Funning — and Punning — with Beer

As somber and dignified as he looks here,  Adolphus Busch had a definite “funny bone” in that stiff Germanic body of his.  In my May 2014 post on this blog I featured the cards he issued for his beers that spoofed Wagner’s operas and well-known plays.  The post cards and other ads shown here all refer to the products of his St. Louis brewery  — but none likely were issued by Adolphus.  It is open to question how much he would have enjoyed them.

The card shown above under the heading, “Under the Anheuser Bush” is a direct takeoff of a popular cartoon figure of Happy Hooligan.  This was a popular and influential early American comic strip by the celebrated cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper that made its debut on Sunday, March 11, 1900 in Hearst newspapers,  Happy Hooligan was luckless tramp who always wore a tin can for a hat. The tramp figure here, also with a tin can on his head, is lying under a tree covered with beer barrels that seems to have sprouted bottles and cork screws, much to the delight of the recumbent gent.  Apparently having access to both is a “double joy.”

The next two cards are, in effect, mirror images of each other.  Two figures, identifiable as German youths are featured on each, although in different colored garb.  Each is drinking from a large stein marked “Prosit,”  German for “Cheers!”  I am assuming that the button referred to in the text opens the spigot of a keg of beer.  Otherwise the accompanying verse makes little sense:  Dear Dutchy —

Gersundheit and Prosit is all you can say

A button is all you can push

With your Rhine and your Nein

And your nose in a Stein

In the shade of the Anheuser Busch

Yet another reference to Adolphus’ company, is a postcard showing five gentlemen, all wearing  porkpie hats, black coats, and a variety of checked pants energetically shoving forward a keg of beer with a spigot that it on wheeled wooden cart.  It is captioned “The Anheuser Push.”  While the title clearly is a play on words, the entire premise of what is intended here escapes me.

If Anheuser Busch was susceptible to puns so was the brewery’s principal brand, Budweiser. This card shows a scruffy black cat that clearly is experiencing a difficult situation or some dilemma. The caption here — “She was Pale ‘Bud-Weiser,’” — seems to be a variant on the theme “sadder but wiser” often used to refer to a young woman who ill-advisedly has engage in conduct with a young man that she now has reason to regret.  Perhaps our cat has been caught by a prowling male.

The names of other beers also could be used in pun fashion.  Among them was Schlitz beer of Milwaukee — a rival of Adolphus Busch and his Budweiser.  This card that combines the two.  Here a newsboy is ogling a very pretty young woman sitting at an outdoor cafe drinking a glass of wine.  She is wearing a dress that is slit on the side, showing ankle and calf.  The boy is intoning:  “Some like Budweiser but give me S’litz.”

A similar message is found on a another postcard.  This time the lovely lass is standing and carrying a puppy.  Nevertheless, the slit on her dress is revealing a stocking-covered ankle and leg.  She is being followed by a vested young man with an eager look on his face, presumably taken by the sight of her shapely limbs.  The female here seems pleased with the attention.  Note that here “slits” is spelled correctly.

The notion of “Schlitz-Slits” could also offer more risqué interpretations, as demonstrated by the next two cards.  Each is a poem, the first a true five-line limerick.  In addition to ringing in Budweiser and Schlitz through their punning connotations,  it brings in a third beer,  Pabst, another Milwaukee product.  Here the sexual innuendo is more blatant than with the cat scene.  

This juxtaposition of St. Louis and the Milwaukee beers puts me in mind of the 1953 Milwaukee brewery strike that one Schlitz executive declared did “irreparable harm” to the city’s beer industry.  During it, Anheuser Busch is said to have flooded Milwaukee with its Budweiser and gained many local patrons to the brand.

The next card presented a copy-cat verse, not a true limerick.  It spelled “Busch” right and “Anheuser” wrong.  The text referenced Pabst’s Blue Ribbon brand and brought in fourth beer, Bohemian, product of the National Bohemian Brewery of Baltimore, Maryland.  In this doggerel, however, it is not so clear whether the implication is about a real encounter or just a glance by “Miss Pabst” that caused her to go home “extra pale, Bud-Weiser.”

The last card gives us a young woman who is very chastely dressed and carrying a bouquet of roses.  This is a miss who would forego slits of any kind and never be “sadder but wiser.”  The accompanying verse celebrates the home town of Anheuser Busch:

In old St. Louis on the banks of the Mississip’,

Where the Budweiser flows till goodness knows,

Its a wonder we dont all have the pip,

Where the pretty girls with their frills and curls,

Are on parade every day,

In the retail section on the eastern direction,

Bounded by old Broadway.

