Two-Sided Mystery: On the Flip Side

I love a good mystery. Last week I analyzed a group portrait and provided a time frame of the early 20th century. It was on one side of a sheet of pink paper. Before I divulge the family information behind this image, let’s look at the other side. It’s a two-sided mystery.

Over the years, I’ve seen photographs used for doing math homework, writing grocery lists and even sketching embroidery patterns. In this instance, the two photographs and the pink sheet of paper form a single scrapbook page.

In the upper left hand corner of the flip side of the page is a picture of a young man dressed for work on a ranch–cowboy hat, tall boots, heavy gloves and riding pants that are wide at the upper legs and hips and narrow at the lower leg.

To the right of this image is a valentine.

The lower half of the sheet is a child’s drawing of a flower with one of the petals ripped off.

It’s the final piece of evidence of this collage that so’s interesting. It’s a bit of a printed page.

It turned out to be a piece of a music catalog for Conqueror Records. Carson J. Robison and his trio recorded Moonlight on the Colorado and Oklahoma Charley in 1930. You can view an online catalog for Conqueror. Just below that listing is another song, My Blue Ridge Mountain Home, a tune that Robison wrote in 1927. If you’re interested you can still purchase the sheet music from eCrater.

Wikipedia has a short biography of Robison with links to sites for more information. He was very well known as “the granddaddy of the Hillbillies.” In the early 1930s he formed his own band and travelled around the U.S. and the British Isles playing country music. He was posthumously named to the Country Music Hall of Fame. He died in 1957.

I have to admit that I couldn’t do all this research without listening to his music. You can a recording of Going to the Barn Dance Tonight on YouTube and find a picture of him and a clip of I Don’t Wanta Be Rich on Hillbilly-Music.com. It’s foot-tapping music.

The pieces add up to suggest that sometime in the early 1930s, a person (perhaps a little girl) decided to piece together a few of her favorite things–a couple of pictures, a valentine, and a drawing. Maybe she was a country music fan.

Next week I’ll be back with the family details.