Everybody’s heard “Sweet Home Chicago” and “My Kind of Town.” But these beloved songs are only a small part of our local musical heritage. Most of us don’t know this classic from way back in 1926:
Looking for real prosperity
There is no other like it.
Except to catch the Evanston Express
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“The golden age of the band, of sheet music, was from the turn of the century to the 1920s, 1930s,” said Dennis Buck, curator of the Aurora Historical Society, which has preserved “Aurora, Our Own” as well as “The Aurora Two-Step,” a march written for the Zouaves, a local military drill team. “It was a big period for just writing songs. The widespread use of radio killed off the local band. Once you get to the big-time era of radio there are only four or five big bands. By then, you’re writing for a bigger market, and the only way you can sell a song is to make it universal, or about New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, someplace people want to go.”
In the 1920s, Agnes Robinson Kirsch didn’t want to go anywhere but Aurora. She loved the place so much that she penned “Aurora, Our Own” and published it herself, under the pseudonym A.R. Kay.
Aurora, our own, of all we love you best.
