CANNING, Effie I.

Effie I. Canning, born Effie Crockett and later known as Effie Canning Carlton, was an American songwriter, composer and stage actress. She was born in Rockland, Maine, and became best known for the melody and musical setting of the lullaby “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” published in Boston by Charles D. Blake & Co. in 1886. Although versions of the nursery rhyme’s words had circulated since the eighteenth century, Canning’s late nineteenth-century setting established the melody by which the song became widely known in the United States.
Canning reportedly composed the tune while still a teenager and later presented it to a music publisher. The published version was incorporated into Denman Thompson’s successful stage production The Old Homestead, helping the song achieve considerable popularity. Contemporary sheet music identifies Canning as the author of both words and music for the expanded strophic song, which was written for voice and piano and included additional verses and a refrain based on the familiar nursery rhyme.
Her surviving output also includes songs such as “Safely Rocked in Mother’s Arms,” “Don’t Tread on the Daisies” and “Tapping on the Panes.” “Safely Rocked in Mother’s Arms,” published in 1887, is scored for solo voice, piano and SATB chorus. Sheet-music advertisements also document arrangements of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” as a male quartet, waltz, galop, transcription and schottische, indicating that Canning’s celebrated melody circulated in numerous domestic and popular-music formats.
Alongside her musical work, Canning pursued a long career as a stage actress, appearing with William Gillette and in touring theatrical companies. She married actor Harry J. Carlton and was subsequently known as Effie Canning Carlton. Despite the lasting popularity of “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” copyright difficulties prevented her from receiving substantial income from its later use. She died in Boston in 1940