Songwriters

Dominic Vautier  1/7/2011

Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all.[1]

Perhaps New York was not the ideal place to live and work around the turn of the century as noted:

In this big city atmosphere a song tradition grew up. The themes established in Foster’s style of music were loosely adhered to but was also well embellished by the city's flavor where we find a collection of skilled and enthusiastic people to support it.

Songwriters of that time usually came in pairs.  Harry and Albert Von Tilzer were mediocre lyricists but unequaled at melody. Harry wisely employed top lyricists of his day, such as Andy Sterling and Arthur Lamb, to put words to his songs, suggesting ideas and sometimes suggesting lyrics.  Irving Berlin spent many years writing lyrics before he felt comfortable doing melody. He eventually could do both with supreme skill.  Paul Dresser and Jim Thornton did words and music. But because the business was becoming so competitive, artists concentrated on what they could do best [3].  Song development was an art then, even as it may still be today. But this evolving discipline was art that had to be seasoned with work and failure. Songs that were flops got recycled, repackaged, and rearranged, perhaps later to become successes.

Timing and public attitude played a big role. One example of timing was And Her Golden Hair Was Hanging Down Her Back, first published in 1884 turned out to be a failure, never getting out of vaudeville.  In 1896, it was tried again and became a hit. The public, perhaps by this time, was more accepting of an unusual story describing the adventures of a country girl in the big city.

Melody seamed to come first. Melody was what found words.  It became the starting point.  Early tunesmiths were constantly in pursuit of a good, catchy melodies, because once found, they could eventually be used. These pioneers of Tin Pan Alley who worked uncharted waters of American popular music guarded their tunes by lining pianos with newspapers to muffle the sound to prevent theft. It was melody that sold songs, not advertisement, not words, not accompaniment. In those times it was the benchmark of success, pure and simple. And, since melody made the song, melody drove the early market and melody was precious.

Of course, words were needed. An accomplished lyricist could fit reasonably good words to a good tune and create a hit.  But excellent words, when added to an average melody could also develop success as well. Glow Worm is a more recent example of exceptionally good words put to an average  melody [4].  The song was originally in German and translated, but the words were done so well that the song is still played today, and has been re­released many times. In this one case the words made the difference.

Some songwriters moved freely among the three music areas (Broadway, vaudeville, and popular music), each area involving slightly different rules and different skills. With Broadway, the development of musical comedy was a long and intense undertaking. Generally songwriters needed to have a collection of songs and needed to be able to choose the right song for the right musical situation.  In English light opera, however, the librettist (lyricist) finished an entire libretto (words and story), before the songwriter began work. This is perhaps why English Light Opera is torturously word-heavy and highly story-oriented, often to a fault and not at all the way Americans prefer their theater.

On Broadway, musical development was a partnership in which two, three, or even four writers collaborated on one play [5].  Some wrote music, others wrote words, and still others did both, but it was a joint authorship. The American musical consequently had a much better connection between words, music and story. From these early efforts developed the great teams of Rodgers and Hart, Herbert and MacDonough, Romberg and Donnelly, and Kern and Hammerstein [6] all of whom had very productive relationships and generated some very fine early American musical plays. These teams learned to integrate story and music so well that there was a kind of seamlessness and consistency that has long since earmarked the American Musical.

Vaudeville required different skills.  It was fun-packed, light­hearted, and sexy, and it needed jazzy, snappy melodies.  This form of theater was open-ended and often used as a career path for actors, singers, and songwriters who wanted to refine their styles and make a name for themselves.  Berlin is a fine example. He worked for many years in vaudeville before moving to Broadway.

Just about all the people involved in early popular music are forgotten today, which is, I suppose, to be expected.  After all, who needs to remember those long peaceful productive years between the two big wars (the Civil War and the Great War).  Life, when it works right, is unglamorous, and is therefore relegated to footnotes and parentheses. Its killings, atrocities, and outrages that are remembered or seem important or are exciting enough to produce action-packed dramas [6].  It’s great discoveries and breakthroughs that stand out, not the backdrop of steady, slow, meticulous, everyday, unremarkable, boring, uneventful progress.

Here are a series of short biographies of some of the people who did make a difference during the formation of early popular music.  First are Stephen Foster and Harry Von Tilzer, because of their clear and powerful effects.. Also included are Paul Dresser, Jim Thornton, Ernest Ball, and Gus Edwards, who were people most representative of the many writers of the day. Irving Berlin and W. C. Handy made great contributions although these people are more remembered for their later work. Harry Fox is included for his effect on dancing.

Stephen Foster - First of the Breed

Some claim that Stephen Foster was that guy who left his family and died poor and penniless in a New York flophouse from a gash in his neck inflicted during a brawl.  He was that scoundrel who left his wife penniless. The draft-dodger, the drunk, the great pro-slavery advocate.

More correctly let's start by saying that Foster was a man living in the mid century who was very much in touch with the common people of his time. He brought to America, and to the world as well, a great deal of happiness through his incredible gift of song.

