Germans in California Sheet Music

San Francisco sheet music publisher Louis von der Mehden was also a composer. In "Mine Leedle Yawcob Straus" (1878), he has fun with the German immigrant father of little Jacob. Five verses of dialect end with "I somedimes dink I go vild mit sooch a grazy poy." Other verses mention beer, kraut, and Limburger cheese.

The cover of "Jammo! Onward Let Us Go" or "Funiculi- Funicula" shows the colorful costumes of the Bavarian Alps in the dirndl-clothed dancer and the loden-coated zither player.

Nostalgia for Germany is revealed in "My Native Land" and "Heimweh." "Blue Alsatian Mountains" recalls a territory now in France.

Another dialect song listed in the series of "comic" songs on the cover of "Simon the Cellerer" is "Das leedle Plack und Dan" by George Evans. Evidently German singers also participated in the minstrel shows caricaturing African Americans as "Black and Tans."