This battered and stained booklet is on sale online for an exorbitant price.  Fortunately, I was able to snag a scan of the cover.  It was published in 1919 by The Quill; Edwards was not yet editor, but apparently had free rein in the guidebook.  I’d like to know more, but will content myself with admiring […]

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Nancy Hertel Melvin has kindly passed along a painting by Bobby Edwards, her great-uncle: a portrait of Edwards’ sister, Rebecca Chapin Edwards.  I’ve posted several of Edwards’ pen and ink drawings, but had never seen one of his paintings. Lovely muted colors, I think (especially compared to his ukes!), and lush, loose brushwork. (Posted by […]

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I’ve been posting information here, from time to time, on Bobby Edwards: a singer-songwriter who became somewhat of a local legend in Greenwich Village in the ‘teens and ‘twenties.  He also made his own cigar-box ukes, which he sold at souvenir shops in the Village.  I had resigned myself to the idea that none had […]

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I’m a great fan of Tony Sarg.  He’s perhaps best known today for his work on the first Macy’s Thanksgiving balloons; but he also made animated silhouette films, designed children’s books (often with elaborate inserts and paper engineering), mounted a memorable sea serpent hoax, and pioneered puppet theater in the US.  There’s not much about […]

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A sad and surprising piece of news was reported in the Kokomo Daily Tribune, October 21, 1926.  Bobby Edwards, the avatar of Bohemia, got a job.  I only hope it didn’t last. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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I’ve found another picture of Bobby Edwards online; we can add it to the archive. There he is in the back, to the left, cigar box uke in hand. This was at the Garrick Club, sometime in the ‘teens. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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Our Edwards fiesta draws to a close now.  I’d like to leave with an intriguing note for the Forteans out there: in 1915, Theodore Dreiser threw a party for Edgar Lee Masters.  Fort attended; and Bobby Edwards entertained on his ukulele.  A photographer from the New York World was also there; I may have to […]

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The Quill was one of the Village’s more successful little magazines.  It debuted on June 30, 1917, owned and edited by Arthur Moss.  Edwards was a regular contributor from the beginning; in 1921, he took it over, and ran it until 1926. There are a number of issues of The Quill archived on the internet.  […]

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Since Edwards in his Village heyday was described as a former illustrator, I’ve been curious about that earlier career.  After a little rummaging, I think I found something.  A “Robert Edwards” illustrated a book by Marion Hill, Harmony House, in Boston in 1910.  Is it the same Edwards?  I don’t know, but I think so:  […]

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Romany Marie (Marie Marchand), whose Gypsy-themed tavern was a popular hangout for decades, reminisced about Bobby Edwards in a long interview with Robert Schulman (for his book Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village, 2006). She quotes several Edwards songs, including this charming snippet: We are holy Christian martyrs We don’t shave or clean our […]

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