When Foster arrived on the musical scene, what we now call popular music was non-existent. There was nothing but a rough collection of minstrels and minstrel shows touring the countryside, high-toned old-world English opera sung to ultra rich gentry with their very proper top hats, sideburns, fans, and plump crinoline dresses, and Italian Operas that everybody pretended to understand, imported from the continent.  America was a social province, a cultural outpost, a literary backwater, and class distinction tended to divide the music onto definite highbrow and lowbrow types. Yes, there were things like Sacred Harp and other home-spun religious formats, southern black spirituals, and a confused, disorganized hodgepodge of work songs, traditionals, slave songs and South American imports, but nothing much to unify them.

Stephen Foster was born into this setting, this musical stew, this misshapen cacophony, this amalgam.  What made him so great was how he could draw so much out of such an utterly confusing environment. He had nobody to copy, no prototypes to use, no teachers to enable him, no towers of success or bastions of talent, and for that matter not a living soul to give him one ounce of leadership in the development of music. He groped around in total darkness, and had to struggle against the complete ignorance and confusion of his time. He had to blaze his own trail.  Sure, he may have stood above his contemporaries, but there were no contemporaries to stand above, because nobody was around who even remotely compared to him.  He was the Bobby Jones [8]of music, the 1927 New York Yankees, the 1992 Chicago Bulls; he played by himself in his own league. There were no other teams.

Stephen Collins Foster was born on July 4, 1826, into a middle-class family in Lawerenceville, Pennsylvania, which is now a suburb of Pittsburgh.  It was perhaps an ill omen to come into the world, for this was exactly 50 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence and, coincidentally, the very same day that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. Shakespeare might even have called his birth “star-crossed,” that is, destined to greatness and doomed to end badly.  Like so many of the other early popular artists and songwriters who followed him, Blame, Scott Joplin, Dacre, Gershwin, Davis, Dresser, and Bonnie Thornton, to name a few, Foster was eventually consumed in and by his own talent.

When yet a small boy, he expressed a strong desire to write music, an occupation which, at that time, was equivalent to becoming a shiftless hippie. As a teenager he often would skip school and go down to the Ohio River docks and listen to the work songs, sorrow songs, and sea chanteys that the deck hands had brought with them from downriver. Worse yet by far, he would sneak into black camp meetings and attend black spiritual revivals. Stephen was a keen observer and began developing melodies on piano, for the boy had taught himself privately how to play and read music.

The Foster family would have none of this disgraceful, unconventional and completely unacceptable conduct. Their son was not going to fritter away his life on such idle rubbish. They packed him off to Cincinnati to work as a bookkeeper in his brother’s grocery store but, most of all, to get him away from the influences of the Pittsburgh docks, the evil and lecherous assortment of gamblers and prostitutes that frequented the river-front, and the shameful and sensuous black revival meetings that he continued to surreptitiously attend.

None of this prevented Stephen, now a young man, from following his own instincts anyway. In Cincinnati he began frequenting beer halls and taverns. He joined a group called “The Knights of the Square Table, [9] which was devoted to the pursuit of song, drink, and general hell-raising.  It was during this period that Stephen developed some of his excellent songs. He created such masterpieces as Oh Susanna and Old Uncle Ned, for which he received $10 each from lukewarm and indifferent publishers. But the songs became so popular that Foster’s reputation improved and he actually began earning enough to make music writing a full-time career (unheard of at the time), because only financially independent people could dabble in this kind of nonsense.

So in 1850 Stephen said goodbye to his boring and humdrum bookkeeper’s job, returned to Pittsburgh, and was finally able to marry his childhood sweetheart, Jane McDowell.  He continued to write songs for the next five years, producing some of his best work, including Old Folks at Home, Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair (about his wife), and De Camptown Races.

However, as would be expected, the muse did not sit well with this restless man. Foster spent money carelessly, became disillusioned and disorganized, and finally left his family and went to New York, where he continued to run up bills at taverns and nightspots.  His wife by this time had left him and he became a bum, wandering the streets at night, looking for somewhere to stay and writing cheap tunes in exchange for a place to sleep and a bottle to drink away his troubles. By January 1864, this unfortunate man was admitted to New York's Bellevue Hospital, in a coma and with a huge gash running down the back of his neck. He had nothing in his wallet but 38 cents and a scrap of paper upon which was the start of a new song. He died three days later, never awakening from the coma.

There are several versions of Foster’s death. Some say he may have died from a cut in his neck inflicted during a brawl. Others say he was overcome by fever, and struck his head when he passed out. Still others speculate he died from a cut caused when he fell while drunk.

It is hard to believe that Foster would ever become involved in a fight. He was not a violent person and avoided any kind of physical confrontations. But there was always the possibility that he was mugged for whatever money he may have had.  Foster was not a well man towards the end of his life, and he most assuredly suffered from malnutrition.  He drank heavily and barely survived under poor circumstances. He had nobody to console him since his wife and friends had all left him and he fell deeper and deeper into depression. There is one reliable account that describes his last days in some detail.[10].  Foster had probably been taken by a fever (which was quite possible given his poor physical state of health) and had fallen while attempting to make breakfast, hitting his head on his stove and gashing his neck. His death was most likely due to a combination of fever and concussion added to his own already weakened condition.

