Mabel McKinley

Vivian Grey est le pseudonyme d'une nièce du président américain William McKinley, Mabel McKinley (Somerset, 8 mars 1877-Somerset, 7 juin 1937), soprano, célèbre pour avoir écrit la chanson populaire Anona en 1903.

Fille unique d'Abner McKinley et d'Anna Endsley, elle commence à apprendre la musique à quinze ans et a pour enseignant Isidore Luckstone (1861-1941), professeur de chant et de piano new-yorkais.

Elle se fait connaître en chantant à la Maison-Blanche durant le mandat de son oncle, William McKinley. Célèbre, elle compose alors des chansons. Anona sera son plus gros succès. Elle se produit alors à l'Aeolian Hall et au Metropolitan Opera.

Elle épouse le docteur Hermanus Ludwig Baer en septembre 1900. À la mort de son mari le 25 novembre 1932, elle revient dans sa ville natale de Somerset en Pennsylvanie où elle devient directrice de chœurs à la St. Paul's Reformed Church et donne des leçons de chants.

In the western state of Arizona,

Lived an Indian maid;

She was called the beautiful Anona so 'tis said.

Graceful as a fawn was she,

Just as sweet as she could be,

Eyes so bright, dark as night,

Had this pretty little Arizona Indian maiden.

All the chiefs who knew her,

Came to woo her,

For her pined

To marry she declined,

At last she changed her mind,

But 'twas not a chief so grand, who won her heart and hand,

But a warrior bold, who wooed her with a song:

Chorus:

My sweet Anona, in Arizona,

There is no other maid I'd serenade;

By camp-fires gleaming, of you I'm dreaming,

Anona, my sweet Indian maid.

When her father heard that his Anona,

Loved the youthful brave;

Straight-a-way he said he would disown her, things looked grave.

She must marry "heap big chief,"

Sweet Anona hid her grief,

Ran away, so they say,

And got married to the man she loved without delaying.

Then her father sought he,

Never caught her,

Till one day,

When two years passed away,

They both came back ot stay,

Then the chief declared a truce, when they named their young papoose,

After him and to his grand-child he would sing:

(Chorus)

• Ma Li'l Sweet Sunbeam, 1903
• Take Me Back to the Garden of Love, non daté
• Karama, 1904

• The New York Times, 7 juin 1937 (nécrologie)
• Maxwell F. Marcuse, Tin Pan Alley in Gaslight: A Saga of the Songs that Made the Gray Nineties "gay", 1959, p. 308
• Michael A. Amundson, Talking Machine West: A History and Catalogue of Tin Pan Alley's Western, 2017, p. 54-56