“We don't all have the pip.” Who wrote this stuff?  The Simplicity Co. that published and copyrighted the postcard seem to have lacked editors.  At least the art work was above average.  I imagine if Adolphus had seen these items — most of them published in his day — he might have snorted rather than laughed.  At the same time he might have been secretly pleased that Anheuser Busch and Budweiser were so prominently mentioned.

Buggies in Glass Paperweights: A Second Look

In one of my first posts on this blog in December, 2011, I featured a group of ten glass paperweights that memorialized buggy manufacturers, a once thriving industry in America that was destroyed by the coming of the automobile.  Although the post, entitled “Buggy Makers, Gone But Not Forgotten,” has been far from my most popular, I have continued over the years to collect other examples of this once ubiquitous mode of transport as captured under glass. 

The first example is from Keys Brothers Wholesale Buggy Manufacturer from Council Bluffs, Iowa.   This firm was founded by the brothers, N. A, Keys, F. H. Keys and E.W. Keys.  They had been in the hardware business in Red Oak, Iowa, and became engaged in making buggies with a Red Oak firm.  After buying into the company the brothers were enticed about 1891 to transfer its operations to Council Bluffs by a subscription offer of that city’s Board of Trade. Keys Bros. manufactured buggies, spring wagons and carriages.

The Coleman Carriage & Wagon Co. was founded in Ilion, New York, by an immigrant English family led by Fred Coleman.  It employed a work force of some 36 men manufacturing horse-drawn vehicles, including sleighs, Coleman was reported to have won many first prizes when exhibiting at fairs and the National Carriage & Harness Dealers Assn. in New York.  The company advertised their manufactures as "Victorias, Landaus, Dog carts, Village carts, Ilion platform and spring wagons and other patent wagons."  Prices ranged ran from $50.00 to $1,000.00 with every vehicle said to be guaranteed.  Victorias, large buggies with cushioned seats fit for a queen, and landaus, high end convertible carriages, would have been closer to the latter figure.

The W.C. Koller Carriage Co. of Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, sought a national market for its buggies, like the No. 119 Bike Wagon shown here.  The firm displayed its ware at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.  The Koller firm showed six vehicles there, including two buggies, two canopy top surreys, a phaeton (a sporty open light carriage), and a depot wagon.  One observer of their exhibit noted:  “The styles are good, the lines being of the popular forms, the mechanical construction is of high grade, as is also the finish.”  He noted that Koller was one of the few makers to sell buggies right off their exhibit.

The Ohio Spiral Spring Buggy Co. of Cincinnati was also exhibited its wares at the Vehicle Division of the State Transport Department.  It was showing five buggies with tops, four phaetons, one cabriolet (two-wheeled, one-horse carriage that had two seats and a folding top), three surreys, a canopy top wagon and one “jump-seat” buggy, featuring a back seat that could be folded out of the way.  No indication of sales from these items. The firm guaranteed its springs for ten years.

In 1908 a trade paper reported that S.E. Baily & Company of Philadelphia had received a contract from the New York City Fire Department to build twenty-two fire chief’s heavy buggies, equipped with rubber tires and a regulation fire gong.  This was a hefty order even for the Baily firm that operated factories in both York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  In its advertising the company claimed to make and deal in carriages and harnesses “of every description.”

The Cooper Wagon Works of Dubuque, Iowa, was founded by Augustine A. Cooper, once an apprentice and blacksmith for local wagon makers Newman and Duffee. One month after finishing his apprenticeship in 1850 he bought out Duffee’s interest and the company became Newman and Cooper.  With Newman’s retirement for bad health in 1862, Cooper took full control of the enterprise.  

Under Cooper’s leadership, the firm expanded considerably. In 1875, when the factory was producing nearly three thousand wagons annually, ninety workmen were employed with the average monthly payroll being $4,000. By 1897 the company employed 300 men who worked thirteen to fourteen hour days to keep up with demand.  With continual expansion,  in 1910 the company employed about six hundred workers with an annual payroll of a quarter of a million dollars.  The Cooper paperweight is quite unusual.  It features a clown-like individual with a wide open mouth in which is written “Cooper Wagons, Buggies, Bobs & Cutters Are the Best Made.” This may not be just hype.  Cooper is said to have seasoned the wood for his wagons for no less than seven year.