Although there is room for doubt as to the exact circumstances of Foster’s death, his days were numbered anyway. The songwriter had lost his will to live and merely subsisted, no longer able to produce the material that had once been his custom, and from which he had derived his physical well being, peace of mind, and spiritual nourishment.

Foster more influence on the future of popular music than anybody else ever had, in fact he just about created it.  Given the total dominance that American popular music now exercises over the world today (whether or not we like to admit it), it is probably no exaggeration to claim that Foster was the most influential musician who ever lived, anytime, anywhere.

Learned and lofty scholars wobble off to their secure lecture podiums, under the intense weight of countless literary and musical degrees, heavy doctoral robes, and weighty publications, with the universal recognition of their peers, general respect of the public, and the usual blind deference of a music world that acknowledges that these guys seem to know what they’re talking about.  In one voice, these shining scholars extol the rich and intricate melodies of J.S. Bach, the awesome crushing power of Beethoven, the unparalleled technical skill of Mozart, and lastly (in a gesture of condescension), the humanity and warmth of The Beatles. They also grudgingly confess to the greatness of early American artists Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Copland, but not one word, not one mention, not one parenthesis or footnote is given to the greatest influence of them all.

Stephen Foster should get credit for determining the direction of the one primary and totally unchallenged form of music that is dominant today, constantly evolving, and continuing to enrich our lives. It was he who set it all in motion, heavily directing the very course of American musical history, and for that reason Foster is most rightfully called father of popular music. This music would definitely be something else without the supreme contributions of this single, unrecognized, unassisted, isolated, absolute genius of a music man.

The illustrious career of the incomparable Stephen Foster may have ended badly, but his enchanting lullabies and his rousing racetrack songs are an inspiration even today. His spirited tunes of progress, challenge, and triumph over adversity, as well as his soulful ballads: none of this will ever die.

There is a statue of Stephen Foster outside the University of Pittsburgh, a tribute to the founder of American pop music.  I hope that this man will at some time and in some way be more fully recognized for what he was and for what he managed to accomplish. Stephen Foster is not gone at all.  He is still remembered through his work and every single piece of popular music that is ever played.

Harry Von Tilzer - Forgotten One

We vaguely, remember Stephen Foster. Yet Harry Von Tilzer exercised a great deal of influence over early popular music soon after 1892, and yet he is so completely forgotten.  The man had just about everything needed to be a successful songwriter. During his reign as the king of Tin Pan Alley, from 1898 until about 1913, Von TiIzer was said to have published about 100 songs that sold over half a million copies each [12] and many more that sold over one million [13]. He had great showmanship ability, strong voice, and he could act out as well as write melodies that people liked. During this time Von Tilzer had virtually no equals.

The former circus roustabout and burlesque trouper who had never taken a formal music lesson, piano or otherwise in his life, was soon to sit on top of that world.  Despite his lack of formal music education, Harry Von Tilzer possessed an uncanny, intuitive gift for melody and an amazing presence, to be proved time and again, of the kind of ballads and comedy numbers that the millions of song-loving Americans would sing and play and buy. [14] 

Harry's original name was Harry Gumm. This was not the most artistic name in the world, especially for a promising boy wanting to make a career for himself.  So in keeping with the ways of the stage, he changed his name, taking his mother’s maiden name and adding the “Von” for flavor.

Like many ambitious adventurers of his time, Harry left home at the age of 14 and joined the circus, for there seemed no better place to develop his precocious acting and musical skills.  Harry soon left the circus and joined a traveling stock company, where he was free to do his own acting and sing his own songs. He began writing songs at 15 and some say that by the turn of the century he had already produced about 3000 songs.

The young Von Tilzer eventually arrived in New York with a bag full of songs, a lot of hope, and $1.65 in his pocket. He continued to crank out songs at $2.00 a copy for the next six years and got by relatively well, at least for a songwriter. He was versatile enough to supplement his earnings as a singing waiter, song plugger, piano player, vaudeville performer.  He did just about anything that came along dealing with music, and he was very good at all these things.

Von Tilzer shared an apartment with Andy Sterling, a lifelong friend, adviser, and collaborator. His big break came in 1898, when he finally hit stardom with My Old New Hampshire Home, a song about the Spanish-American War invasion of Manila Harbor by the U.S. Navy under admiral Dewey.

There are many stories about the various exploits of this man who was so talented and versatile. Let’s look at just one case where he was able to demonstrate this. It occurred when Nora Bayes [15] an inexperienced singer was performing one of Harry’s new beer-hall songs, Down Where the Wertsburger Flows, at the Percy Williams’ Orpheum. Half way through the chorus the girl forgot her lines, and Harry, who was occupying a box, immediately  stood up, and began to sing with her until she regained her place.  That was all Harry, a true ham. The incident came off so well that everyone thought it was prearranged and Harry was applauded soundly for his impromptu performance. The manager insisted that he repeat the act for at least a week. Nora Bayes never forgot the favor.

