[Sheet music]: Down De Lover's Lane: Plantation Croon (from The Casino Girl)

New York: Jos. W. Stern & Co, 1900. Softcover. Very Good. First edition. Folio. Two nested bifoliums making eight pages. Edgewear to the outer bifolium including some chips and tears along the fold, as well as some light rubbing and toning, still very good. For voice and piano. Plate number 2068-3. The front cover features a photograph of Virginia Earle. Features several short samples of other songs including "Tobie, I Kind O' Likes You," and "Kunnin' Kaffirs." Paul Laurence Dunbar is an important African American literary figure and Will Marion Cook was an African American composer who studied under Antonín Dvo?ák, both popular in their own right, they are remembered as a duo for their collaboration on the landmark musical *In Dahomey*, which according to historian Gerald Bordman, was "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." This collaboration predates *In Dahomey* by three years, and while *The Casio Girl* may not be as well remembered or celebrated today, this stage song written in dialect is nonetheless an intriguing piece of African American music history.