The Deal Buggy Co. not only displayed a buggy on its paperweight but also a picture of its factory in Jonesville, Michigan.  Jacob J. Deal was a blacksmith who moved to Jonesville to practice his craft.  About 1865 he decided that making buggies was a better idea, sold his shop, constructed buildings across the street, and began making wagons and carriages.  The initial factory with buggies on display atop a porch is shown below.  

Taking his son into the company Jacob gradually expanded to the facility shown on the weight.   In 1908  the company, bowing to the inevitable, branched out into making motor cars, producing multiple models of the Deal Automobile.  Like other buggy manufacturer who tried to morph into the auto industry, the effort failed and the Deals went out of business in 1915.

The final weight here is from the Fife & Miller of Dallas and Fort Worth, showing one of the buggies it sold.  This company was a dealer not a manufacturer, obtaining its vehicles largely from the Columbus Buggy Company.  Considered a “premier sales agency” for that Central Ohio manufacturer, Fife and Miller were sent the first three motor cars produced by Columbus Buggy for testing.  Called the “Firestone-Columbus,”  all three automobiles broke down in test runs after barely going ten miles.  The diagnosis:  they all had overheated in the Texas sun.  In 1913, after thirteen years as agents for Columbus Buggy,  Fife & Miller terminated business.  A. D. Fife had died earlier and Col. Dick Miller, the surviving partner, was reported to have gone on to other interests.

Few would have been interested in buggy sales after 1913.  The general demise of the industry was rapid.  There were only about 300 automobiles in the United States in 1895, the era of “get a horse,” when many predicted motor cars were a passing fad.  Five years later the number had grown to 8,000, however, and by 1905, to 78,000.  By 1910 the number of automobiles had grown to 459,000 and by 1914 to 1.7 million.  Buggy makers were doomed.

Many carriage companies advertised their products under glass as paperweights — many of them still to be found and collected.  These artifacts provide industrial history buffs in 2015 with a glimpse of the time when the horse drawn vehicle was in its heyday.  

Drinking and Flying: “Are You Kidding Me?”

This post begins with a personal story.  During the summer of 1957 while working on a Northern Wisconsin weekly newspaper, I was told by my boss to take aerial photos for a prominent resort owner of his place.  When I arrived the owner clearly was drunk but he proceeded to tell me how he would fly his Cessna sideways with me leaning out to take the shots.  When he picked up the phone to call the local airport, I figured on running away to join the circus.  Then he put down the receiver, explaining: “I never fly if I have been drinking.” The photos never got taken.

This incident caused me to follow up on my last post about “drinking and driving” as captured in pre-Prohibition beer advertising.  It is evident beer and liquor interests have also linked drinking and flying in their merchandising — not only in the early days of flight but even more recently.

Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first airplane in 1903 at Kitty Hawk and it quickly sparked many innovation so that by 1914 the first commercial passenger service was established.  Beer manufacturer were quick to seize on public interest in flying as an advertising gimmick.  

Falstaff Brewery appears to have embraced the idea of advertising its beer with flying early on.  It issued a postcard that showed a comely young woman, an early aviatrix, holding a bottle of beer.  The caption is very clear about the purpose:  “A bottle of Falstaff as a ‘bracer’ before the flight.”  The message was “drink before flying.”

The brewery returned to this theme by issuing a trade card showing a Gibson girl sitting in something that looks vaguely like an airplane.  She is quaffing a glass of Falstaff poured from a bottle beside her.  Her seat bears the brewery logo.  Women had begun participating in aviation about 1910.  The first woman to be given a flying license was a French baroness.  Shown here is Lillian Todd, an early flyer and the first female aeronautical engineer.  Ms. Todd had designed the plane she is posing on.  She is not known to have had a beer before taking off.

The Miller Brewing Company also saw the benefit of advertising via the airplane.  Theirs is a cartoon.  The pilot, a little old man, is drinking from a stein while surrounded by large bottles of Miller High Life Beer.  He is said to be experiencing the “High Life in Milwaukee.”  The pilot may never be able to land; his struts are actually sausages.

Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris in May 1927 had made him a national hero.  His popularity extended beyond the repeal of National Prohibition in 1934 prompting Haffenreffer and Company to use his image and associated message to promote its Pickwick Ale and Stout.  According to the ad, Pickwick has experienced a “flight of popularity.”  The public is assured: “And you will have no fears for safety when you’re navigating with Pickwick.”  Maybe, but I suspect that if “Lucky Lindy” had been navigating with a few drinks in him he might have landed in Chicago.