Von Tilzer was able to write in any style, from rowdy beer-hall songs to flowing waltzes and snappy ragtime songs like Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown and I’d Leave My Happy Home for You. He was a supreme master of every single form of popular music then in use.  Some of his most memorable are Bird in a Gilded Cage, On a Sunday Afternoon, Wait till the sun shines Nelley, Under The Yum Yum Tree, In the Sweet By and By and I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad

But more important, Harry was always concerned about social issues.  He was the first songwriter who dared to openly address the realities of life in his portrayal of a prostitute in the song Bird in a Gilded Cage. Two years later he did another song about life in a brothel called Mansion of Aching Hearts. Both of these songs were revolutionary, as well as very successful.

After 1914 Harry was no longer very good as a songwriter. However he remained very much involved in the music business, running his publishing house, and finally going into semi­retirement around 1925. He died, more or less forgotten, at the age of 73 after a most amazing and influential life. [16]

What Harry Von Tilzer did in just the 16 years from 1898 until 1914 is not easily measured. In those few years he was able to transform the infant music industry into an economic powerhouse.  By his excellent example of melody, style, subject matter, and musical form he was able to define a standard for the future of popular music, and that future is still unfolding today. Consider the similarity between some of his ragtime and modem rap. Just look at his soft and flowing waltzes and compare these to work done by Celine Dion, Mariah Carry, and Madonna. Harry Von Tilzer’s legacy is still very much with us, even though he himself has long been forgotten [17]

Paul Dresser - Tragedian

Your troubles, sorrows and care,
She was always willing to share. [18]

Paul Dresser came right out of Greek drama. At 300 pounds, this guy was definitely larger-than-life, and his tall stature seemed sometimes to tower above his friends, as well as overwhelm his competitors and detractors.

Paul was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1860, one of 13 children. His original name was Dreiser, but he changed it because the name Dresser was easier to say and sounded more American.  Besides, Paul had always had a desire to break away from his overprotective and domineering father, and a name change suited him just fine. One of his brothers, Theodore Dreiser, later became a writer of some consequence.

Paul left home at 20 and joined a medicine show [19].  Soon after he went to work for a stock company in Louisville, Kentucky.  In 1885 he decided to join the minstrel show of Billy Rice out of Brooklyn, and played the part of Mister Bones [20].  It was at this time Paul discovered his desire to write his own songs. He was not very good at first, and made money by mostly doing other things, like writing humorous columns for newspapers and composing monologues for other comedians. Paul finally decided to publish his own songs and collect his own royalties. This proved successful, and Paul Dresser finally achieved some degree of recognition as a serious songwriter. Paul Dresser’s generous nature was his weakness, because he gave away about everything he ever made and eventually died sick and penniless. He was probably manic-depressive, although in those times he was just considered extremely moody.

His songs were sad. They dealt with broken hearts, lost loves, misfortunes, misunderstandings, and bygone friendships. Perhaps one reason his songs were not so successful was because he lived in a world between loneliness and despair. Just Tell Them That You Saw Me is all Dresser, and representative of his trademark style, great melody and strong story line.

His two really big hits, On the Banks of the Wabash, and My Gal Sal were an exception to his usual morbid fare. Nonetheless Paul Dresser became a kind of folk hero around the Alley, and people talked about him for years after his early death. His last song My Gal Sal may have been his best.  It was a reflection of his own troubled and brooding spirit. [21].

Jim Thornton - Comedian

I love you as I never loved before

Like so many others in the early music business, Jim Thornton didn’t exactly fit anywhere. He was just there.

The man was a true scholar, self-taught, studious to a fault. As a young man, he read anything and everything he could get his hands on. Jim had an almost photographic memory and could quote Shakespeare at length.

Most of his education started when he was working as a night watchman at a Boston printing plant. During these long quiet hours Thornton spent his time in reading, study, and reflection.  Big Jim Thornton, as he was known on Tin Pan Alley, was born in Liverpool, England, but he wore his Irish on his sleeve, because it afforded him a ready opportunity for humor.  He played the piano well and wrote all his own songs. He had a gregarious nature and made friends easily, especially the drinking kind of friends.  Thornton started in show business as a singing waiter like Berlin, Harry Von Tilzer, and many others did.  Soon it became evident that his talent for music was his great strength, and it was not too long before Thornton began to make a name for himself as a stage performer.  He could make anybody laugh, and soon became one of the top-ranked vaudeville monologists [23] of his day.

Jim’s big problem was his drinking. His standard lifestyle consisted of all-night booze benders with his many highly dedicated drinking buddies, including the former world heavyweight champion, John L. Sullivan. “John L” had his own saloon, and Jim was his favorite pianist: the two became inseparable friends. Often Jim spent all night on the town and wound up in some flophouse the next day, not knowing where he was or how he had gotten there. Many times he would do his monologue act while completely intoxicated, and these performances were both hilarious and legendary. At one time while blazing drunk, he fell headlong off the stage into the orchestra pit. Upon climbing back he offhandedly remarked, “Usually you start from the pit and work your way to the stage. I’m doing it backwards.”

