[Dixielandjazz] Grant Clarke

Tue May 17 18:26:46 PDT 2011

A Sad, Old Song
Famous Akron lyricist is virtually forgotten today in hometown
by Mark J. Price
Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, May 16, 2011
You might not know Grant Clarke by name, but you probably know his work.
The Akron native wrote some of the catchiest songs of the early 20th century while
cranking out hits for Tin Pan Alley music publishers in New York. Clarke was the
lyricist for more than 100 tunes, including classics "Second Hand Rose," "Am I Blue?"
and "Ragtime Cowboy Joe," and collaborated with such luminaries as Irving Berlin,
Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and Ethel Waters.
Despite being a celebrity in the halcyon years of Victrolas and sheet music, he is
virtually unknown today in his hometown -- even though his compositions continue
to be recorded by modern artists and featured in movies and television programs.
It all began here.
New York natives Mary and William A. Clarke welcomed baby son Grant on May 14, 1891,
in the bustling canal town of Akron. William, an illustrator, managed the advertising
department at Akron's B.F. Goodrich Co., while Mary was a stage actress.
The infant's first home was in the Windsor Hotel, a four-story inn at South Broadway
and East Mill Street, where owner Ferdinand Schumacher strictly prohibited alcohol.
That taboo was a great irony in Clarke's adult life.
The family moved to 104 Oakdale Ave. and later resided at 509 E. Market St. before
settling into a luxury room at the Barberton Inn. Clarke attended Akron High School,
the forerunner of Central High School.
As a teenager, Clarke acted in Ohio stock theater, where he realized that music was
his calling. The boy could play a mean piano and knew how to turn a phrase, so he
packed a suitcase in 1910 and moved to Manhattan.
Clarke was a happy-go-lucky character -- a tall, thin fellow with a crazy wave of
hair and a razor-sharp wit.
Hungry in the city
"When Grant Clarke came to New York with nothing but an idea that he could write
songs, he found that the idea wouldn't keep him from starving and he started to go
home," Broadway columnist O.O. McIntyre recalled a few years later. "On the way to
the train, he overheard two men on Broadway say that Bert Williams was on the hunt
of a new song."
Overnight, Clarke composed a ditty for Williams, the only African-American in the
cast of "The Ziegfeld Follies." Written in an Akron white boy's interpretation of
black dialect, the song "Dat's Harmony" concluded: "Wid all due credit to a big brass
band, de sweetest music in de land is when you hear de sizzle from de fryin' pan.
Man, dat's harmony!"
Williams listened to the song, made a few changes and agreed to use it in his act,
where it became a major hit. For his work, Clarke was paid $1,000 (about $23,600
today) and caught his big break on Broadway.
Clarke's next big song was "Ragtime Cowboy Joe," collaborating with musicians Lewis
F. Muir and Maurice Abrahams. The lyrics are about a cowboy -- "a high-falutin',
scootin', shootin', son of a gun from Arizona" -- who sings ragtime music to his
cows and sheep. Singer Bob Roberts had a No. 1 hit with it in 1912, but today's listeners
are more likely to recall the 1959 version by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Next up was the novelty song "He'd Have to Get Under -- Get Out and Get Under," about
a motorist who has to keep repairing his automobile when he'd rather be romancing
his sweetheart. Singer Al Jolson had a smash with it in 1913. Jolson later had success
in 1918 with another Clarke song, "Everything Is Peaches Down in Georgia," and sang
two Clarke songs, "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face" and "Mother of Mine, I Still Have You,"
in the 1927 film "The Jazz Singer."
Clarke wrote with many composers, including Milton Ager, Harry Akst, Irving Berlin,
Fred Fisher, James Hanley, George Meyer and Harry Warren. In 1914, he became a charter
member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
Marriage proposal
That year, Clarke met Garnet Patten, 17, of Kokomo, Ind., who was visiting an older
sister in New York. Clarke, 23, became smitten with the girl and hopped a train to
Indiana three months later to propose marriage.
He surprised Patten at her front door in mid-December.
"I want you to marry me," he told her. "Marry me here and now, and we'll both be
back in New York in time for a glorious Christmas dinner."
Her father, the Rev. Arthur Patten, married the couple in the living room, and they
caught a train back to the East Coast.
The young bride wasn't really prepared for the big city.
After a year of wedded bliss, she began to get jealous of women in her husband's
songs. She balked at titles such as "You're a Dangerous Girl," "You Can't Get Along
With 'Em or Without 'Em" and "There's a Little Bit of Bad in Every Good Little Girl."
When Garnet Clarke filed for divorce in 1919, newspapers dubbed her "The Tired-of-Me
