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Scholars of popular American sheet music extol the idea that the combination of poetry, music, and art combine in this "ephemeral" genre to capture an artistic concept in a unique manner that reflects not only their disparate arts, but also the history, culture, and viewpoint of a time. The sheet music for "Out Where the West Begins" offers a quintessential example in support of this view, in this case portraying the period's romanticized ideal or myth of the West.
"Out Where the West Begins" started its life as a poem by Arthur Chapman (1873-1935) published in his "Center Shots" column on 3 December 1911 in the Denver Republican newspaper.1 The poem quickly became popular and was widely republished. Denver composer and music teacher Estelle Philleo (1880-1936), set the poem to music in 1915.2 She chose pen and ink drawings by the famous novelist Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) to illustrate the sheet music. Philleo's Denver friend and fellow musician Margaret St. Vrain Sanford Neill (1886-1958) supported its initial publication in 1917. The song was later picked up by Forster Music Publishing in Chicago and became a national hit according to sources such as Music Trades magazine and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.3 More than that, however, the song became a Western classic, is still in print, and continues to be discussed among aficionados of Western lore today.4
The shared artistic concept of Arthur Chapman, Estelle Philleo, and Harold Bell Wright came together to create an object greater than the sum of its parts. The sheet music to "Out Where the West Begins" captured a romanticized view of the American West common ca. 1915-1920; "Out where the handclasp's a little stronger, / Out where the smile dwells a little longer / That's where the West begins." The combination of the newspaperman's poem, piano teacher's song, and novelist's art captured the public's imagination at the time and remains known to this day.5 The song has been described as being to the West what "Dixie" was to the South.6 It was popular during World War I, perhaps owing to nostalgia for home and the values it symbolized and which characterize many other songs of the time. This article explores how the three creators-who were not...