Jim Thornton’s redemption was his long-suffering and devoted wife, Bonnie, who also was a vaudeville performer and singer of modest talent. Though perhaps not of the same stature as Maggie Cline or May Irwin, Bonnie made up for her weaker voice and smaller size by her determination, enthusiasm, and delicate beauty. She became a fixture around town. She was also Jim’s inspiration for many of his successful songs. 

On one occasion, Bonnie, impatient with Jim’s constant drinking and clowning around, remarked, “Jim, don’t you love me anymore?” to which he quickly remarked. “Bonnie, I love you like I did when you were sweet sixteen." [24] The remark was inspirational and sent the man into his usual frenzy of songwriting.  When he was done he had produced what was to be one of the loveliest ballads of the day, When You Were Sweet Sixteen. On another occasion Bonnie asked Jim if he was still her sweetheart, to which he replied glibly, “No. My sweetheart’s the man in the moon.” This again drove the half-drunk songwriter into a tizzy of creativity from which he again emerged with another smash-hit song, My Sweetheart’s the Man in the Moon.  And just to prove his skill with other song types he wrote the enchanting ballad, She may have seen better days.

As if to continually prove himself, Jim was always playing tricks on people. He sold his Sweet Sixteen song to two different publishing houses at the same time to see what kind of trouble it would cause, and it did indeed cause trouble. Both houses, W. Witmark & Co. and Joseph W. Stern had to take the matter to court for a settlement.

After Bonnie died, Jim never was quite the same. He actually did give up his drinking, but that may have been the result of prohibition more than the death of his wife. The bootleg whisky was so bad that Jim once remarked, “When the stuff you have to drink tastes like varnish and you have to sober up on paint remover, it’s time to quit.” An so he did.

Jim Thornton remains an interesting figure during these early days. He embodied the light side of life, the devil-may-care, free-and-easy spirit. His songs reflect a kind of buoyancy, boldness, sexuality, and lightheartedness that was part of the period. Jim Thornton is remembered for what he did, rather than what he didn’t do.

Ernest Ball - Quiet Wonder

We’ll find a little nest,
Somewhere in the west,
And let the rest of the world go by.[25].

Quiet and unassuming this piano player was.

Anybody who took notice would not have expected much from him. But he “could play an excellent piano,” so he was hired in at Witmark’s at a respectable salary of $20 per week. Ball turned out to be a natural with melody. In those days melody was what made songs, and nobody could spin a melody like Ernest Ball.

As a young boy, Ernest was a Mozart on the piano, mastering it very early and giving lessons when he was 13 so he could make enough to continue his own musical studies. He often played relief piano at Keith’s Union Square Theater. [26]

Three years after going to work for Witmark, Ernest Ball wrote a top-seller called Will You Love Me In December as You Do in May [27]  This one song was on the charts for an entire year. The next year he wrote his first million-seller, Love Me and The World is Mine. Ernest had a simple formula; write sentimental songs, songs that pull at the heartstrings. Success will be assured. He also had the benefit of some of the best lyricists around, although his best work was done with George Graff, who wrote lyrics only as a hobby.

Ernest Ball died the way all good songwriters and performers would like, on the stage. He suffered a fatal heart attack while singing one of his own songs. He was 49.

He filled a void, Ernest Ball did. This little-known, soft-spoken, mousy, easy-going man, who had only two really big blockbusters to his credit during his short life, did much more than write songs. He was the fulfillment of the Foster tradition. He continued it in much the same way that Foster would have, had he lived, and the way that Irving Berlin would in the years to come. But Ernest did it much better than anybody else.

Ernest Ball was the perfection of everything that popular music had ever stood for. His music was the definition of popular music. His soft and lilting ballads, like When Irish Eyes are Smiling, Mother Machree, and Let the Rest of the World Go By had to be the envy of every songwriter of his time. Today the continuation of American Ballad tradition, as best represented in the music of the Carpenters, Neil Diamond, Madonna, Roberta Flack, and the Beatles is perhaps unknowingly modeled after and follows closely the work that was done by Ernest Ball. [28]

Gus Edwards - All Things are Equal

Reading, writing and ‘rithmetic [29] 

Gus Edwards was part of the wave of immigrants who came to the United States after 1880. He left Germany in 1887 when he was 9 years old, settled in Brooklyn, and soon was working14 hours a day in his uncle’s cigar store. Frequently after work, he went down to the local theater and sang soprano parts for vaudeville. Gus also worked as a “plant”: somebody placed in the audience who would suddenly stand up and start singing. This was a valuable and well-respected position for a kid of his age, considering that the other kids had to pass out cups of water between acts and do less glamorous tasks while Gus got all the glory.[30]

Gus Edwards loved to sing. He sang on the streets, ferryboats, saloons, anywhere he could find a place. But his career really started to take oft when he was commissioned to round up four other boys and form a quintet, and at this time young Edwards started writing his own music. He had already taught himself the piano, but he developed his own musical notation because the standard notation was not good enough for him anyway. Since he couldn’t read or write standard music, Gus always managed to get his friends to transcribe his notation into standard music.

