ad for Muriel cigars with it’s sexy “Why don‘t you pick me up and smoke me sometime.” This song sheet makes no mention of cigars in the lyrics, but “words and music” are by Peter Keveson, Al Hoffman and Ralph Freed, seemingly confirming the music came before the TV ad. But the blonde-headed cigar with a Muriel cigar band gracing the lower left corner suggests this particular song sheet was issued after the sultry chanteuse made her P. Lorillard commercial version a cultural icon, one of the most memorable TV commercial songs of all time. A Julliard graduate, actress and beauty pageant winner, Adams was allergic to tobacco smoke, so her cigar smoking husband, Ernie Kovaks, did not light up around her, a fact she never revealed to her Muriel sponsors.

[16295]

 

His Cigar


    This rare sheet with words by Edith Hall Orthwein is a woman’s lament, envying how much her sweet heart loves his cigar, and the joys and comfort cigar smoking provides him.

    The song was published by Frank Jimerson in Kansas City in 1905.


    The Cigar History Museum does not own a copy of this song, and would like to obtain one.  It is seen here through the courtesy of  Lynn Harder of Olathe, Kansas.

 

 

 

  Song sheet offered by L. Goldsmit, Bro. & Co., exclusive factory agents for the Ben Bolt cigar.

    “As sweet as the song” reads the back of this short three- stanza five-line song. I haven’t heard the music, but the words include gravestones, and a sweetheart heroine who “wept with delight when you gave her a  smile, and trembled with fear at your frown,” sentiments difficult to call  sweet by women today.

    Music by Nelson Kneass; words uncredited. Published by the Hitchcock Publishing Co. on 23rd Street in New York City. No date.

[15110 - 15113]

I own this but would like one in better condition.

Cigars, Cigarettes, Souvenirs

Here’s a song about a gal who works in a cafe,

Every night the gang drops in just to hear her say:

Cigars, cigarettes, souvenirs,

Right in the customers’ ears.

Oh, you can’t say no when she says, “hello,”

Her voice thrills you so.

Such compliments she hears,

As she struts around, in her fancy gown

Selling nuts and boutonnieres.

She wears so much make-up,

You may think she’s hard and cold.

She really ain’t, beneath that paint

She’s got a heart of gold.

Oh, you won’t get gypp’d, she’s so well equipp’d,

She’s stack’d clear up to here,

With cigars, cigarettes, souvenirs.

       The song goes on for two more verses which

        focus on her virginity and wealth, ending with:

She makes so durn much money,

She leaves in an armor’d tank.

And instead of going home to bed,

She goes straight to the bank.


 

© 1935

The Pleasures and Comforts of Home

    This 1891 ditty was composed by James Elwin, the manufacturer of ALL STOCK - - NO STYLE brand cigars.

       Sweet solace and comfort only is known,

        When taste and good sense in smoking is shown;

        Like pure balmy breezes from far o’er the sea;

        An “All Stock and No Style” will surely please thee.

        From far off Cuba that loveliest isle;

        Comes the filler for Elwin’s “All Stock and No Style.”

    At 50 cents each, I suspect few song sheets were sold. When Elwin closed shop, he sold the brand to big-time

St. Paul maker-distributer Kuhles & Stock, whose

1914 box is shown here.

No Elwin box has yet been

found.

    Elwin’s 15 rollers made

him one of, if not the,

smallest factory to be

associated with a song.

Kuhles & Stock, in

comparison, employed

100 people.

 

      This oversize sheet music was produced in the last quarter of the 19th Century as an advertisement for

B. Leidersdorf & Co.’s OLD ABE, their leading brand of smoking tobacco.


    This is a photograph of a photocopy. The NCM does not own this item. I’d like to buy it if you know of one for sale.      Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.


[13140]

    The cover credits J.S. Gilbert for the arrangement. Inside, the credit reads S. C. Gilbert. Hmmm?

[17823]                                      [4226]

Brave Dewey And His Men (Down at Manila Bay)



 

    A tribute to Admiral Dewey and the American Navy that attacked the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. Described inside as “A Patriotic Song,” it is filled with gallantry, stars and stripes, our loved tars the noblest that sail the sea, a castle flag (that yellow rag), and calls to “Avenge the Maine today.”


    The cover is dedicated to The Alces Cigar Co. on Cortland Street in New York City, though why is not noted, nor are their brands indicated. Copyrighted 1898 by the Dixie Music Co.