Fast forward to more recent times.  An ad from Guiness shows its toucan mascots flying over a military airfield with glasses of stout balanced on their ample beaks.  Two military chaps are looking at them and while clearly startled seem to be thinking, “Lovely day for a Guiness” just before they take off into that “wild blue yonder.”

Powers Gold Label Irish Whiskey seems to be conveying a similar message, showing a man dressed for flying who is drinking an Irish coffee made with Powers.  The drink is said to “Warm the cockles of your heart….”   It also may warm up other bodily organs, some of which are better left cool in flying.

The illustration here of a stewardess holding an Foynes Irish Coffee in front of a airplane needs some explanation.  As one author has put it, “Foynes and flying boats will be forever connected with the Irish coffee.”  Foynes was an airbase near Limerick and the main airport for flying boats — fixed wing planes that landed on water — traveling between Europe and the United States.  Weather conditions along the West coast of Ireland can be notoriously bad, and after taking off for New York, on one occasion the pilot had to return to Foynes.  To warm up the passengers an airport restaurant brewed some coffee, added some Irish whiskey and brown sugar, topped it off with whipped cream — and the rest is history. 

The last example of linking strong drink and flying appeared in a Smirnoff Vodka ad in 1969.  It features a group of picnickers who are drinking the potato alcohol,  two of them equipped with helicopter backpacks.  Two women also seem dressed for flight.  The caption should have been:  “Don’t try this at home.”

The last illustration is a cartoon that indicates my close scrape with a potentially drunken pilot narrated above was not so far-fetched.  Back in 1990, all three members of a Northwest Airlines flight crew were legally intoxicated when they flew 91 passengers from Fargo, North Dakota, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, roughly an hour-long flight whose landing came without incident. Authorities had received a tip from someone who had seen them drinking in a bar the previous evening. The three served prison sentences.

I escaped making a decision to bolt if the inebriated resort owner had actually order up his airplane.  The passengers on that Northwest flight probably never knew — until they read of the arrests in the paper the next day.  All of us were lucky but luck should be nothing to count on when flying.  

When Drinking and Driving Was Cool

Today the American public is warned on countless fronts about the dangers of  “drinking and driving”   Magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and billboards all carry that message.  Not so in the pre-Prohibition era when the automobile was a new invention.  Shown here are examples of vintage advertising that clearly seem to be fostering drinking and driving.

The automobile came along at the end of the 19th Century.  In 1895, for example, only about 300 motor cars existed in the entire United States. At the beginning of the 20th Century that number had increased to 8,000.  From there automotive growth was explosive — 78,000 in 1905, 459,000 in 1910, and 1.7 million in 1914.   Among other industries, breweries were quick to see the trend and to use automobiles in their advertising.

The first example is the ad above left from the Maier Brewing Company of Los Angeles.  It shows a “grande dame” with a large feathered hat downing a glass of beer.   Even more her liveried chauffeur also is pouring himself a snort.  Their automobile has no windshield and as a result both are wearing goggles. Note that the steering wheel also is missing.  This beer-maker has been described in the press of its time as “one of the oldest and best appointed brewery establishments on the Pacific Coast, and one that it has made itself and its superior products famous….”   The company sold its beer in Western states and even exported abroad.

Windshields had come along — but true headlights had not — by the time Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis issued this ad for Budweiser.  It shows two couples out for a ride in their motor sedan.  Here there is a steering wheel, but it is positioned on the right  — it took the industry a while to straighten out that detail.  The two men and two women have stopped at the “Motor Car Inn,”  obviously a trendy place, for refreshment.   They are getting “curbside” service from a waiter who has four bottles of Bud and glasses on a tray.   With its drive-through daiquiri shops, Louisiana is about the only place left in America where one can get alcohol served to the car.

Pickwick Beer issued an ad featuring a jaunty look gent and his flapper companion heading in their fancy roadster toward a drinking establishment called “Ye Tavern,”  that — no surprise — served Pickwick ale and stout.  The couple look very keen on sampling “the tang of good old ale.” These brands were the product of Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, described as a Rhode Island industrialist and Massachusetts brewer, who called two of his beer brands “Pickwick Pale” and “Pickwick Stout,”  presumably after the character in Dickens novel.

Perhaps the most provocative of the “driving and drinking” promotions was a “novelty song hit” called “There’s Something Else Goes With It” and showing two comely young ladies, out for a ride and scarves blowing in the wind —no shield here.  What clearly goes with joy riding is “glorious old” Rainier Beer, the product of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company.  The chorus, written by an obscure songwriter named J. Louis MacEvoy, tells us so:

There’s something else goes with it you like to think about;

There’s something in its spirit that you cannot do without.

