"By The Light Of The Silvery Moon," 1909 Tin Pan Alley standard by famous children's troupe impresario Gus Edwards(music) and Edward Madden(lyrics). One of the countless "moon/June/croon/spoon" songs inspiring endless parody of early Popular American song...such as 1912's "Moonlight Bay" with (not surprisingly) the same lyricist Edward Madden, music by Missouri-born Percy Wenrich.
Words and music by Henry Dacre, 1892. Introduced first in Dacre's native England, soon after one of the earliest American sheet music blockbusters of the Gay 90's...and forever after.
5 million-seller, 1911, music by Harry Von Tilzer (born Aaron Gumbinksy, 1872-1946), lyrics by William Dillon. Von Tilzer also wrote the music for "A Bird In A Gilded Cage" and "Wait 'Til The Sun Shines, Nellie," and was the older brother of another Tin Pan Alley notable, Albert Von Tilzer ("In Apple Blossom Time," "Take Me Out To The Ballgame").
An early Jerome Kern(1885-1945)tune, 1915, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, interpolated into "A Modern Eve." This is from the period when Kern was writing his series of Princess Theatre Musicals, widely considered to be the first steps toward what became the modern American Musical Theatre.
A ground-breaking song from 1914 by composer Jerome Kern(1885-1945) and lyricist Herbert Reynolds. The melody & lyrics are strikingly modern and set the pattern for all the sophisticated love ballads that would subsequently flow from the pens of Rodgers, Porter, Berlin, Gershwin and every other romantically/melodically inclined songwriter since.