Nora Bayes & Jack Norworth - Rosa Rosetta (1910)

Nora Bayes was born Dora or Leonora or Eleanor Goldberg. Where she was born is uncertain--perhaps in Chicago, Joilet, Milwaukee, or some other Mid-West location.

Nothing is known of her early life, and the name Goldberg was possibly a fabrication that Bayes herself fed to reporters. She never disclosed where she was born or raised, perhaps because of unhappy memories.

She gives this information about her background in an article titled "Why People Enjoy Crying in a Theater," published in the April 1918 issue of The American Magazine: "I never would have been allowed to go on the stage if I had still been living with my parents, to whom the theater and all its works represented the lowest damnation and mortal sin. But I was married at seventeen and thus was free from parental discipline. I was first tried out at a vaudeville theater in Chicago. The Four Cohans were on the same bill...When I was a child of thirteen I had a phenomenal contralto voice."

The contralto had her Broadway debut in 1901 in The Rogers Brothers in Washington. She would not be in another Broadway show for a few more years but enjoyed enough popularity by 1904 to be among a dozen famous vaudevillians listed on the sheet music cover for "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" ("Also Sung With Great Success by...Nora Bayes").

She performed in The Follies of 1907 (the first in the series--Flo Ziegfeld's name was not yet in the title of shows) but did not enjoy great success until appearing with Jack Norworth in The Follies of 1908, which opened in New York City on June 15.

They married in 1908 and divorced in February 1913. He was previously married to singer Louise Dresser. Nora had already been married to Otto Gressing of Chicago and she had three other husbands after she divorced Norworth.

Bayes and Norworth wrote a few popular songs, notably "Shine On, Harvest Moon," introduced in Ziegfeld's 1908 show. They cut it for the Victor Talking Machine Company during their first recording session--on March 7, 1910--but the take was not issued, presumably because it would have competed with a version sung by Harry Macdonough and Miss Walton on Victor 16259. In 1909 Billy Murray and Ada Jones cut the Bayes-Norworth composition "I'm Glad I'm A Boy--I'm Glad I'm A Girl." Bayes and Norworth did not record it. Victor did not generally issue competing versions of popular songs.

From 1910 to 1914, 17 Bayes performances were issued in Victor's single-sided purple label series. Purple labels were introduced in early 1910.

Some titles were reissued in Victor's double-sided blue label series. On April 24, 1911, she recorded the Bayes-Norworth composition "Strawberries," which was from her show Little Miss Fix-It, which had opened at the Globe on April 3, 1911.

She discusses the song in her article "Why People Enjoy Crying in a Theater": "If you can make anybody cry, you make them forget themselves.