    A note on page three

reports this song was

“sung by Zelma Rawlston

with  big success.”

Rawlston was a female

male impersonator who

played the Billy Rose

Theater in NYC.

[15746]

 

Ev’ry Sammy Needs His Smokin’ Over There


    During the First World War, the U.S. Soldiers Tobacco Fund was set up to provide cigars, cigarettes, and pipe tobacco to overseas servicemen. This 1917 patriotic number by Richard Pascoe chronicled how badly our soldiers in the trenches of Europe needed to smoke. It cost 25¢ to buy this song, half the price going to the “Boys in France.”

    The back page of the music reports the song “was written especially for the Detroit Free Press Tobacco Fund”

which in the previous December and January received $271.25 from sales in the Detroit area. The back page reported Delta Publishing planned to expand sales to other cities, and pledged that half the money received from sales elsewhere would be donated to their local tobacco funds. Since the war ended less than a year later, it’s doubtful they expanded very far, making this a hard to find item.

 

    This rare piece of music was a gift from Bob Fratkin, Executive Editor of THE KEYNOTER, a quarterly journal of election campaign history.     [18355]

Dutch Masters Minstrels



























    This 7.25” x 10” eight-pager was given free on NBC radio by the Consolidated Cigar Corporation, sponsors of the Dutch Masters Minstrels. The half-hour song and comic-sketch show was broadcast every Tuesday night for a half hour starting at 9:30 Eastern. The National Broadcasting System consisted of only twelve stations in 1929, but covered all the major markets from Boston to Chicago, Baltimore to St. Louis.

[18347]   [18348]

    Over-the-air voice was still in its infancy, less than a decade old, when Consolidated, and a dozen other cigar and cigarette manufacturers, realized the value of sprinkling commercials between and among popular entertainment provided free to an audience of hundreds, then thousands and eventually millions of potential customers. Giving exhortations to buy the sponsor’s product was woven into the contracts of most performers, and most did so willingly. Among their repertoire, the Dutch Masters minstrels, for example, sang the Dutch Masters song, and did so exclusively as NBC held the copyright and wouldn’t allow others to sing it. Here’s your chance...be the first in 80 years.

    In addition to four songs, including “The Darktown Poker Club” so memorably sung by Phil Harris in later years, this rare music booklet includes two pages of stereotypical dialect humor “as heard on the Dutch Masters Minstrels.”  Typical of minstrel and other radio shows featuring “colored” personalities like Amos ‘n’ Andy, all the performers were white.

[18352]

© 1944

Smoke!  Smoke!  Smoke!  That Cigarette

    I can remember 1947 when this very popular Merle Travis and Tex Williams song hit the FM airwaves. In the days of my youth, AM was pop music, comedy, soap operas and sports. FM, which few people had radios that could receive clearly, was home of classical, country and “race” music and this pre-teen was a devotee of the latter two. As the oldest son of two chain-smoking parents I found the chorus easy to relate to:

        Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that cigarette--

        Puff, Puff, Puff

            and if you smoke yourself to death,

        Tell Saint Peter at the Golden Gate

        That you hate to make him wait

        But you’ve just got to have another cigarette.

Sung by Tex Williams...what more could a guy ask?

© 1947

Muriel

      One of the earlier known cigar songs is “My Last Cigar or ‘Twas Off the Blue Canaries” written by J.M. Hubbard under the pseudonym “Student of Harvard University and dedicated to the Students of Yale College” in 1848. The significance of this seemingly strange dedication is apparently lost to history. Perhaps a Harvard or Yale historian can enlighten me.   [13120]


     Dedicated to the Yocum Bros., whose Cubana Cigar Factory manufactured Y-B, a popular Philadelphia cigar for more than a half century. The music’s cover is a black and white illustration of the color label which decorated boxes of the company’s big selling cigar. Music only, no words, so it’s more of a paean than a commercial. Written by M.A. Althouse and published in 1896. Althouse may have been a pseudonym used by the music publishing house as he is credited with

another cigar

song in 1916

(below),


[13130]   [8454]



    This is the 1920s

version of their label.

    This hard-to-find-complete piece of 1908 sheet music should contain three songs: [1] “What We Want and What We Got,” [2] “Kiss Me Good-Bye, Sweet Eileen” and [3] “Give Me A Good Cigar,” often missing as it was a loose insert. Music appears to be from a music-hall show entitled “The Boys Of Co. B.”


