Today, we will look at another Capitol Hill composer. He, admittedly, has little to do with our neighborhood, for he only lived here for a few years, and his biggest ‘hit’ was a little ditty he wrote for a shoe store, but that one piece makes it all worth it.
In 1912, Berberich’s Shoe House was one of the oldest and best-known shoe stores in Washington D.C. An institution since 1868, they had celebrated their 40th anniversary four years earlier, in which time they had grown from a single storefront only nine feet wide to a 12,000 square foot store covering four buildings along 7th Street NW – plus another outlet around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue. The only thing they felt was lacking was some solid advertising. One attempt was to hitch their star to the high-flying Nationals, who were in the pennant race, and closing in on the league-leading Red Sox. They hired a cartoonist to draw a picture of baseball game being played by the likes of Mutt and Jeff and the Katzenjammer Kids, all under the rubric Burrojaps Shoes Are Worn by Winners. Burrojaps were shoes made of burro leather, and were known (at least by their makers, the Packard & Field Company of Brockton MA) as being particularly long-lasting
How successful this campaign was is unclear. Certainly, by a month later, they were on a different tack. This time, they hired a local musician, Charles H. Roth to write a song about their shoes.
Roth was originally born in Illinois, and had served during the Spanish American War. He married in 1904, and the newlyweds settled down in Washington, first on 17th Street NW and then at 129 6th Street SE. Along the way, Roth became known as a pianist and singer – and songwriter. His songs tended to the sentimental and patriotic: “My Dream of the U.S.A,” “There’s a Spark of Love Still Burning in the Embers of My Heart,” “I Love You, I Can’t Forget,” “A Sailor of the U.S.A.”
A snippet of the music as published in the Washington Times to give the reader a taste of it. (LOC)
For Berberich’s, Roth composed the Burrojaps Trot, which was “the acme of grace as dance music without any semblance of the vulgar or inartistic,” at least according to a full-page ad that Berberich’s took out in the Washington Times of July 2, 1912. Furthermore, they were sure that “this new dance [would] place the others [sic] more or less famous trots in the background.” They also listed 100 bands that had already played the piece, including two bands at the Willard, the Navy Band, and that of Capitol Hill’s own Alhambra Garden. The Marine band, apparently, did not get involved in this new craze.
Berberich’s final push to use this new music to get people into their store was an offer of free sheet music to the first 10,000 people who came to their store at 813 Pennsylvania Avenue – and hear the composer play it. How many actually took them up on their offer is unknown. Certainly, the Burrojaps Trot disappeared from the public consciousness almost immediately thereafter.
Roth, for his part, moved to New York State shortly after the first World War, and lived there until his death in 1959. He never again rated a full-page piece in any newspaper.