Ransom E. Olds started the Olds Motor Work several years later in 1904 he had developed a good runabout and demonstrated its reliability by driving it from New York the Chicago in eight days.  Soon after this he sent cars from New York to Portland, Oregon in 44 days, but by that time he had sold over 5000 units to eager New Yorkers.  The following year Gus Edwards used this incident to write and publish the nice little song In My Merry Oldsmobile.

Edwards wrote many other vaudeville songs, but his really big break came in 1907, when he wrote School Days, an immensely popular song that sold well-over 5 million copies.  With the proceeds of his riches, he opened a school for aspiring young musicians. Through his doors passed some excellent future talent: Walter Winchell, Groucho Marx, Ray Bolger, Sally Rand, and others.

The constant enthusiasm that Gus Edwards displayed toward his work and his very life, for that matter easily made up for any apparent lack of great talent. He wasn’t quite in the same class as Harry Von Tilzer, Ernest Ball, or Al Piantadosi, but it didn’t much matter. Gus Edwards is to be remembered because he compensated for his lack of raw basic talent with sheer determination and hard work.

Joe Howard - Hard Life, Hard Times

If you refuse me,
Honey you loose me
Then you’ll be left alone.
So Baby telephone
And tell me I’m your own [31]

Joe Howard was born in 1878, which was a very good year for young and promising songwriters to come along, but Joe did not have a lot of support from his family. He was raised on Mulberry Street, which was, at that time, about the toughest part of New York. His father owned a saloon and treated the 8-year-old boy like just another hired hand, so Joe ran away and hid in a Catholic Orphanage. Soon after, he hopped a freight for Kansas City. He survived by selling newspapers, and later moved to St. Louis and was able to get work in vaudeville as a singing soprano. From there Joe traveled all over the West, with stops at Dodge City, Tombstone,  Denver, and many other cities where he obtained work in the various dance halls and saloons. He got married at 16, but the marriage lasted just 24 hours. That was only the first in a life plagued by many more failed marriages. Of all the things Joe Howard could do, he could organize. At 17 he formed a song-and-dance team, and when he was 19 he wrote the smash hit Hello, My Baby. After that he began composing musical scores for Broadway. Between 1905 and 1911 he wrote the music for 18 productions.

Joe Howard will always be recognized for bringing ragtime to the American public with such songs as Hello, My Baby and Goodbye My Lady Love. He was also credited with I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, although he only produced the song as part of a Broadway musical.

Irving Berlin - Little Big Man

Come on and hear
Come on and hear
It’s the best band in the land. [32]

It was a cold September morning in 1893 when the SS Rhynland docked in New York harbor [33] The U.S. Immigration Service had just taken control of immigration processing and the whole thing was pure bedlam. New arrivals were ferried out to Ellis Island and run through makeshift and haphazard procedures using the outmoded and dilapidated buildings on the island. After the confusing ordeal everyone was again ferried back to New York.

Among the immigrants that day was Moses Baline and six of his children, the youngest of which was five-year-old Israel (later to take the name Irving Berlin). The boy was destined for greatness, although as far as it mattered then, he was just another pitiful, destitute, Russian, Jewish immigrant among hundreds of thousands of other Russian Jewish immigrants who had come in search of a decent life.

He was born in the small Siberian village of Tuman in Russia in 1888, and everybody called him “Izzy.” The Baline family, with their eight kids, was forced to flee when their village was burned, and the family decided to come to New York.

Against all nature and probability, the industrious “Izzy” got into music. He was determined to succeed despite his inability to sing or dance, his inherent shyness around people, his lack of technical skill at any musical instrument whatsoever, and his total absence of knowledge about musical theory and composition. He never had any formal training at the keyboard, he knew nothing about classical music, he was a poor student in school and could barely play the piano, and in only one key.

But Izzy worked extremely hard at everything he did. It seemed that his whole life depended on a never-ending quest for success, the Holy Grail, the fifth essence, and an everlasting desire to prove his own worth over and over again to the world and to himself. He was first a paperboy, then a street singer, then a plugger, and then a singing waiter.  Israel  wasn’t very good at any of these things but there was a determination in this young man’s soul so powerful that it overcame all obstacles. lzzy wrote his first published song in 1907, Marie From Sunny Italy, and made 37 cents from it. He also, at this time, assumed his stage name, Irving Berlin.

Berlin was soon able to get a job as a songwriter for Ted Snyder, and by 1911 he was a well-established songwriter. That year brought him to fame and fortune with his starting smash hit Alexander’s Ragtime Band.  No biographical review of early popular music would be complete without Irving Berlin. Even though his glory days mostly came after 1915, it can hardly be disputed that Berlin Irving Berlin is the most recognized songwriter in American popular music history. He lived for 101 years, and some people seriously wondered if he would ever die. They thought about him almost like the apostles thought about Saint John.  Berlin was a quiet and secretive man, very often refusing to endorse biographical work, and it wasn’t until after his death that a number of excellent biographies could finally come to print.[35]

Even though Berlin’s greatness was earmarked for a later time, nonetheless his contribution to early popular music was immense. He spearheaded the ragtime revival of 1911 with the highly successful Alexander’s Ragtime Band. The song itself contained an unusual 32-measure chorus. He continued to produce fine music well until the middle of the 20th century. We are familiar with much of his later work: White Christmas, Always, Blue Skies, God Bless America, Easter Parade.

