The song was written and composed by American songwriter Paul Dresser. It was published by the Tin Pan Alley firm of Howley, Haviland and Company in October 1897. The lyrics of the ballad reminisce about life near Dresser’s childhood home by the Wabash River in Indiana, United States. The song remained popular for decades, and the Indiana General Assembly adopted it as the official state song on March 14, 1913.
About On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away in brief
The song was written and composed by American songwriter Paul Dresser. It was published by the Tin Pan Alley firm of Howley, Haviland and Company in October 1897. The lyrics of the ballad reminisce about life near Dresser’s childhood home by the Wabash River in Indiana, United States. The song remained popular for decades, and the Indiana General Assembly adopted it as the official state song on March 14, 1913. Its longtime popularity led to the emergence of several lyrical versions, including an 1898 anti-war song and a Swedish version that was a number-one hit. It is believed that the first public performance took place at the Alhambra Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, probably in June 1897. Dresser officially dedicated the song to 14-year-old Mary South, a native of Terre Haute, whom he had never met. The 1917 song \”Back Home Again in Indiana\” borrowed heavily from Dresser’s song, both lyrically and musically, and led to a dispute with dresser’s estate that was never resolved. The ambiguity of United States copyright laws at the time left the song vulnerable to plagiarism. The second verse of \”Wabash\” contains reference to \”Mary\”, but Dresser told a reporter that the name was “fictitious’ and used only for “rhythmical purposes” and denied that the inspiration for the name came from a girl he once courted in his youth.
It’s believed that Dresser began writing the song in New York City in April 1897; continued working on it in May, when he was on vacation in Baden Springs, Indiana; and completed it in Chicago, while he was staying at the Auditorium Hotel in the summer of 1897. It has been called one of the best-selling songs of the 19th century, earning over USD 100,000 from sheet-music revenues. It also inspired a 1923 film of the same title, which was the basis for a television series and a series of radio shows. The film was based on a novel written by the same name, and was released by Paramount Pictures in 1922. The movie was the first to be released in English, with an English-language version of the book being released in 1923 as well as a German version in 1924. The book was later published as a hardback book, which has been translated into several languages, including German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The German version was released in 1925, with the subtitle “On the Banks of the Wbash, Far Away”. The English version was published in July 1925, and it was released as part of the “Mother-and-home’ series of songs,” which included a number of other songs by Dresser and other composers. The first version of “Wbash” was published as the book “The Song of the Mother-And-Home” by the publisher Howley-Haviland & Company.
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This page is based on the article On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 21, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
