'I'm Going Back Home' sheet music

This “Terrific Hit” song written by Maceo Pinkard of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown” fame is about a man returning to his home in “Dixie land”. He tells his girl, “Now you can stay up here and have all I’ve seen” but what he wants is to return to, “the best old land the kind I understand”. As he rides home on the train, in the reverse direction of the Great Migration, he looks forward to his arrival where “the band will play some rags”. Janice Cleary, who owns this amazing collection, informs us Pinkard was a booking agent and music publisher in Omaha before he moved on to New York. His southern roots must have inspired this tune.

On the cover of this sheet music is a drawing of a man standing on the back of a train illustrated by Maurice M. Leaf. There is also a photograph of Steve Clifford superimposed on the train’s railing. The sheet music bears a 1916 copyright and was published by the Dick B. Bruun Company, 11 Wright Block, Omaha Nebraska. An image of Bruun appears on the bottom of the cover along with the logo of his company, which includes a cartoon drawing of a mouse that predates the famous Mickey. He is wearing a suit looking at some sheet music, which proclaims, “Croon a Bruun Time”. There is a full page ad for Dick Bruun’s song, “Thelma Waits for Me in Norway by the Sea”, dedicated to Miss Doris Wilson, “featured in Through the Looking Glass” as well as an image of her and the Wilson Triplets. There is also a small promotion for Pinkard’s “When He Sang that Baritone”.

For interviews and oral histories of this and other items please visit the History Harvest YouTube Channel.