Songs for Mother

Sunday, May 9, is Mother’s Day. My colleague on Inside Adams, the Science, Technology, and Business Blog, writes about the floral industry’s popularization of Mother’s Day here.  What better way to remember mothers living and passed away than with songs from the Music Division.  The Performing Arts Encyclopedia has over two hundred  pieces of sheet music with  ”mother” in the title  - and another eight titles with the variation “mamma.” The collection of Historic Sheet Music, 1800-1920 is full of sentimental ballads to mother, variations on the mama’s boy theme, and a son-in-law’s lament on his hypochondriac mother-in-law.  The Civil War Sheet Music collection features dozens of musical pleas from weary soldiers, thinking of mother as they prepare for battle,  and, with sad frequency,  dying with visions of the one they left behind. But this is not just a day for melancholy;  honor those who are gone but  remember too the expecting mothers and robust matriarchs alike; and ponder why Leon Haywood, composer of  the 1981 hit song “She’s a bad mama jama,” did not rhyme his fine subject with “pajama.”