William Jerome
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William Jerome Flannery (September 30, 1865 – June 25, 1932)<ref name=Jasen2003/> was an American songwriter, born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, of Irish immigrant parents: Mary Donnellan and Patrick Flannery. He collaborated with numerous well-known composers and performers of the era but is best remembered for his decade-long association with Jean Schwartz with whom he created many popular songs and musical shows in the 1900s and early 1910s.
Early career
By the time he was seventeen, Jerome was singing and dancing in vaudeville. He toured with minstrel shows and performed in blackface.<ref name=Rice1911/> He met Eddie Foy while on tour and they became friends;<ref name=Fields/> the two would work together often throughout their careers. By the late 1880s Jerome was performing as a parody-singer at Tony Pastor's.<ref name=Jasen2003 /> He also began to write songs and his efforts met with some success. In 1891, Jerome composed "He Never Came Back",<ref name=HeNever /> sung by Foy in the musical Sinbad, which became the hit of the show.<ref name=Fields/> Throughout the 1890s he continued to perform, and his reputation as a lyricist grew gradually. He wrote "My Pearl is a Bowery Girl" (1894) with Andrew Mack which became a number one record for Dan W. Quinn.<ref name=Dean2003/>
He met and married another vaudeville singer, Maude Nugent, probably in the early 1890s.<ref name=Jasen2003/>Template:Efn He and Nugent had at least one child, Florence, born in 1896.<ref name=Variety1913/>
Jerome is sometimes credited with suggesting the bicycle lyric of "Daisy Bell" (1892) to Harry Dacre.<ref name=Sullivan/>
Collaboration with Schwartz
His first collaboration with songwriter Jean Schwartz was the coon song, "When Mr. Shakespeare Comes to Town", in 1901.<ref name=Jasen2003 />
The duo came up with "Mr. Dooley", which was interpolated into the 1902 American staging of the London musical A Chinese Honeymoon.<ref name=Bordman/> Chinese Honeymoon was successful and "Mr. Dooley" became popular. Later that year the song was interpolated into the musical The Wizard of Oz, extending its popularity.<ref name=Swartz/>Template:Efn "Mr. Dooley" reputedly sold over a million copies.<ref name=Sanjek/>
Their next big hit was "Bedelia" (1903). Interpolated into The Jersey Lily and sung by Blanche Ring, it sold over three million copies. By 1904, "Bedelia" had been recorded by four different artists on the three major phonograph labels.<ref name=Steffen/>
In 1904 they scored the musical Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!!, starring Foy.<ref name=Bordman/> They went on to score seven more musicals together.<ref name=Green/>
Jerome and Schwartz became two of the best-recognized songwriters of the first decade of the 20th century<ref name=NYStar/> with numerous popular songs to their credit such as "My Irish Molly-O" (1905), "Handle Me With Care" (1907), "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Meet Me in Rose Time, Rosie" (1908). Although it was not an immediate success, "Chinatown, My Chinatown" (1906) is considered by some to be their biggest hit. Four years after it was written, it was interpolated into Up and Down Broadway by Foy; another five years passed and it became a national hit record.<ref name=Ruhlmann/> It went on to become a jazz standard.<ref name=CrawfordMagee/>
In 1911, Jerome and Schwartz formed their own sheet music publishing company.<ref name=PrintTrade/> They chiefly published titles with music by Schwartz, many with lyrics by Jerome—such as "If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews" (1912)<ref name=Garrett/>—but also many with lyrics by Grant Clarke.Template:Efn Jerome also began to work more with other composers: in 1912 he wrote the lyrics of "Row, Row, Row" (music by James V. Monaco) for the Ziegfeld Follies;<ref name=Merwe/> in 1913, he worked with Andrew B. Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer to write lyrics for "On the Old Fall River Line", and with Von Tilzer again on "And the Green Grass Grew All Around". Jerome and Schwartz worked as a team less and less and gradually both moved on.
Later career
After he and Schwartz went their separate ways, Jerome continued to collaborate on songs with some of the best-known composers in the business. In 1920 he wrote the lyrics for "That Old Irish Mother of Mine", music by Von Tilzer, which he dedicated to the memory of his mother. Again with Von Tilzer he wrote "Old King Tut" (1923); with Charles Tobias and Larry Shay he wrote "Get Out and Get Under the Moon" (1928).
He continued to publish sheet music without Schwartz and in 1917 published the enormously successful "Over There" for George M. Cohan; he eventually sold the publishing rights to the song to Leo Feist for $25,000, the most ever paid for a song at the time.<ref name=Sullivan/> On the strength of his Broadway comedy writing credentials, he was recruited by Mack Sennett as a writer for the Keystone Film Company.<ref name=Walker/> He was among the first board members (1914–1925) of the American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (ASCAP).<ref name=Pollock/>
William Jerome was struck by a car in the spring of 1932 and died June 25 in Newburgh, New York.<ref name=Jasen2003 />
Notes
References
External links
- "Mr. Dooley", 1902 recording by Dan W. Quinn, at the Library of Congress National Jukebox
- Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!! songbook at the Internet Archive.
- Template:IBDB name
- William Jerome recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
- List of popular recordings of Jerome songs at Music VF