Berlin was great.  For a little, unassuming Jewish Russian who mumbled a lot and couldn’t dance or sing (who, for that matter, could barely play the piano) he did OK.  Well maybe a little better than OK.

Perhaps it was his raw determination that so lifted him above his contemporaries, perhaps the same kind of determination that sparked Alexander the Great or Gustavus Adelphus. After all, his contemporaries included the likes of such versatile and exceptionally talented piano players and composers as Al Piantadosi, Ernest Ball, and Harry Von Tilzer. Its a wonder this little guy survived at all in a business that he was not really designed for. But he did. And he did it in a most magnificent way.

William C. Handy - Revolutionary

“Take it away!” William’s father shouted. “How could you bring such a sinful instrument into this house?”  “But I want to be a musician,” cried the boy.  His father’s eyes burned with rage. “My son! A Musician! I will not permit it! NEVER! NEVER!”

The 12-year-old boy, shocked and disappointed, sadly took his beautiful guitar back to the store and exchanged it for, of all things, a dictionary. What possible good was a dictionary? He had worked for two years, saving pennies and nickels, picking berries and collecting nuts for nearby farmers, and now he had to take his wonderful instrument back and get a dictionary? There's no justice.  All of his dreams were gone. It was a hard lesson for the young William Handy to learn, but he vowed then and there to be a musician someday, and a great one at that, despite anything his father said.

For the next two years Handy had to make reparation for his sin of pride. His father was a strict Methodist minister who wanted his boy also to follow in the Lord’s path, and therefore the boy’s spirit must be cleansed of these worldly interests and pleasures.

Young William, however, did not at all agree with his father’s designs on his life. After all Will had restless blood in his veins. His grandfather was a slave who had been a runaway several times and had never really taken to the idea of being owned by anybody. William also had an uncle named Hanson who refused to be whipped and was sold away from his family and loved ones, never to be seen again. So the spirit of rebellion was born into him: it was in his blood. William indeed had other ideas about his future, and his dictatorial father was not in those plans. William, too, would not be owned by anybody.

When W. C. was 15, a circus band was stranded in Florence , Alabama , Handy’s hometown, and every day the band rehearsed in the local barbershop. The boy hung around listening and memorizing every note.

“Hay, young man. You want’a buy my old cornet? I’ll sell this one to you for $1.75,” said one of the band members who had noticed the boy’s intense interest.

“Sure,” said Will, “but all I have is a quarter.”

“That’Il do; just pay me a quarter a week until it’s all paid off.”

Naturally, Will had to hide his cornet for fear of his father’s wrath. He decided to leave with the minstrel troupe, but was again stranded, this time in Georgia. Sadly he had to return to Florence and once again face his father’s wrath. But this time William decided to bide his time. He finished school, taught school for a while, and worked in an iron foundry. But the music would not leave him.

In 1893, the Chicago World’s Fair was on, so he organized a quartet, and off to Chicago they went with no more than 20 cents in their pockets.  Handy’s quartet never got to Chicago, but while he was riding the rails, W.C. heard some unusual and beguiling sounds. This was the first time the boy had ventured very far beyond his backyard or had ever had a chance to hear real music from the American backwater.

All kinds of sounds! There were the sorrow songs and work songs of the people who lived and toiled along the Mississippi, from the down-and-out gamblers who hung around the bawdy houses, the mournful moans of the bale-toting stevedores, the melancholy dirges of the jailhouse gangs who trudged along the roadside with their chains rattling and the gang bosses barking a cadence not quite of this world, and the forlorn and earthy singing of the drunken shipwrights and boat-hands who frequented the river-front taverns. There were also the delightful and enchanting songs of the black piano players who worked the brothels and saloons of the busy Mississippi River towns, and the doleful wails of the small-time street-corner musicians who grubbed out an existence from the pennies and nickels donated by merciful passersby.

William Handy observed this and his keen mind remembered and cataloged it all. He eventually became a performer working for Mahara’s Minstrels, a black minstrel show owned by three Irish brothers. Finally, with all this experience, W. C. went on to form his own band.

In 1909 Handy was hired to play for Ed Crump, a reform candidate who was running for mayor of Memphis. For the occasion he came up with a bizarre melody based on the W.C. Handy sorrow songs he had heard while riding the rails along the Mississippi. This, combined with his own skill and personal experiences, resulted in a tune that was quite unusual because it was written in three-line stanzas of twelve measures [37]  The rhythm was on the after-beat, or up­beat, and the notes were slurred or “blue.” When Handy’s band begin to play the song, while on a wagon that was slowly being pulled through town, everybody was so impressed that they started following the wagon and dancing at the same time. When the wagon finally stopped, most of the city of Memphis was there. By the way, Crump did win the election.

