Dear Mayme, I Love You 1
The pattern
This still is filed under Lettered cover hook.
Define
The cover is the hook, and the hook is lettering: a title treated as an image.
Mechanism
Type as bait. The words are drawn so they stop the hand before the contents are known.
Verdict
A journal, book, or issue must sell itself on a rack or a feed
Why it works
The letter in her hand is the hinge: it makes the headline function as dialogue rather than a label, so the buyer reads the title in a voice. The picture hat is the period's status signal, doing the work of saying who this song is for without any copy. Painting a cast shadow onto a flat unmodelled ground is a cheap depth trick that lifts the figure off the paper while keeping the background free for lettering. The lozenge border and corner ornaments frame the sheet as an object worth keeping on the piano, which is what a sheet music cover is competing to be.
Steal this when
Use this when the headline is a spoken line. Put an object in the scene that plausibly contains those exact words - a letter, a screen, a note, a sign - so the reader attributes the line to the person in the picture instead of to the advertiser.