| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 100.2

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 100.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

On the Banks of the Wabash The Life and Music of Paul Dresser

By Clayton W. Henderson

(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2003. Pp. xxix, 481. Illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

In this first biography of singer, song-writer, and comedic actor Paul Dresser, Clayton W. Henderson provides an engaging and enlightening account of his subject's life and times, with an emphasis on the culture of 1890s popular song. Dresser is a challenging subject for a biography because, unlike his more famous younger brother, the writer Theodore Dreiser, he left few personal records behind. There seem to be no diaries or autobiographical accounts, and only a few letters. Any chronicle of his life depends upon contemporary sketches in newspapers and magazines and a few reminiscences of friends, most appearing long after Dresser's death. The most detailed accounts of Dresser's personality appear in his brother's works, chiefly the sketch "My Brother Paul" (Twelve Men, 1919) along with a few essays about the 1890s song business. All are refracted through the haze of the younger brother's hero-worship for Paul and his simultaneous disdain for sentimental music. As a result of this dearth of primary materials, Henderson devotes much of his account to sketching the context of American popular song, providing a fascinating and illuminating history of patent medicine showmen, black-face minstrel troupes, vaudeville entertainers, and the business of music publishing.

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