My Little Dream Girl

Sheet music courtesy of Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection

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We're celebrating the release of our latest Phonographic Yearbook, 1915: "They'd Sooner Sleep on Thistles," with this alternate version of one of the years big hits, "My Little Dream Girl." James Reed and James F. Harrison were a popular recording team during the mid-1910s, although record buyers weren't aware the singers were actually performing under pseudonyms. James Reed was really Reed Miller, and James Harrison was really Frederick Wheeler.

This haunting tune is typical of the material Reed and Harrison performed, and the lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert (of "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" fame) are equally entrancing:

The nighttime, the nighttime is calling me
It's dreamtime, sweet dreamtime for you and me.
I'm longing, I'm longing to close my eyes
For there a sweet vision lies.

Chorus
My little dream girl, you pretty dream girl
Sometimes I seem, girl, to own your heart.
Each night you haunt me, by day you taunt me
I want you, I want you, I need you so.

Don't let me waken, learn I'm mistaken
Find my faith shaken in you sweetheart.
I'd sigh for, I'd cry for sweet dreams forever
My little dream girl, goodnight.

While shadows are creeping through darkest night
In dreamland, sweet dreamland, there's your love-light.
It's beaming, it's gleaming, and all for me
Your vision I long to see.

It was the lyrics of the first line of the second verse particularly that made us think of the biggest news story of 1915: Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare and her sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland in May 1915. Curiously, neither the Victor nor Columbia version feature Reed and Harrison singing the second verse....But now you'll know what we were referring to when you read 1915's historical essay!