Кэрри Джейкобс-Бонд: Американская певица и композитор

American singer, pianist, and songwriter

Carrie Minetta Jacobs Bond (August 11, 1862 – December 28, 1946) was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular music from the 1890s through the early 1940s. She is perhaps best remembered for writing the parlor song "I Love You Truly", becoming the first woman to sell one million copies of a song. The song first appeared in her 1901 collection Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose, along with "Just Awearyin' for You", which was also widely recorded. Jacobs Bond's song with the highest number of sales immediately after release was "A Perfect Day" in 1910. A 2009 August 29 NPR documentary on Jacobs Bond emphasized "I Love You Truly" together with "Just Awearyin' for You" and "A Perfect Day" as her three great hits. Jacobs Bond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Carrie Minetta Jacobs was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, to Dr. Hannibal Jacobs and his wife, Mary Emogene (or Emma) Davis Jacobs and was an only child. She was a distant cousin of John Howard Payne, the lyricist who wrote "Home Sweet Home." Jacobs was born in the house of her maternal grandparents at the corner of Pleasant Street (now W. Court Street) and Oakhill Avenue. Her father died while she was a child, and the family faced financial difficulties without him. Most of Jacob Bond's family enjoyed playing music, and her father played the flute. Jacobs Bond could pick out piano tunes at age 4, she could play some pieces just by hearing them at age 6, and then at age 8 she was able to play Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody just by hearing it. She studied the piano from age 9 to age 17, with the dream to become a songwriter. As a child, she attended classes in the Janesville public school system. During Jacobs' short lived first marriage to Edward Smith J. Smith of Janesville, at age 18, her only child, Frederick Jacobs Smith, was born on July 23, 1882. This marriage ended in divorce in 1887. Her second marriage in 1888 was to her childhood sweetheart, physician Frank Lewis Bond of Johnstown, Wisconsin. They lived in Iron River, Michigan, where she was a homemaker and supplemented the family income with painted ceramics, piano lessons, and her musical compositions. After achieving some success with her composing, Jacobs Bond moved with her son to Chicago to be closer to music publishers. Her lyrics and music exemplified sentimentality, which was intensely popular at that time. Her publishing company changed location eight times, finally settling in Hollywood, California, which is where she and her son moved to in the early 1920s to help ease the pains of her rheumatism, where she continued performing and publishing. She named her home there "The End of the Road" (also the title of her 1940 book). She was an early supporter of the Theatre Arts Alliance, which created the Hollywood Bowl near her home. Jacobs Bond died in her Hollywood home of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 28, 1946, at the age of 85. She is buried in the "Court of Honor" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Carrie Jacobs Bond also published books of children's poetry and an autobiography. Her autobiography The Roads of Melody was published in 1927. She drew the artwork for her sheet music covers. The wild rose, her trademark artwork, appears on many of her publications.

Former U. S. President Herbert Hoover wrote in her epitaph: "Beloved composer of 'I Love You Truly' . and a hundred other heart songs that express the loves and longings, sadness and gladness of all people everywhere . who met widowhood, conquered hardship, and achieved fame by composing and singing her simple romantic melodies. She was America's gallant lady of song." The success of Seven Songs allowed Jacobs Bond to expand her publishing company, known as the Bond Shop, which she had originally opened with her son in her apartment in Janesville. During World War I Jacobs Bond gave concerts in Europe for U. S. Army troops. "A Perfect Day" was especially popular among them. She was invited again to Washington to perform at a White House State Dinner given by President Harding for the Members of the Supreme Court on February 2, 1922. Carrie Jacobs Bond was the most successful woman composer of her day, by some reports earning more than $1 million in royalties from her music before the end of 1910. In 1941, the General Federation of Women's Clubs cited Jacobs Bond for her contributions to the progress of women during the 20th century. One of her final compositions titled Because of the Light was published in December 1944, when she was 82. Composer Rolande Maxwell Young later revised and updated some of Jacobs Bond's songs for Boston Music Co.

Jacobs Bond's life and lyrics serve as testimony to her resilience in overcoming hardships such as poverty, her father's early death, her divorce, her second husband's death, and her son's suicide in 1932 while listening to "A Perfect Day" on the phonograph.

Jacobs Bond, Carrie. The Roads of Melody: My Story. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1927. 224 pp.