[Dixielandjazz] "There Ain't Nothin' Doin' What You're Thinkin' About"

Bruce Stangeland stangeland at earthlink.net
Sat Apr 4 10:33:26 PDT 2015


Fellow listmates,

I've been trying to understand the background of a song called "There 
Ain't Nothin' Doin' What You're Thinkin' About".

1. The Charles Anderson collection contains music for a tune by this name:
      1932 - James White & Billy Johnson in G. It's only 16 bars, and 
sounds like a chorus.

2. On grainger.de 
<http://www.grainger.de/dbe/asm/asmwhitejam.html#tabb0000d530r> I found 
a reference to the same title and composers, but done in 1912.

*There Ain't Nothin' Doin' What You're Thinkin' About* - Song: Music by 
*James White* Words by *Billy Johnson*
Publisher: C. W. Thompson & Co. 
<http://www.grainger.de/music/publishers/thompsoncw.html>
Printed: 1912. Sheet Music 5 pages. Currently unavailable.

3. At Indiana University I found music by Chris Smith and Cecil Mack, 
1912 for a tune called
"There Ain't Nuthin' Doin' What You're Thinkin' About" 
<http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/detail.do?action=detail&fullItemID=/ihs/sheetmusic/ihs-SHMU_30_17&queryNumber=1>, 
published by Harry von Tilzer. The music for the first line in its 
chorus is quite different from the one in Charles Anderson.

4. In the US copyright archives 
<https://archive.org/stream/catalogofcopyri72libr/catalogofcopyri72libr_djvu.txt> 
I found this tune:


  Full text of"Catalog of Copyright Entries, 1912 Musical Compositions
  Last Half of 1912 Jul-Dec New Series Vol 7 Part 2"
  <https://archive.org/stream/catalogofcopyri72libr/catalogofcopyri72libr_djvu.txt>


August 1912

There ain't nothin' doin' what you're thinkin' about ;
words by Billy Johnson, music by James White. [16951

==================

Does anyone know if these are two different tunes, and if the one by 
White and Johnson was written in 1932 (as Anderson says) or in 1912 as 
listed in the Copyright archives (and on grainger.de)?

Thanks,
Bruce Stangeland
Berkeley banjoist




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