Nellie Bly: A Song History
"Nelly Bly," as the title was spelled on its first edition, is a song with words and music by Stephen Foster, published in New York by Firth, Pond & Co.[1] A chronology kept by the University of Pittsburgh's Center for American Music records that the publisher entered it for copyright on February 8, 1850, and that in September 1851 Firth, Pond wrote to Foster that the song "goes like hot cakes."[2] It was a minstrel-show song: the first edition's title page gives it as sung by the Christy Minstrels,[1] and Firth, Pond issued it as the fourth number in a series of Foster's minstrel songs.[3] It stayed in print long after Foster's death in 1864: the Pitt collection holds a Boston reprint by Oliver Ditson & Co. that it dates to about 1881.[4]
James and Ralph Clews, Picturesque Views: Pittsburgh, Pa., transfer-printed earthenware plate, about 1829 to 1834. A view of Pittsburgh, Stephen Foster's hometown, from about the time he was a boy.
The song's title found a second life as a famous newspaper byline.[5] Elizabeth Jane Cochran, who later added an "e" to her surname, was hired by the Pittsburgh Dispatch after a letter she had signed "Lonely Orphan Girl" reached its managing editor, George Madden.[6] When Madden wanted a catchy pen name for her, men in the newsroom offered the title of the song by Foster, a Pittsburgh songwriter, and in his hurry Madden wrote "Nellie" for "Nelly."[5] Born in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania, in 1864, she died in New York in 1922.[7] As Nellie Bly of the New York World, she stepped off a train in New York on January 25, 1890, having circled the globe in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds, beating the eighty days of the fictional Phileas Fogg.[8]
Judy House's self-published download Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer sets "Nellie Bly" alongside "Oh! Susanna" and "Camptown Races" in a book of well-known songs, which its listing describes as arranged neither too simply nor too hard.[9]
Sources
- The Morgan Library & Museum: "Nelly Bly" (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., c1850).
- University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music: "Foster Chronology 1850".
- University of Pittsburgh, Stephen Foster Collection: "Nelly was a lady" (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1850).
- University of Pittsburgh, Stephen Foster Collection: "Nelly Bly" (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.).
- PBS, American Experience: "The Nellie Bly Song".
- PBS, American Experience: "Nellie's Milestones".
- Britannica: "Nellie Bly".
- Library of Congress: "Today in History - January 25".
- Judy House: "Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: James and Ralph Clews, Picturesque Views: Pittsburgh, Pa., transfer-printed earthenware plate, about 1829 to 1834. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.