Yes, something else goes with it and to you its very clear,

There’s something else goes with it.

What?  Rainier, Rainier, Rainier.

The next motoring and suds scene comes on a beer stein issued by Milwaukee’s Juneau Hotel in 1914.   Like the Maier ad earlier, a woman is being chauffeured.  This one is rather prim looking and the driver intent on reaching the destination, which is — a saloon.  A waiter is right outside waiting with a large foaming stein under a sign that proclaims “Lager Beer.”  The Juneau Hotel was located at 229 Wisconsin Ave in the heart of downtown.  Originally an apartment house it had been turned into a hotel in 1910 by Eugene Trimberger.  In 1919 he established a restaurant on the site called Eugene’s.  Known for its seafood, Eugene’s was a favor of mine when I lived in Milwaukee.

That city was famous for touting its beer heritage, once the center of brewing in America but, sadly, no longer.  This post card, entitled “Seeing Milwaukee,” boosted Pabst Beer.  The barrel between the wheels and the banner that waves atop proclaims the name. The drinking here seems to be confined to the tourists aboard a bus whose seats are made from beer barrels.  Several passengers can be seen imbibing.  The boxes along the side are clever in indicating favored Milwaukee German food items — sauerkraut, frankfurter, pumpernickel, and schwitzerkase (swiss cheese).

Not to be outdone, the Miller Brewing Company had its own postcard, entitled “The Water Wagon in Milwaukee.”  Have included it although the source of locomotion is not a gasoline engine but two dachshunds. There is enough drinking going on among all those hanging on to make this a risky situation.  

The final example of pre-prohibition “drinking and driving” comes from a postcard with no attribution on it but similar to those that feature the Milwaukee skyline.  Here the Germanic-appearing driver has in hand a vehicle whose engine is in a beer barrel, with two open steins as headlamps, and a third stein at hand should the dust he is stirring up make him dry.

The juxtaposition of the automobile and beer drinking ended with National Prohibition in when the Nation’s breweries either closed or were reduced to providing non-alcoholic beverages.  After repeal, the ubiquitous nature of the automobile and the frequency of drunken driving discouraged a repeat of these varieties of beer ads.  Today, of course, such images would be utterly unthinkable.

Note:  In my next post I will concentrate on beer and liquor ads that juxtapose drinking and flying, a prospect even more terrifying than drinking and driving.

Singing Along with Prohibition: Part Two

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In the previous post, Singing Along with Prohibition:  Part One, the emphasis was on songs and sheet music that pre-dated National Prohibition, with the song writers asking or predicting what life would be like in a completely “dry” America.  This post examines the music and lyrics generated by the actual imposition of what came to be known as “The Great Experiment.”

The topic is ushered in by a 1919 song by Andrew Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer that dwells on the July passage of the Volstead Act that implemented the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that had many Americans thinking that alcohol sales had been immediately banned.  The legislation, however, simply set the date for the following January first, 1920.  In this song the gent is moaning “Whoa January, oh January, I hate to see you come around, July was mighty tough but we could get enough…” Von Tilzer was a prolific songwriter who wrote "Shine on Silvery Moon" and "Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nellie."

When January and National Prohibition did occur, the liquor firms going out of business did brisk sales of their barrels, jugs and bottles of liquor.  Long lines of people stood outside the stores to buy as much as their budgets would let them.  The wealthy established liquor cellars in their homes in which they stock wines and whiskeys.  Author H. L. Mencken created his behind a locked medal door with dire imprecations against anyone trying to enter.  When he died in 1956, long after Repeal, he still had a liquor stash.  

American songwriters were not long in noting these events. Grant Clarke and Milton Ager in 1920 teamed up to give America “Its a Smart Little Feller Who Stocked up his Cellar That’s Getting the Beautiful Girls.”  The lyrics suggested a new era in wooing and winning a “girlie full of charm:”

Oh, they won't call you honey, because you've got money,
It isn't for money they sigh,
You could once grab a queen with your big limousine
But now times are changing, you know what I mean,
Oh, they won't know you're livin' if all you can give'em
Is just pretty diamonds and pearls;
It's the smart little feller who stocked up his cellar,
That's getting the beautiful girls.

