After You've Gone- Marion Harris (1918)

Rating-- 6.5/10

I already knew I liked this song, back when I was trying to find my favorite songs of the 1910s. It was pretty hard to find "good" 1910s songs-- I don't like the vibrato-filled 1910s voice that some contemporary singers affected, supposedly to make their voices more audible on the bad quality records of the time. When I heard Marion Harris's 1918 song "After You've Gone", it sounded like the 1920s in its quality, but the lyrics were cute ( "you'll miss the only pal you ever had")  and kind of timeless. I'm not surprised it's been recorded so many times.

Apparently it borrowed from "Peg O' My Heart", which was a popular practice of the time, copying notes from earlier popular songs. (I tried to listen to that song and it had the dreaded vibrato voice and also didn't sound like "After You've Gone".)

Marion Harris was a famous singer in the 1910s and 1920s. She looks like Julie Andrews in "Thoroughly Modern Millie". Her name was "Mary Ellen Harrison" which she turned into Marion Harris. She did vaudeville for a few years and then got famous for singing "I Ain't Got Nobody" in 1916 for Victor Records. Her daughter was named Mary Ellen and also changed it to Marion and also was a singer.
Then she died in a hotel fire in 1944, having fallen asleep smoking.



In the words of Today's "Music/Life Was So Much Better Back Then":

I wish I was born in the earlier of the 20's 😢😢