Girl," after Clarke's hit "Tired of Me": "Tired of me, tired of me. Sorry is all
you say. Just like a toy, children enjoy. Loved and then thrown away."
Clarke's battle with the bottle must have played a role in the marriage's failure.
He frequently drank himself into a stupor at the Blue Ribbon Bar in New York. Tin
Pan Alley composers couldn't get him to leave, so they sometimes worked out songs
on the tavern's old piano.
One time, Clarke and pal Tony Hughes went on an all-day bender at a hotel. Columnist
O.O. McIntyre recounted that Clarke looked out the hotel window and happened to see
the Ringling Bros. circus unloading.
"Ooh, looka!" he exclaimed. "Elephants and monkeys!"
According to McIntyre: "The panic-stricken playmate sent for the house physician
and Clarke was confined to an asylum! And not until 10 days later could they prove
that Clarke wasn't seein' things, but a real load of animals."
The inebriation didn't seem to show in Clarke's work. His lyrics were sharp, and
his biggest success was yet to come.
Singer Fanny Brice introduced Clarke's famous song "Second Hand Rose," co-written
with James Hanley, in "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921." "I'm wearing second hand hats,
second hand clothes," she sang. "That's why they call me Second Hand Rose." Barbra
Streisand reprised it in the 1968 movie "Funny Girl."
Clarke's other signature tune, "Am I Blue?," co-written with Harry Akst, was in the
1929 movie "On With the Show." Ethel Waters sang the show-stopper: "Am I blue? Am
I blue? Ain't these tears in these eyes telling you?"
Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky Nelson, Brenda Lee, Bette Midler, Cher and
Linda Ronstadt are among the many singers who recorded it.
Concentrating on movies, Clarke left New York and moved to Hollywood. His songs appeared
in more than 20 movies from 1929 to 1930, but it was a frantic pace that couldn't
last.
On May 16, 1931, two days after his 40th birthday, a sickly Clarke tried to walk
to a friend's bungalow after dark. He never made it. The lyricist fell to the ground
and died of alcohol-induced heart failure.
The nation's newspapers barely mentioned Clarke's passing 80 years ago. That anonymity
continues to this day.
Despite more than 100 songs, Clarke might be the most famous Akron native that no
one knows.
_________________________________________
Grant Clarke Song Titles
Here is a sampling of the song titles written by Akron native Grant Clarke:
Am I Blue?
Anything Is Nice If It Comes from Dixieland
As Long as I'm Here With You
Avalon Town
Back to the Carolina You Love
Beatrice Fairfax
Bee-Da-Lum, Bo-Da-Lum
Birmingham Bertha
Blue (And Broken Hearted)
The Chop-Stick Rag
Come Back to Me
Dat's Harmony
Dirty Hands, Dirty Face
Dixie Dreams
Don't It Mean a Thing to You?
Everything Is Peaches Down in Georgia
France, We Have Not Forgotten You
Goodbye Virginia
He'd Have to Get Under -- Get Out and Get Under
He's a Devil in His Own Home Town
Home in Pasadena
Honolulu, America Loves You
The Honolulu Blues
I Can't Believe You Really Love Me
I Hate to Lose You (I'm So Used to You Now)
I Love the Ladies
I Know I Got More than My Share
I Still Have You
If He Can Fight Like He Can Love, Good Night Germany
I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird
I'm the Medicine Man for the Blues
In the Land of Beginning Again
In the Land of Jazz
In the Land of Let's Pretend
Is Everybody Happy?
I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling
Jig Jigaloo
Just for Me and Mary
Land of Old Black Joe
Let Me Have My Dream
Lift the Juleps to Your Two Lips
Mandy Make Up Your Mind
Maybe You Think You're Fooling Baby
Mother of Mine
My Little Bimbo Down on a Bamboo Isle
My Sahara Rose
Neptune's Daughter
New Orleans
Nobody Cares If I'm Blue
Now That I Need You, You're Gone
Oh, Eva (Ain't You Comin' Out Tonight?)
Oh! You Million Dollar Doll
One Little Drink
On the Steps of the Great White Capitol
Oogie Oogie Wa Wa
Ragtime Cowboy Joe
Ragtime Eyes
Regretful Blues
Ring Ting-A-Ling
Rose of the Rio Grande
Rosie (Make It Rosy for Me)
Salvation Nell
Samoa
Second Hand Rose
Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat
Some Lonesome Night
Start the Band
The Sweetest Melody of All
Sugar Cane
Thanks to You
They Start the Victrola (And Go Dancing Around the Floor)
There's a Girl in Arizona
There's a Little Bit of Bad in Every Good Little Girl
There'll Be a Hot Time for the Old Men (While the Young Men Are Away)
There's One in a Million Like You
Tired of Me
Weary River
Wedding Day
Welcome Home
When God Gave Me You, I Know I Got More than My Share
When You're in Love With Someone
Why Are You Breaking My Heart?
Winter Nights
Wishing and Waiting for Love
Wouldn't It Be Wonderful?
Yokohama Lullaby
You Can't Get Along With 'Em or Without 'Em
Wouldn't It Be Wonderful?
You'll Find Old Dixieland in France
You'll Never Get to Heaven With Those Eyes
You're a Dangerous Girl

--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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