Lorene’s Vintage Music: 52 Ancestors 2021 “Music”

 

Songs from Yesteryear: A Trove of Vintage Music

Lorene Smith Jandy: 1903-1994
George Jandejsek: 1894-1931

 

            Following Laurel Aird’s death, family members were sorting items she had stored in her attic in her Silver Spring home. One box contained vintage sheet music from the First World War era and the 1920s and 1930s. The music was arranged for piano and voice—most of the pieces were popular songs from the early twentieth century rather than classical pieces. Laurel’s mother, Lorene Smith Jandy, had been the pianist who built up the collection, and her signature could be found on the cover sheet of many of the pieces.

Lorene--around age 20

What really caught our attention were the full-color illustrations on the cover sheets of many of the pieces. They were absolutely delightful: perfect examples of World War I and Art Deco illustration styles. We started sorting the pile, pulling out all the most charming illustrations. No one in the family played piano, so no one was really interested in the music. Most of it was going to be tossed. But we felt much of the illustrated vintage sheet music should be preserved for future generations. It wasn’t valuable in the monetary sense, but it had value to us as a window into the era that shaped Lorene and her husband Edward Jandy.

            When I examined the sheet music more closely, I noticed two different stamps on some of the top sheets, and these stamps have interesting stories to tell us about two different periods of Lorene’s life.

            The first stamp reads “Hamby’s Music Shop: Mail Orders and Specialty. Dawson Springs, KY”. This stamp or a couple variations, can be found on much of the older, World War I-era music. Lorene Smith was born on April 13, 1903 in Oklahoma, the daughter of an itinerant minister. Rev. Willis Smith started his ministry career in Kentucky, but after his second marriage to Cora Leachman, he decided to move to the frontier lands of Oklahoma and then on to New Mexico to start new churches. At some point after 1910, he returned to Kentucky, taking up the ministry of a Dawson Springs church. Lorene was probably about ten years old when they moved to Kentucky, and spent the rest of her childhood in Dawson Springs. She would have been a young teen during World War I, which lasted from 1914-1918.

            Obviously she enjoyed playing the piano, and was drawn to the patriotic music being produced during the war years. Perhaps she was stirred by the romantic paintings adorning the music, like the sweet-faced mother and child wrapped in the flag illustrating “Let’s Keep the Glow in Old Glory and the Free in Freedom Too”.

            Or perhaps she ached for the children of soldiers, like the little girl waving goodbye to her soldier father on the cover of “His Buttons are Marked ‘U.S’”. Her name is penciled at the top of the sheet music: L. Smith. I wonder if she sang the words as well as played the accompaniment. Did the family sing together? Did her school friends join her to sing patriotic songs? Did the family have a piano at home, or did she go to her father’s church to practice?

            I have not been able to find any information on Hamby’s Music Store. The Hamby family was quite prominent in Dawson Springs. The town boasted a spa due to the mineral wells that ran beneath the community, and the Hamby family had discovered the original wells, and built the first hotel to take advantage of the growing tourist trade. They also ran stores and various other businesses in the community, so it is not surprising that by the World War I era, they also ran a music store.

            As for the second stamp I discovered, it came from a different point in Lorene’s life. Lorene attended Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois, a small Presbyterian College (her father was a Presbyterian minister). She met Edward Jandesek at Blackburn and they fell in love. Lorene’s father married them in Dawson Springs in August, 1925.

 Edward was from Chicago and had family there, including a brother, George. Ed was the youngest of eight children, and George was the brother closest in age to him, being about four years older. After the older Jandesek siblings left home, the two youngest brothers cared for their widowed mother Emily, before Ed went off to college and both men married. Due to their long years living together, the two brothers were close.

George Jandesek was born October 23, 1894 to Emanuel and Emily Jandesek in Chicago. George served in World War I, assigned to Company D of the 132^nd Infantry. He was reported wounded on December 19, 1918, but survived, returning home to a career in the printing industry as a pressman.

However, George apparently had what we now call a “side hustle”—a second job that made use of his love of music. Several pieces of sheet music from Lorene’s collection bear the stamp “George Jandesek, Pianist for All Occasions”, followed by the address 4043 West 21^st Place, Chicago, and a contact phone number: “Tel. Lawndale 7182”. Obviously George hired out as a pianist in his neighborhood. The West 21^st St. address is near the suburb of Cicero, further west and further upwards in class than the Pilsen neighborhood where the family had previously lived in several different rentals for fifteen or so years around the 1910 and 1920 censuses. I therefore hypothesize the pianist business was a post-war venture.

The two pieces of sheet music shown here were both copyrighted around 1920, so shortly after World War I. It appears George specialized in playing popular songs—the type that people would enjoy singing along to as he played. Most of the pieces bearing his stamp were ballads or more swing-style pieces.

George married Iona Louise Jones on September 1, 1923. By 1930, the couple had moved to a home in the suburb of Brookfield, Illinois, even further west than Cicero, and once again a little higher class. He was still working as a typesetter for a printing company, and his mother Emily was still living with him.

Tragically, George died just a year later, on July 19, 1931. George was only 36 years old. He and Iona had no children. There is no record of the cause of death. Presumably George’s brother Ed kept some of George’s sheet music as a keepsake following George’s death. Lorene must have gotten to know George and Iona following her marriage to Ed in 1925. She probably wanted to keep the memory of her brother-in-law alive by playing his music. 

I wish we had more information about George—especially a photo or two. He sounds like he was an interesting man.