Songs She Wrote: Forty Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music

Garber (My Melancholy Baby: The First Ballads of the Great American Songbook, 1902–1913) examines women songwriters from the 1920s to the 1950s in this meticulously researched book. Starting with a history of Tin Pan Alley and women’s roles in building the popular music industry, this title offers an easily digestible history. It delves into a series of popular songs, highlighting ways women were instrumental in popular music history. Garber shares stories of more well-known songwriters, such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday; women not known for their songwriting, such as essayist Dorothy Parker; and women who are largely unknown but who made significant contributions to the music industry. He introduces lyricists such as Lucy Fletcher, one of the early Black American women writers who succeeded in the industry, and composer Kay Swift, who wrote for Broadway and film. Garber also unearths histories of the women who wrote songs that were rarely credited to them and the record labels that seldom promoted them as they did their male counterparts.