Clark and Ager were not the only songwriters to see possibilities in the burgeoning liquor caches of America.  A trio of writers gave the country the song, “Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar,”  with the sheet music featuring six hands grabbing toward the key.  In the opening verse the owner confesses to having changed things around in his cellar, stockpiled liquor, tried to keep it a secret but told his wife.  She blabbed:

Now ev'rbody wants a key to my cellar, my cellar, my cellar,
People who before wouldn't give me a tumble,
Even perfect strangers beginning to grumble,
'Cause I won't let them have a key to my cellar,
They'll never get in just let them try.
They can have my money,
They can have my car,
They can have my wife
If they want to go that far,
But they can't have the key that opens my cellar,
If the whole darn world goes dry.

The “I write the songs,” crew also picked up on another phenomenon of the Dry Era — the sudden popularity of doctors.   During America’s dry age, the federal alcohol ban carved out an exemption for medicinal use, and doctors nationwide suddenly discovered they could bolster their incomes by writing liquor prescriptions. They typically charged $3.00 for such and prescribed it for a wide range of supposed ills.  Pharmacies filled those prescriptions and were one of the few places whiskey could be bought legally.  They raked in the dollars. Through the 1920s, fueled by whiskey prescriptions, the number of Walgreens stores soared from 20 to nearly 400.

On this sheet music, entitled “Oh Doctor,” a gent is whispering his needs to a doctor who is in the process of writing a prescription for whiskey.  Meanwhile behind him a line of well dressed men are calling for similar assistance.  According to the song, the petitioner is pleading, “Write the prescription and please make it say, ‘Take with your meals,’ I eat ten times a day.”  The authors,Billy Joyce and Rubey Cowan were New York songwriters who also worked as publishers.

Even the famed American songwriter, Irvin Berlin, took a turn at writing a Prohibition ditty, both music and lyrics.  Remembered far and wide for “White Christmas,” his song, “I’ll See You in C-U-B-A,” falls far short of that classic.  Written in 1920, Irvng B. is going to Cuba “where wine is flowing,” and “dark eyed Stellas light their fellers pan-a-gel-as.”  That apparently is Stella on the cover of the sheet music, looking saucy and sexy.  Berlin ends the verse by asking everyone to join him in C-U-B-A.  In that island country, as might be fathomed from the song, alcoholic beverages flowed freely.  

The cover of the sheet music for “I’m the Ghost of that Good Man John Barleycorn” may be be the most interesting part of that song.  It depicts a ghost-like figure in a mist looking over a broken whiskey barrel and some broken and intact bottles.  The words were by George A. Little and the music by Earl K. Smith.  Another Geo. Little song, “When a Black Man is Blue” was recorded by Duke Ellington’s band and is still available on disc.

Some new words and phrases were coming into the vocabulary of the average American, words like bootlegger, rum-runner, speakeasy, home brew, and moonshine.  Actually moonshine had been around for a while.  Bert Williams, a black man who performed in black face, had a hit song in the Ziegfeld Follies called “The Moon Shines on the Moonshine.”  Williams was by far the best selling recording artist before 1920 and is said to have done much during his career to push back racial barriers.

The cover of the 1923 song, “The Moonshine Shudder,” is austere enough to induce at least a slight chill.  It shows five empty bottles on a window sill silhouetted in the light of a smiling moon.  The cover design is by Jan Farrell, about whom I was able to learn nothing, nor anything about the songwriter, Wade Hamilton. Given the lyrics, perhaps their obscurity is deserved:

Oh, could you ever keep from doing it,
I mean the moonshine shudder,
After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew
First you shiver at your throat,
Then you shimmy at your chest;
You wiggle out of your coat,
And you nearly shed your vest.
But you cannot keep from doing it,
I mean the moonshine shudder,
After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew.

As Prohibition wound on through the 1920s and into the 1930s, the songs continue to come.  Some representatives titles were “Kentucky Bootlegger,” “Bootlegger’s Story,”  “Moonshiner,” “Prohibition is a Failure,”  “The Old Home Brew,” “Whiskey Seller,” “Down to the Stillhouse to Get a Li’l Cider,” and “Drunkard’s Hiccups.”  The last-mentioned song is also known as “Jack of Diamonds,” a euphemism for hard drink.   An excerpt from it seems a suitable way to end this post:

Wherever I go

Jack of diamonds, jack of diamonds

I've known you from old

You've robbed my poor pockets

Of silver and gold.

Note:  This and the prior post largely were made possible by the website, AuthenticHistory.com, that provided images and lyrics to many of the Prohibition era songs.  It is a very interesting site and worth a look.