    This is not in the NCM collection. This illustration is copied from other sources. The National Cigar History Museum would like to obtain the original sheet music to “Give Me a Good Cigar.”


    Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.

      An advertising song from 1908

glorifies Waitt & Bond’s PIPPEN,

one of Boston’s most famous and

long-lived brands of cigar.


    “By special agreement with the

manufacturers of PIPPINS, the

publishers of this song have

arranged to furnish a limited number of copies FREE TO THE PUBLIC and to conduct the Verse Writing Contest with liberal cash prizes.”   Both the back and inside cover contain information about a contest to write additional verses to this story of love for a woman and a cigar.


    “We want additional stanzas of a sentimental, comic,

dramatic or amusing nature, and the following prizes are

offered to song and verse writers everywhere for suitable verses with choruses, so that in issuing new editions we may publish such verses as part of the song.” Forty-three prizes from $1 to $50 were offered.

    “After the verse-writing contest it is probable that a new edition will be prepared, containing not only the original song but many of the prize-winning verses, with writers’ names attached.”  Seen one of these editions? I’d like to buy one. Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.


    “Special to orchestra leaders, theatrical, vaudeville, concert and dance-hall proprietors and managers: We have prepared full orchestration of this song for piano and ten pieces. This full orchestration will be sent free to you on application. This is the Liveliest, Catchiest Two-Step of the Year.”  Know of one for sale? Please share that info.

     This 1909 sheet is dedicated to Ferd Haak, maker of DON CAESAR DE BAZAN as well as the better known SPECKLED TROUT. No words accompany the music.

        Haak’s Davenport, Iowa, factory is pictured on the back cover, with minimal text. No other advertising. Though not specified, this was probably a give-away.


[13151]

            [13152]

    Written by a member of Decatur, Illinois, cigarmaker’s union local 110 and distributed free by its members in 1909. This is one of the more rare cigar-related pieces of music. Other Locals, here #431 of Litchfield, Illinois, contracted in some way to also distribute it.   All C.M.I.U. promotions focussed on the union label, the first union label in the U.S. to be used nationwide.  Their music was no exception:


        Look for this Label of Blue.

        You’re protected when smoking

        From all that’s unfair.

        Please remember it’s all up to you.

        When you buy a cigar please have a care.

        Ask for the label of blue.


[15542]

       Another wordless march and two-step, UNITUS is part of one of those chicken-egg mysteries. This music comes with two different covers. This is the more common. The other also features Uncle Sam, but with a box of cigars, not a document. The second version also differs in that it has advertising for UNITUS brand cigars where this has Heller’s credits. The mystery?  Which came first, the Unitus sheet music or the UNITUS cigar brand, the label of which also features Uncle Sam (albeit in a different pose)? The music  is from 1913; my UNITUS box was made between 1910 and 1916.  I believe the Unitus Coffee Company was responsible for both, as Unitus was their house brand, but...


    Whichever it is, I’m looking for the cigar-ad version.

   Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.


    M.A. Althouse, the same person who wrote the Y-B March nearly twenty years earlier, is credited as creating this piece. As the Y-B March was dedicated to the Yocum Brothers, Philadelphia makers of Y-B cigars, this was dedicated to W.W. Stewart the Reading, PA, maker of JOHN HAY cigars.

    Rear cover is blank. There are no words to the march.

    Music  published by Penn Music Publishing Co. of Reading, PA.  Copyrighted 1916.

   


[21614]

     While not a cigar song, it was tough to pass up this 1935 cigarette-based song. As cigarettes began outselling cigars and became prevalent in movies, cigarette songs began to dominate the tobacco-related music of the 1930s and 1940s.

 

Love is like a cigarette

you know you held my heart

a-glow between your fingertips

and just like a cigarette

I never knew the thrill of life

until I touched your lips

Then just like a cigarette

love seemed to fade away

and leave behind ashes of regret.

Then with a flip of your fingertip

it was easy for you to forget.


     This 1898 piece proudly proclaims “by Theo. A. Metz, composer of “A Hot Time in the Old Town” who, apparently under contract, dedicated it to Tillmann & Bendel, San Francisco wholesalers.

   The back advises that the wordless music sells for 35¢ in stores, but that as long as supplies last, it could be obtained from Tillman & Bendel in exchange for 25 bands from KING V cigars.


   The printer of the beautiful full color cover is not known.


