Ada Jones 'Virginia Song' (George M. Cohan) Edison cylinder 9294 LYRICS (Ethel Levey's Virginia Song

The song has a few names: "I Was Born In Virginia," "Virginia, Song," and "Ethel Levey's Virginia Song."

The song is from the George M. Cohan Broadway show "George Washington Jr." (1906).

I was born in a Southern state
Where all nature's sublime
In a city where the gals are pretty
And the sun shines nearly all the time
Hospitality there you'll find
Bright smiles ev'rywhere
When I look 'roun' and see some other town
I'm mighty glad I come from there

I was born in Virginia
That's the state that will win yer
If you've got a soul in yer
Ain't no Southern frown
In the city of Norfolk
Home of beauties and war talk
Reckon you'll like it, if you should strike it
That doggarn town

Something nice about Southerners
You don't find ev'rywhere
Never con yer, but they smile upon yer
And they make you happy while you're there
Old Kentucky and Tennessee
They can certainly go some
Travel far and wide, still I'm satisfied
To settle in the state I'm from

I was born in Virginia
That's the state that will win yer
If you've got a soul in yer
Ain't no Southern frown
In the city of Norfolk
Home of beauties and war talk
Reckon you'll like it, if you should strike it
That doggarn town

Ada Jones (1 June 1873 - 2 May 1922) was the leading female recording artist in the acoustic recording era.

Victor catalogs listed roles at which she excelled: "Whether Miss Jones' impersonation be that of a darky wench, a little German maiden, a 'fresh' saleslady, a cowboy girl, a country damsel, Mrs. Flanagan or an Irish colleen, a Bowery tough girl, a newsboy or a grandmother, it is invariably a perfect one of its kind."

Columbia catalogs as late as 1921 stated: "Miss Jones is without question the cleverest singer of soubrette songs, popular child ballads and popular ragtime hits adaptable for the soprano voice now recording for any Company. She is also one of the most popular singers in the record field and her records have been heard in all quarters of the globe. Her duet records with Mr. [Walter] Van Brunt, unique and entertaining as they are, have also come in for unlimited popular approval."

Despite this high praise in Columbia's 1921 catalog, very little of her vast output was available by the early 1920s. For example, of the nearly two hundred titles that she recorded for Columbia from 1904 to 1917, only six remained in the catalog by 1921--five duets and one solo effort, "Cross My Heart and Hope To Die."

She was born in her parents' home at 78 Manchester Street in Oldham, Lancashire, England. Her father, James Jones, ran an inn, or public house, named The British Flag--the original building no longer stands. Her mother's maiden name was Ann Jane Walsh. Ada was baptized on June 15 in Oldham's St. Patrick's Church as Ada Jane Jones. Her birth was registered on August 18, 1873.

The family moved to Philadelphia by 1879 (documents show that a brother was born there in that year). Her mother died and her father remarried. Ada's stepmother, Annie Douglas Maloney, encouraged Ada to make stage appearances, and "Little Ada Jones" was on the cover of sheet music in the early 1880s. One example is the sheet music for Harry S. Miller's "Barney's Parting" (1883).

The January 1921 issue of Farm and Fireside duplicates an 1886 photograph showing Ada Jones as "Jack, a stable boy with song."

Ada's stepmother had been hired to make or mend drapes for the Edison company. The Jones family at that time lived nearby in Newark, New Jersey. It is likely that at the studio she saw an opportunity for her talented stepdaughter. Ada's earliest recordings were brown wax cylinders made for Edison in late 1893 or early 1894 (no recording logs of this period exist). Two surviving cylinders are "Sweet Marie" (North American 1289), a song by Raymon Moore, and "The Volunteer Organist" (North American 1292).

They are among the earliest commercial recordings of a female singing as a solo artist. Estimating how many female singers preceded Jones is difficult. Moreover, nothing is known of singers such as "Miss Lillian Cleaver, the phenomenal contralto of the Howard Burlesque Co."--she is included in an 1892 New Jersey Phonograph Company catalog described by Jim Walsh in the October 1958 issue of Hobbies.

Though Jones would later win fame as a performer of comic numbers, her brown wax cylinders give no hint of her comic talents.

During most of her recording years she resided in Huntington Station, Long Island, New York. She died of uremic poisoning (kidney failure) in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on May 2, 1922, while on a performing tour.

Jones is buried in Saint Patrick's Cemetery in Huntington, New York (Section C, Plot 70).

Ada Jones "Virginia Song" (George M. Cohan) Edison cylinder 9294 LYRICS (Ethel Levey's Virginia Song