The song Handy played that day was called Mister Crump and later renamed Memphis Blues. It was very successful, but did not achieve national recognition.  The world was not ready for Blues music. Two years later W.C. Handy wrote his first nationally recognized Blues song, St. Louis Blues. This achievement later earned W.C. the appropriate title, “The Father of The Blues.”

Harry Fox - Song-and-Dance Man

Troubles were brewing in Europe. It was May of 1914 and America was not at all interested in European wars: the country instead was looking for new distractions. The distraction this time was the Fox Trot. Not that it was anything new ,because it was like many earlier dances with similar slow-slow­ quick-quick rhythms. But this one had a name, and a catchy name too, and it had a champion.  Harry Fox was your typical young, enthusiastic, smooth-talking and handsome song-and-dance man. He had been performing a special dance he had developed in his usual course of business, going through the standard trotting-to-ragtime motions. The public, or rather the papers, first discovered his dance while he was doing an act at the Jardin de Dance on the roof of the New York Theater.  Management soon realized the advantage of making Fox’s dance a feature of the evening, and soon everybody wanted to do the Fox Trot.

Initially, there were several versions of the dance and it took another year or so before dance instructors were able to standardize it.

Lady luck eluded Harry Fox. Neither riches nor happiness came from his spectacular invention [39]  His first wife Yansci Dolly, divorced him in 1921, after he had managed to get himself heavily into debt.  He filed for bankruptcy that same year. Fox’s second and third marriages also ended in disaster. He moved to Hollywood and again married. He played insignificant parts here and there and died in obscurity in 1959.

So ended the life of Harry Fox, a man whose name has been immortalized, even though he may have been considered a flash in the pan, every dance book, every ballroom program, and most dancing contests still remember and pay homage to the song-and-dance man Harry Fox by the inclusion of his namesake in their programs.

Here are some other links in this article:

  Origins of Early Popular Music

     Minstrelsy
     Broadway
     Vaudeville
     Other sources

  People Growth - the First Baby Boom and it's effect

  How Dancing Helped Music

  Women and Early Music

  Some Songs

  The Influence of the Piano

  Recorded Music

  Sheet Music

  Chronicles 1892-1900

  Chronicles 1901-1915

  Million Sellers

Notes

1.  Harold Atteridge & Earl Carroll, By the Beautiful Sea, 1914.
2.  Maxwell F. Marcuse, Tin Pan Alley In Gaslight (New York: Century House,1959), 143.
4. This is not to suggest that Paul Lincke, the song’s author was not great at melody. He was.
5. Harold Orlob was the author of I Wonder Who’s Kissing her now for the Broadway play The Prince of Tonight, although for many years Joe Howard claimed that right because he was the producer. Howard felt it was his music since he paid for it.
6. There have been several movies made about early American popular songwriters, e.g. My Gal Sal (1942), When Irish Eyes are Smiling (1944). As expected, they were all flops.
7. Stephen Foster, My Old Kentucky Home, 1853.
8.  Considered the greatest golfer ever to play the game (1902-1971).
9.  Jack Burton, The Blue Book of Tin Pan Alley (New York: Century House,1951), 14.
10  John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster,  America’s Troubadour (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1934), 342.
11. Arthur Lamb & Harry Von Tilzer, Mansion of Aching Hearts, 1902.
13. David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1988),
14 Marcuse, 257.
15. Nora Bayes later married Jack Norworth and achieved stardom in her own right.
16. Jason, 42.
17. The library of congress maintains many of his works in the Hariy Von Tilzer Collection.
18  Paul Dresser, My Gal Sal, 1906.
20. Marcuse, 127.
21. A movie was made called My Gal Sal. It was a bomb.
22. James Thornton, When You Were sweet Sixteen, 1898.
23. A stand-up comedian.
24. Burton, 64.
25. Kiern Brennan & Ernest Ball, Let the Rest of the World Go By, 1919.
26. Burton, 68.
27. The lyrics for this song were written by Jimmy walker, who also wrote the lyrics for several other songs. Walker made about $10,000 on this one song alone, which was enough to put him through law school and launch him into politics. Jimmy Walker was elected Mayor of New York in 1926.
28. The movie When Irish Eyes are smiling, 1944, features Earnist Ball.
29. Will Cobb & Gus Edwards, School Days, 1907.
30. Burton, 81.
31. Joe Howard, Hello My Baby, 1891.
32. Irving Berlin, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, 1911.
33. Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer (New York, Viking,1990),4.
36. Elizabeth Rider Montgomery, William C. Handy (Illinois: Garrard Publishing Company, 1968), 29.
37. Songs at that time were usually written in four-line stanzas of 16 measures. Montgomery, 54.
38  Performances were often held on the roof of theaters during hot summer New York evenings.
39. Richard M. Stephenson, and Joseph laccanno, The Complete Book of Ballroom Dancing (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1980), 35.