[13135]   [13139]

My Last Cigar

    This rare four pager is a reprint of the 1848 original (above). Published by clothiers Ed McKernan and Will Willard of Hartford, CT, as an 1902 advertising promo.

 

Ben Bey

    This barely qualifies as “cigar music” only because the cover has the identical image found on tin and wooden boxes which held the popular BEN BEY cigar during the first four decades of the 20th century. But there is no mention of that, or any other, cigar on the covers. Nor are there any “cigar” lyrics.

    The only clue uniting the world of music and cigars is the small notation under the crescent to the rear of the horse acknowledg-ing the image was copyrighted by Grommes and Kennedy Co., the Chicago cigar makers  who began selling BEN BEY cigars some time around the turn of the century. Copyright date on the sheet music itself is 1904.


    Cover seen courtesy of Kevin Lynch.

This music is not owned by the NCHM.

   Please contact <tony@CigarHistory.info>.

Music and words are unchanged except for the shortened title. The ad (left) is page 3 between the two pages of music.


[18893]

[18896]

    This 1890 sheet advertises “the famous” NICKLE IN cigar

that hasn’t been found in any ads, trade cards or boxes by today’s collectors. Seven Manhattan outlets plus one each in Brooklyn and Newark are cited, along with a warning that “paper cigarettes are injurious” accompanied by an ad for the company’s all tobacco cigarette, a cigarillo precursor.

    Music published by Hitchcock and McCargo Pub-lishing Company, Ltd., at 365 6th Avenue, New York.

[21695]



 

Cigarettes, Cigars !


    Song is from the Ziegfeld Follies a musical revue self-proclaimed as “Glorifying the American Girl.”


    Music by Harry Revel; words by Mack Gordon. Song sheet published by Miller Music, Inc.,  New York City.


    The Cigar History Museum does not own a copy of this song, and would like to obtain one. 


    The cover of the music has been made into a poster obtained from greatgraphics@mac.com and is reproduced here. 

 

Nickel in Cigar

A Good Cigar is a Smoke  from musical Miss Dolly Dollars


If a pair of blue eyes have deceived you,

And a pair of red lips said you nay,

Don’t appeal to champagne,

All its bubbles are vain,

You will only feel worse the next day.

Just forget fortune’s snub

And drop in at the club

Where you know all the good fellows are,

There the tonic you’re after is gossip and laughter,

You light up a long dark cigar.

    Puff, puff, puff, puff. Watch the smoke arising.

    Puff, puff, puff, puff. Soon you’ll be realizing

    That which the poet has written is true.

    All love is a practical joke.

    For a woman is only a woman, my boy,

    But a good cigar is a smoke.

When you find that your latest flirtation

Is becoming too serious quite,

And you’re getting too fond

Of a brunette or blonde,

Call a halt, lad, and set yourself right.

Love perhaps ends in smoke,

But its rings are no joke,

They dissolve not, nor vanish afar;

They are put on to stay there, they  won’t float away there,

Like rings you blow from your cigar.

    Puff, puff, puff,puff/ etc.

   ©1905                                    


 

You Needn’t Go To College if you’ve Been to College Inn


 

4th verse

If you would be a lawyer, you can save a lot of grind,

Instead of tiresome study, College Inn relieves your mind.

They give you no diploma, but a drink or good cigar,

Is all you need to show you’ve been admitted to the bar.

Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!


Chorus

You needn’t go to college if you’ve been to College Inn,

For when I think of what I learned there, I commence to grin.

If you require instruction, that’s the place you should begin;

You needn’t go to college, if you’re in search of knowledge,

You needn’t go to college if you’ve been to College Inn.


[22456]                                                                            © 1911

    Boogie-beat ditty about women, wine and cigars.

Only peripheral mention of the latter.

[


  Lulu Glaser’s

portrait adorns

this 1912 cigar

jar honoring her

and the musical.

Chew Tobacco Rag


 


    Billy Briggs’ 1951 song set to a “Moderate Boogie Tempo” cost 40¢ and was printed on cheap acidic wood-pulp paper that brittled quickly, making this a difficult four page set to find in perfect condition.

    The song’s most memorable feature is the

“bft ping, bft poong, bft ping, bft poong” sound effects following:

   

        If you ever had a chew in your life before,

        Why don’t you try to chew once more.

        Just get a big plug and bite off the end;

        Let it run down and off your chin.

        If you chew tobacco don’t spit on the floor

         Ex-pec-to-rate in the cus-pi-dore.”